Women in the front line as recession bites

Jan 26 2009 by Kevin Rowan, The Journal

NOW that we are formally in a recession the debate will focus on its nature, scale and scope. It is already bad and will get worse before things get better.

This recession will also hit women workers harder than any previous downturn, according to a new TUC briefing. Jobs are being lost across the economy rather than concentrated in male dominated sectors such as manufacturing. There are more women working today than at the time of previous recessions, and there are more households than ever which depend solely or primarily on a woman’s wage.

A quarter of households with children are headed by lone parents, 90% of whom are women and women earn more than men in a fifth of couples.

In recent months the rate at which women have been losing their jobs has increased at the same speed as the male unemployment rate.

During the downturn, women’s redundancy rate has increased more quickly than the male rate. From January to September 2008, the female redundancy rate increased by 2.3 percentage points, almost double the rate of male increase (1.2 points).

These figures probably represent underestimates, as the first group of workers to start losing their jobs was agency workers, who disappeared from the workplace without being picked up by any official statistics and are much more likely to be women than men.

If there was a major drive to cut public spending even more women would find their jobs at risk, as there are more women than men employed in the public sector.

With so many households absolutely dependent on women’s wages, the Government must ensure that women benefit in full from programmes to help those facing redundancy and the long term unemployed and tackle the invisibility of some job losses.

Women may also face particular barriers to finding new jobs. Women who still have the major share of childcare responsibilities may have chosen particular part-time or flexible employment opportunities as a means to balance paid and unpaid work. This places restrictions upon their job search.

The Government, union and employer responses to female unemployment should focus on: acting to protect women’s jobs; fair treatment for women facing redundancy; enforcing employment rights; support for unemployed women to access and understand benefits; and creating new opportunities for women.

Kevin Rowan is Regional Secretary, Northern TUC.