Women Almost 50% of U.S. Workforce (At Men's Expense)

The New York Times published this rather depressing article by Lisa Belkin over the weekend titled: The New Gender Gap.

The article basically says that while women are about to represent half of the U.S. workforce, a historic landmark, this ultimately comes at the expense of men who have suffered the largest job losses in the economic crisis.

But wait - it gets better: women are losing out when they bust through the 50 percent margin because we come cheap (77 cents to the dollar), we don't typically have the same salary demands (part-time) and we are likely to stay put in a low to mid-level position for a long time without asking for more money.

So essentially, women take one step forward as a statistic, but several steps backs in terms of actual workplace equality and pay fairness.

And then, when it comes right down to it, women who have smashed the glass ceiling are actually losing their jobs at the same rate as men...and this is supposed to be encouraging:

The point that the increase of women in the workplace is not somehow a victory for women is driven home by the fact that the most successful and highly paid women are losing their jobs at the same rates as successful and highly paid men.

There is also the fact that equality in the workplace has not translated into equality in the home, where women still do decidedly more of the work, on average, than men. That may change as more men are domesticated by unemployment, or it may become an additional burden of this new economy, because there is a different kind of tension in a home where a man is out of a job....

Cataclysms are often classrooms. What we are learning from this one is that women have not reached parity, no matter what next month's jobs data say. It is not good news when women surpass men because women are worth less. Perversely, real progress might come when we reach the place where a financial wallop means women lose as much ground as men.

In general, I see the conclusion of this article as yet another casualty of the economic crisis. And we all (men and women) must take the blame for enjoying the Gilded Age Part 2 for a little too long, but I hope that just because the stock market crashed, women's expectations of themselves don't also take the plunge. I hope that we can keep our hopes, dreams and ambitions alive and truly seen as equals in the workplace, on our paychecks and in the home regardless of the economic recovery.

[Photo by: Dyanna, on Flickr.]