WMC News & Features

Are We Doomed to Repeat the Mistakes of the Last She-cession?

Wmc features barista andrew donovan valdivia unsplash 061721
Jobs in which women, people of color, and young people are overrepresented were most impacted by pandemic-related shutdowns. (Photo by Andrew "Donovan" Valdivia on Unsplash)

As the Great Recession unfolded between 2007 and 2009, male-dominated industries such as construction and manufacturing appeared to be hit the hardest. Yet, nearly a decade later, a new study from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) found that women — and predominantly young women of color — workers are more likely than their male counterparts to be struggling financially. They’re also the ones hit hardest by the pandemic this time around, as industries in which women, people of color, and young people are overrepresented, such as retail and hospitality, were most impacted by early, pandemic-related shutdowns.

Much of the persistent economic struggles of women workers a decade after the Great Recession, IWPR researcher Shengwei Sun says, can be traced back to initial policy failures from the recovery period of the Great Recession — policy failures that women workers can’t afford for the government to make again, as we stare down the pandemic-related recession of today.

“When you look at the differences and parallels between these two recessions, when the Great Recession happened, male workers were hit the hardest at the height of it,” Sun said. “But similar to what we're seeing now, men recovered much more quickly than women — it took a long time for women to recover compared to men, for minority workers, for young workers. Workers who are more marginalized in the labor market tend to recover more slowly.”

According to IWPR’s research, a disproportionate number of young women, classified as those between the ages 16 and 24, worked part-time involuntarily and earned low wages a decade into the economic recovery from the Great Recession, in 2019. In that year, almost 70% of young women earned less than $15 per hour, compared to 58% of young working men, 27% women aged 25 to 64, and 17% men in this age category.

This isn’t an accident. Sun says a key finding of her research is that these numbers stem from the emphasis on job creation, rather than quality job creation, during the Great Recession recovery period.

“Up to 2019, that's when they said we had historically low unemployment rates, and we're at full employment now. A lot of people took it as, the labor market is doing well,” Sun said. “But when you look at the quality of the jobs people are getting, especially those workers who are more marginalized including young workers, especially young women of color, the quality is not living-wage jobs.”

That’s because, as Sun notes, during the recovery, job industries in which women, people of color, and young people are disproportionately concentrated, such as hospitality, retail, and general service work, began to push workers out of full-time jobs and into part-time jobs. Sun notes this was “for saved costs for the employer, because these part-time jobs don't have to come with job benefits.”

This time around, to avoid entrapping women workers, workers of color, and young workers in a similar place of involuntary, underpaid part-time work without benefits, Sun says it’s not enough to indiscriminately create new jobs. “There hasn’t been enough attention or effort to create high-quality jobs,” she said. “To measure the health of the economy, not just in the context of the unemployment rate, but to really look at what kind of jobs workers are getting, what kind of schedules and minimum pay are we instituting, and do these jobs come with health benefits, enough hours? Job quality is a major issue.”

Already, at the height of the pandemic and consequent economic recession, women of color, and especially Black and Latina women, shouldered the brunt of pandemic-related job loss, and experienced the highest rates of struggling to afford rent and other necessities. Specifically, a report from March found Black and Latina women are twice as likely as white men to say they have barely enough to pay for food, housing, or child care in the past year. Twenty percent of Black and Latina women said the pandemic has had a “devastating” impact on their finances, compared with 9% of white men and 12% of white women.

The economic impacts of both the Great Recession and the current recession have carried disproportionate and long-term harm for women, particularly women of color, because, according to Sun, recessions “exacerbate” existing gender inequities in the economy — “creating and contributing to the ‘she-cession.’”

Just some of these existing gender inequities include pay discrimination, lack of resources and supports for pregnant workers and new parents, lack of investment in child care, and what Sun calls “gender segregation” that overrepresents men in higher-paying lines of work and women in lower-paying lines of work. There is also, of course, the reality that women in general face a higher cost of living than men, known as the “pink tax,” which includes everything from the tax on menstrual hygiene products to the costs of reproductive health care like contraception, and even basic beauty, fashion, and grooming products.

The IWPR’s report does identify key solutions for an inclusive economic recovery this time around, one that won’t continue to marginalize women workers a decade on. Immediate, short-term solutions include improving part-time labor conditions with a minimum wage increase, greater stability in shifts, benefits, and more. Longer-term solutions include investing more deeply in job training programs, creating more and higher quality jobs, and creating equitable access to these jobs, among other policies to address workplace inequality and build workers’ collective bargaining power. The report can be read in its entirety here.

“These workers want to be working full time, but they can't find a full-time job, or jobs with a living wage,” Sun said. If the continued inequities of the post–Great Recession recovery period reveal anything, it’s the importance of not just quantity, but also quality of jobs. The economic security of women workers, workers of color, and young workers will rely on meaningfully striking a balance between quality and quantity.



More articles by Category: Economy
More articles by Tag: Economy, Equal Pay, Labor, Women of color, Young women, Work
SHARE

[SHARE]

Article.DirectLink

Contributor
Kylie Cheung
WMC Fbomb editorial board member
Categories
Sign up for our Newsletter

Learn more about topics like these by signing up for Women’s Media Center’s newsletter.