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On this past Thursday, the White House hosted a small conference call for online media with senior administration officials to discuss the impact of the recession on women and how the Administration's agenda is affecting women. Led by Cecilia Rouse, Member of the Council of Economic Advisors and Jen Psaki, White House Deputy Communications Director, the on-the-record call was grounded in a new National Economic Council (NEC) report. This report describes what it sees as the economic landscape facing women currently. You can read the Executive Summary of the report here and can also find a link to the full report there as well.
The level of detail in the report resists being repeated here simply due to the plethora of numbers and facts. I would urge people who want to see what was discovered about the status of women vis a vis the economy, the recession and the recovery to review and browse the report on their own.
Although the timing of the release of the information coincides with an intense election cycle that often has included commentary on the importance of women's votes, the data still stands on its own as demonstrating what's been accomplished and what remains to be achieved.
The first batch of information discussed was a quick hit on what has been done to help women since President Obama came into office in January 2009. This rundown included:
- More than 12,000 SBA Recovery Act loans have gone to women-owned small businesses, a total of $3 billion being driven into lending support with the expectation of growing businesses and creating jobs.
- An estimated 2.9 million women who had been unemployed for more than two months were hired by employers who qualified for payroll tax exemptions under the HIRE Act (Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment)
- The Recovery Act and the Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act played a role in saving jobs in the education and healthcare sectors, sectors in which women make up more than three-quarters of professionals. The report indicates that this fall, over one hundred thousand teachers, the majority of them women, returned to their classrooms because of these laws.
- From July 2008 to August 2010 about 6.9 million women were helped by the extensions of unemployment benefits.
Next, we heard about changes related to women in the labor market. According to the NEC:
- Women are the majority of college graduates and nearly 50 percent of the workforce.
- In almost two-thirds of families led by single mothers or two parents, women are either the primary or co-breadwinner. In two-parent families, with the wage gap and the loss of jobs traditionally held by men in this economy, reliance on a woman’s income in their family budget is even greater.
- As a result of the recession that started in December of 2007, women have lost jobs and seen their median annual earnings fall. Additionally, the report points out that women have faced increased economic insecurity as housing prices declined and states and municipalities have cut back on the provision of social services.
- The wage gap and female underrepresentation in higher levels of management are seen as long-term challenges with specific groups of women like single mothers, older women and minorities facing additional hardship.
At this point, the host of the call coupled this information with challenges for women in the workforce as they relate to pay and workplace equity. She referred to the Council of Economic Advisors Workplace Flexibility Report which was released early last spring. It is an example of how the Administration is analyzing and tackling the challenges. That report presented "...an economic perspective on flexible workplace policies and practices" and was pursued because of the belief that more productive workers have lower turnover and benefit the bottom line.
Some of the data in the NEC report relates to how women are faring through the recession. Although it is acknowledged that men have lost the majority of jobs during this recession, the report says:
Substantial job losses have occurred in industries where women comprise a disproportionate percentage of the workforce, such as in retail trade, leisure and hospitality, and financial activities. The recession saw more job losses for women than any prior recession in the post-World War II era. During the recession millions of American women lost their jobs.
The report's specific points include the following data:
- The unemployment rate for women increased from 4.9 percent in December 2007 to 8.3 percent
in June 2009, the “official”
