Working Women And The Recession

For the last few decades, women have become a larger and larger part of the overall workforce. This is partly because of women becoming more equal in our society, but a large part of it is also because of the corporate depression of wages for working people. Many families now have to have both the male and female working just to maintain a semi-decent standard of living for the family. In the 1950's, most families could live off the wages of one family member. That is no longer true in our society.

The corporatists have sold us the lie that whatever is good for corporations is good for everyone. They convinced many that as the rich and the corporations got richer, much of this would "trickle down" to workers and everyone would be better off. It was a lie and they have used this lie to depress wages to the point that a single wage-earner can no longer support a family for a huge part of our population.

This has made it important for women to find and maintain a job, even though they probably don't make as much as their male counterparts. In addition, there are many single-parent families in our current society, and most of those single parents are women. These women have no choice but to work (because welfare simply won't support a family to a decent standard, regardless of what Republicans would have you believe).

While it is now necessary for women to work, the recession has made it harder than ever. A report is to be issued on Monday on working mothers by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. It does not paint a very pretty picture. And since it is now necessary for women to work in both one and two-parent families, it gives us a glimmer of just how hard its going to be for the working class to make it through this recession.

Here are some of the points the report makes:

-Most jobs lost in the recession were lost by men, but many women lost jobs as well. From December 2007 to December 2009, women lost 45 jobs for every 100 lost by men.

-As the economy began to recover in recent months, women lost jobs while men gained jobs. From October 2009 to March 2010, women lost 22,000 jobs while men gained 260,000.

-April's positive employment numbers were better for men. Women gained 86,000 jobs last month, while men gained 204,000.

-Participation of mothers in the labor force increased during the recession, from 71 percent to 71.4 percent between 2007 and 2009.

-Nearly half of all mothers with children under 18 worked full time last year.

-Of the 21.7 million mothers employed in 2009, two-thirds were in a dual-earner family. One-third - about 7.5 million mothers - were the sole breadwinners.

-Unemployment increased dramatically during the recession for single mothers. Between 2007 and 2009, the unemployment rate among single mothers increased from 8 percent to 13.6 percent.

-Many women - 3.3. million in 2009 - worked part-time for economic reasons, either because they couldn't find full-time work or their hours were cut back.