Mancession

Jillian Bandes | July 10, 2009 4:27 PM

The disparity in the number of jobs women have lost and the number of jobs men have lost during the recession is striking. Eighty percent of the layoffs have hit the gents, topping 3 million jobs in all.

The lovely Christina Hoff Sommers comments on this disparity with her typically keen and engaging commentary, noting that women's groups were partially responsible. They launched a lobbying campaign to commandeer more of the stimulus dollars towards professions that were female-dominated; they felt that since Obama was focusing on male-dominated professions (because they were the hardest hit by the recession) that the money was discriminatory.

There is great room for debate over the effectiveness of government stimulus programs, and over how much impact a focused "shovel-ready" spending program would have achieved by now. What is not debatable is that changes in the American economy and workforce are favoring service sectors where women are abundant and that the current severe contraction is centered on sectors where men, especially working-class men, predominate. That an emergency economic recovery program should be designed with gender in mind is itself remarkable. That, in current circumstances, it should be designed to "skew" employment further towards women is disturbing and ominous.