Hidden unemployment
The number of women with jobs increased by 21,500 in the year to January, according to figures released in late February by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. By contrast, the number of men with jobs for the same period decreased by 26,900.
The jobless rate for January also reveals a gender gap, with unemployment at 11.6% for men and 10% for women, a reversal of the situation in the 1982-3 recession when the unemployment rate for women was greater than that for men.
But there are things the figures don't say.
They don't reveal whether the "jobs" obtained by women are full time, part time, permanent or casual. They don't say where the jobs are, and they don't include everyone who is out of work, just those registered for benefits.
Men are losing jobs in the areas hardest hit by the current recession — manufacturing and construction. Women are obtaining work in the industries one would expect them to in the most gender-segregated work force of all OECD countries — retail and services. There are no figures available, but it's a fair bet that the majority of these "new" jobs obtained by women are either part time, temporary and/or casual, and poorly paid.
Many women have been obliged to take such work to supplement a family income devastated by the retrenchment of their partner, the collapse of a family business or even their own retrenchment from full-time employment. Economic necessity is driving women, more than ever, to accept low paid and insecure employment in traditionally female-dominated industries — women's work.
Although the bare figures indicate that the number of unemployed men is greater than the number of unemployed women, Mark Wooden, deputy director of the National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders University, told the Financial Review on March 3 that "The number of underemployed women is more than double that for men".
Apart from underemployment, women also avoid the "jobless" headcount through their disproportionate membership of the category known as "discouraged workers" — people who have ceased looking for employment but who would take a job if one became available.
Of 846,400 "discouraged workers" in Australia
at September last year, 71% were women. Strangely, the number of female "discouraged workers" was almost identical to the number of female unemployed. The biggest single reason given by these women for dropping out of the job hunt was lack of child-
care.
But don't worry. According to Sidney Simpkin, regional director of Drake Beam Morin, an English consultancy that advises executives who have been made redundant, unemployed women don't suffer as much as unemployed men.
"Maybe women have had their fair share of disappointments before", he explained in the February 26 Economist. "The [unemployed] men seem much more taken by surprise. And men have a harder time adjusting, perhaps because they are less flexible and partly because they are judged by their employment status and salary."
While women are still judged by their man's status and salary — or is it their charm and good looks?
Sorry, Mr Simpkin. Unemployment doesn't discriminate. It means poverty, boredom and misery, whatever your gender.
By Karen Fredericks