Recession Seen Taking Toll on Gender Equality

By KATRIN BENNHOLD
The New York Times
April 26, 2011 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/world/europe/27iht-letter27.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

LONDON - It was dubbed the 'He-cession.' As male unemployment
surged and female jobs proved more resilient, pundits
proclaimed not just The Death of Macho (Foreign Policy,
September 2009) but The End of Men (The Atlantic, July/August
2010). The worst economic slump in half a century was hailed
as the beginning of the end of male dominance in the labor
market.

But as attention has turned from bank balance sheets to
government debt and from stimulus spending to austerity, the
legacy of the recession may be less, not more, gender
equality.

From Athens to London to Washington, the new age of austerity
is likely to rewrite basic assumptions about solidarity and
the role of the state in rich countries. Few dispute the need
for governments to be more frugal. Years of fiscal
profligacy, expensive military campaigns and, more recently,
Keynesian deficit spending, have intensified the strains that
aging populations are putting on the welfare states of Europe
and the entitlement programs of the United States.

But with the first cuts beginning to bite, economists and
women's groups warn that women are likely to bear the brunt
of austerity: as public sector employees, as retirees who
live longer than men and thus rely more on health care and
social security, and as mothers whose decision to work
depends on affordable child care.

'This is not just individual categories of women losing out,
this is structural: This is rolling back gender equality,'
said Anna Bird, acting chief executive officer of the Fawcett
Society, a women's advocacy group based in London.

Britain, the country that has gone fastest and furthest with
its belt-tightening, provides a glimpse into what may loom in
other countries.

To read more, go to 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/world/europe/27iht-letter27.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

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