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