The Sexism of the Recession

• Post by: Bryce J. Christensen
• June 12, 2010

While lamenting alleged sexism in the workplace for decades, the media have remained strangely quiet about the gender-specific impact of the recession that began in 2008. According a cover story in The Atlantic by Don Peck, the job losses of the past two years has turned into what others call a “he-cession,” which the deputy managing editor fears does not bode well for the future of marriage, the family, and society. “The weight of this recession,” observes Peck, “has fallen most heavily upon men, who’ve suffered three-quarters of the 8 million job losses since the beginning of 2008. Male-dominated industries (construction, finance, manufacturing) have been particularly hard-hit, while sectors that disproportionately employ women (education, health care) have held up relatively well. In November, 19.4 percent of all men in their prime working years, 25 to 54, did not have jobs, the highest figure since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the statistics in 1948. At the time of this writing, it looks possible that within a few months, for the first time in U.S. history, women will hold a majority of the country’s jobs.” Peck believes that Mirra Komarovsky’s account of the Great Depression, The Unemployed Man and His Family, is remarkably applicable 70 years later, as her interviews with out-of-work husbands and fathers “paint a picture of diminished men, bereft of familial authority.” The observation of one unemployed man quoted by the sociologist—that would never be said of a woman then or now—says it all: “A man is not a man without work.” Given that most married men work to support wives and children, their loss of jobs is more catastrophic than job losses among women, whose families depend less, on average, on their income. Unlike other observers, Peck sees the social dimension of the current recession. If job losses among men are not reversed, he projects higher rates of divorce in the next few years