There was a TUC report last week (link) that said that female employment was being hit harder by the recession as many women work in the retail sector. The TUC said there had been a 2.3% increase in the redundancy rate for women even though the redundancy rate for men is just 6% and the female redundancy rate is just under 4% (graph).
The report received lots of media coverage, because It as about women, of course -(BBC) and had politicians rushing around to highlight their concern.
The way that this report though is being used by the anti-male feminists to inject some fervour about the fact that the redundancy rate is due to discrimination against women is an outrage and a clear abuse (link). There is absolutely nothing that Hariett Harman and Vera Baird won't use to attack men, make up stories about female discrimination with not one shred of evidence and generally show that their view of equality is to be free to attack men.
Whenever there is a recession, it hits both men and women whether they are in employment or not. A husband losing his job affects his wife and the wildcat strikes (link) show the effects on men. Also there tends to be a sharp increase in male suicide rates and depression when there is a recession as some men who are redundant feel worthless if they cannot provide for their family.
There is, of course, a queue to condemn the strikers but would it be the same if the strikes were being led by women. It is unlikely, very unlikely.
I noticed the story too.
To suggest that somehow employers would somehow "target" women in order to survive the downturn is ridiculous - they'll want to get rid of whoever is the lest useful and least essential, or whoever is perhaps the cheapest to lay off.
Anyway - given that Harman always tries to pretend women get paid 15% less for the same work as men, then no employer is going to sack a single female are they given they are so much better value.
harman can't have it both ways - either women get paid less for the same work and thus will not be sacked, or they in fact represent poor value for money and will be let go.
Perhaps rather than being such an idiot she should just equalise paternity/maternity leave and make is transferable thus removed the biggest barrier women face these days (i.e. state sponsored favouritism which makes in fact makes them less employable)
Posted by: John Kimble | Sunday, 01 February 2009 at 23:22
Harriet and Vera are using this as a bid to get "quotas" in the training programmes funded by government for people put out of work.
In fact women's jobs will generally be more secure because the majority work in the national and local state sector.As government policy is to continue funding levels to these sectors to stimulate demand in the economy. There is likely to be little loss in employment in these sectors (well at least for the next two years). Men are much more vulnerable because the vast majority work in the private sector and so are much more subject to the current turbulent conditions in the economy.
On a related favourite topic of Harriet the gender wage gap: As one of the reasons that the "wage gap" is all but non existent in Northern Ireland (and one or two other regions) is the size of the state sector there compared to the private sector. I expect the collapse of much of the Finance Sector in the South East will have a similar effect both on male unemployment and the supposed "gender wage gap" for England. I'm sure this side effect of the collapse of one of our key industries will be hailed as a success by Ms Harman.
Most interesting is that the authors of the report used by Harman wrote to say that the report did not say what Harriet said it did. Not often one feminist calls another a liar.
Posted by: Nigel | Wednesday, 04 February 2009 at 20:30