gender, employment and recession: trends and impacts · •in the literature on gender impacts of...
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Gender, Employment and
Recession: Trends and ImpactsRecession: Trends and Impacts
Nata Duvvury
Research Symposium Employment and Crisis
Trinity College
11 March 2011
The Irish Crisis
Main features
Severe banking crisis – 2008 credit freeze, failure of Anglo Irish
Reputational crisis – increasing difficulty for Reputational crisis – increasing difficulty for borrowing on international bond markets
Sovereign Debt crisis – with bank guarantee and the slowing down of the global economy from 2008, fiscal deficit sharply increased
EU/IMF bailout was agreed in November 2010
• In terms of the public discourse attention has been focused on
– Unemployment and emigration, particularly that of young men
– Need for fiscal discipline, largely expenditure cuts– Need for fiscal discipline, largely expenditure cuts
– Need to send signals to international markets that Ireland is still in business, holding the line on corporate tax rate
– Culture of overspend, the ‘hangover’ and the need to ‘sacrifice’ ‘buckle-up’
– Bloated public sector
• Absent however is what are the gender impacts of the crisis
• Some attention to the impacts of welfare cuts on women, particularly those in vulnerable on women, particularly those in vulnerable groups such as lone parents, older women, etc.
• Less attention to trends in female work participation – which is fundamental to strategies by families to manage the crisis
• Focus on two questions
• How has the crisis impacted women’s
employment/unemployment?
• What are the implications for gender relations • What are the implications for gender relations
in households?
• In the literature on gender impacts of economic or financial crisis two possible effects for women’s employment are noted
• Added worker effect – women’s participation in labour force increaseslabour force increases
• Resultant of households increasing female labor participation as a strategy for coping with declining income on one hand
• Employers preferring women workers as a way cutting costs – substitution
• Discouraged worker effect – women’s participation declines
• Resultant of opportunity cost rising for women working with wage gap, discrimination women working with wage gap, discrimination in benefits and social costs of childcare on one hand and employers perceiving women workers as unreliable, unavailable and requiring additional costs – women a flexible buffer
Unemployment Rate and GDP Growth
• One trend noted in the literature is that
women’s employment is protected in the
initial stages as they are often in sectors less
prone to cyclical fluctuationsprone to cyclical fluctuations
• However as the crisis spreads and deepens
then more likely that women lose jobs at a
faster rate
• What has happened in the present crisis
Change in Employment by Quarter
-2.00
0.00
2.00
4.00
6.00
(ch
an
ge
on
ye
ar
ba
sis)
-14.00
-12.00
-10.00
-8.00
-6.00
-4.00
Q1 2008 Q2 2008 Q3 2008 Q4 2008 Q1 2009 Q2 2009 Q3 2009 Q4 2009 Q1 2010 Q2 2010
(ch
an
ge
on
ye
ar
ba
sis)
Male
Female
Change in Employment by Sector
Change in Employment by
Occupation
Trend in Employees, 1998 to 2010
600.0
700.0
800.0
900.0
1,000.0
0.0
100.0
200.0
300.0
400.0
500.0Women
Men
Increase in Part-time Employment
Rising Vulnerable Employment
• The more intriguing story was how these
shifts in limited employment opportunities
over the crisis period actually affected
household negotiations in the labour market household negotiations in the labour market
and their long-term implications
Crisis has differential impact
• Age is a significant factor – unemployment is
highest for young men, followed by young
women
• Education as proxy for socio-economic status –• Education as proxy for socio-economic status –
higher unemployment rates among those with
primary education, followed by HS and then
tertiary. Women with tertiary education have
the lowest unemployment rates and slowest
increase as crisis spread
• Among families with children, women lone
parents have the highest
unemployment, followed by married men and
then married womenthen married women
• Unemployment rates are highest for young
families with children below 15
• What is happening then in terms of household
strategies?
• Is there an added worker effect or discouraged
worker effect over all?worker effect over all?
LFPR by Age, Men
LFPR by Age, Women
LFPR of Older Women
1998 to 2010
40.0
50.0
60.0
0.0
10.0
20.0
30.0
55-59
60-64
Who is leaving?
• The exit of younger women with children has
grave implications
– Reproducing the interrupted work history of their
mothers
– Not the marriage bar but the crisis that will
undermine their pension provision in the future
• Entry of older women at low wages and
minimal pension provision means that
households will oscillate around poverty rate
and even fall into deeper poverty