Are women suffering worst in the recession?
A few months ago there were a stream of headlines suggesting that women might be the big losers in the current recession. This, it was felt, was because they were in the workforce more than in past recessions and because the industries they worked in were among the first to be hit. In addition, organisations like www.workingmums.co.uk had been receiving a big surge in calls for advice from women who had been made redundant on maternity leave.
But what is the real picture and what does the evidence from past recessions say about the long-term impact of economic downturns?
Jackie Scott, professor of sociology at the University of Cambridge, heads a network of researchers on gender issues. She spoke recently at a debate at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas on whether women or men were more affected by this recession.
She had organised a seminar on the subject in March when headlines were claiming that women were losing their jobs at double the rate of men and were more worried about losing them in the future. However, she referred to research by Dr Brendan Burchell of the University of Cambridge which found that when women were interviewed about a range of issues around losing jobs, the rising cost of living, falling property prices and so forth they were in all cases significantly more likely to be anxious than men. Could it be that women just worried more in general, she asked?
In fact, this recession and previous ones seemed to show that those who are most likely to lose their jobs are from ethnic minorities, particularly black Britons. Surveys had shown that a marked drop in happiness as a result, but only 20% of this drop was due to income loss. Loss of self-esteem, social networks and status was much more important. The psychological impact of losing your job, the research by Professor Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick found, lasted for the entire length of a person’s life, even when they had got a new job. Unemployment also had a big impact on the well-being of a person’s family and not just in terms of income.
Ill health
Professor Scott said: “Unemployment increases your risk of depression and later ill-health. It wipes out the benefits of healthier living among more educated people. The effects are far-reaching. Well-educated young men from well-off backgrounds who were out of a job during the 1980s recession were far less likely to be higher earners or own homes in 1991 than those who had been steadily employed. It is clear from the research that there is no catch-up in health and economic terms even when a recession has ended, especially for the unskilled who will be worst hit and could spend many years out of work.”
She said the impact of unemployment therefore affected everyone in a person’s family. Men who were unemployed were more likely to split up with their partners, irrespective of how long a couple had been together. Interestingly, women who lose their jobs are twice as likely to split up with their partners, but only if they have been with them for over 15 years.
Research also shows that it is women who, in most cases, control the family budget. They are very likely to give their children priority in straitened circumstances and cut back personal spending as much as possible.
Interlinked lives
Professor Scott said that it made limited sense to ask whether the recession affected women or men more, or young or old people since most people’s lives were interlinked. What was undoubtedly true was that the recession would have a long-term impact on people’s lives and that policies that political short-termism was “a major impediment to effective intervention for mitigating the longer-term damage of the recession on people’s lives” even if policies aimed at mitigating the longer-term effects showed little “cost-effectiveness” in the short term. She said: “Policy makers short-termism can impede efforts to tackle the longer-term damage that recession can inflict on people’s lives.”
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