How is the Current Global Economic Crisis Expected to Affect Women?

Global Status of Women

Issue 9, May 2009

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With decreased demand for goods and services worldwide, unemployment is expected to hit men and women alike. Yet women make up the majority of the flexible workforce

While men employed in traditionally male sectors (transport, communications, and mining) have been hit hard by job cuts in the early months of the recession, experts predict the next wave of cuts will likely come in the public sector, dominated by women.

As tax revenues decline and governments fall on hard times, budget-cutting will affect fields like education, health care, and other public services, creating a gap in societies that women will then likely fill through unpaid work. This will affect women in rich and poor countries alike.

In many developing countries, remittances from migrant workers living abroad sustain entire families left behind. As workers all over the world lose jobs, remittances may dry up and plunge whole communities into extreme poverty. This will affect women as the primary provisioners and caretakers in families.

It has been noted that government stimulus packages designed to mitigate the present crisis often contain large expenditures on infrastructure (roads, bridges). While these projects, when completed, should help women, the jobs that are created in short-term will largely be filled by men who dominate the construction industries. Studies done by the U.S. Conference of Mayors show that “green jobs” are also predominately male; by some accounts women are expected to fill only 12% of these new employment opportunities.

Is there a Silver Lining?

With crisis often comes opportunity. With the global economy in chaos, the rules of the game may be rewritten. Although, as Shalini Nataraj and Muadi Mukenge of the GFW have noted, this window may be closing as more attention is focused on shoring up and bailing out the current system, rather than re-examining it.

At the very least, as men lose jobs all over the world, traditional family structures and workplace assumptions are being upended. Many women are now the primary breadwinner in households, with their husbands picking up more responsibility in the unpaid “care economy.”