Femi-conomics...

An interesting article:

Of the 5.2 million people who've lost their jobs since last summer, four out of five were men. Some experts predict that this year, for the first time, more American women will have jobs than men. And that's just furthering the decline of the endangered male.

Consider this: A 2007 government survey found that of the 36.8 million American adults who lack health insurance, 56% are men. But given the tremendous percentage of lost jobs that were held by men, that number could skyrocket. For family men, at least, there's a built-in safety net: The preponderance of two-career couples means that women, and their secure jobs, often provide the benefits. It's men who are single or divorced and who, studies show, live shorter lives than their married brethren who now make up the largest segment of the unemployed and uninsured. The impact of this in the form of untreated illness and injury will follow single men around for a generation.

[...]

As the Obama administration contemplates its strategy for health care reform, it isn't just the unemployed and uninsured we need to keep in mind. We need an overhaul of the system to take care of the hardworking people who do hold on to their jobs and pay a dear price for it. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, men make up the majority of those injured on the job. In the manufacturing, mining and construction fields, 86% of workplace injuries and illnesses occur to men and 92% of workplace-related deaths are men as well.

[...]

98% of the Iraq wounded are men, and for many of them, their war-related health problems will continue for a lifetime.

Psychological issues again, often left untreated because of a lack of employment and insurance affect men in much greater numbers, as well. Almost 70% of homeless adults are men, and the suicide rate for young men is five times that of young women.

These factors help explain why, in 2006, the average American male could expect to live 5.1 fewer years than the average woman; a black American male will likely live 11 fewer years than a white American woman. (By contrast, in 1920 men and women could expect to enjoy about the same lifespan.)

Despite the overwhelming evidence that men are being left behind, the U.S. government has never made a concerted effort to address male health issues. Right now, there are seven (seven!) offices of women's health in the U.S. government: six in the Department of Health and Human Services and one in the Department of Agriculture. And the Pentagon makes huge investments in women's health research. Yet there is not a single federal organization that encourages and disseminates physical and mental health research for and about men.

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One argument for funding so many health service organizations targeted to those citizens who already enjoy the best health, the most insurance, the longest lifespan, and the safest and most plentiful jobs that would be women is that it's payback time.

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The Obama administration showed great eagerness in addressing the problems of women soon after it took office, with the establishment of the White House Council on Women and Girls. We applaud that move, and we now look for equal time for the males of the species.

So as momentum for health care reform builds and melds with the president's economic agenda, let's think about the Americans who are most likely to face unemployment, a lack of insurance, and the untreated physical and psychological problems that make their lives that much shorter and harder. In other words, let's think about men. It's about time we caught a break, and a he-covery would be just the thing.

All in all a good overview and I must admit I would have missed this article, if I hadn´t read the answer by feminists on feministing. If you think about this factum: "Of the 5.2 million people who've lost their jobs since last summer, four out of five were men." you can only conclude that the best way in dealing with this men who do not have a job anymore is to give them one again, to use the human capital that is not working. Well the feminists have a different opinion:

While men in fact are losing jobs at a higher rate than women, what the author isn't taking into account is that not only are women paid less and generally have worse jobs than men, but are economically behind men in so many other ways.

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unemployment isn't the only indicator of economic struggle. Women are one-third more likely than men to have sub-prime mortgages, nearly 60 percent of impoverished children are living in female-headed households, and the poverty rate is higher among women than it is among men of any race. Undergirding all that is the stubbornness of the pay gap between men and women, meaning that women still earn just 78 cents on the male dollar--even for the same work, with the same educational background and number of years on the job. Advocates say that given these disparities, it is actually women who are harder hit by the recession, despite more staggering joblessness among men.

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How about the fact that 70% of people in poverty are women?? Sounds to me like job loss and economic disenfranchisement only became relevant when men started to become victims.

These parts were so full of misinformation and lies I had to research a little. The 70% poverty rating for women made me wonder as there are more homeless people that are male. While I was searching for the actual rates I came across this:

Women in America are more likely to be poor than men. Over half of the 37 million Americans living in poverty today are women. And women in America are further behind than women in other countries—the gap in poverty rates between men and women is wider in America than anywhere else in the Western world.

The difference must be huge, so when I came across real numbers, I was shocked.

Adult Poverty Rate by Gender, states (2006-2007), U.S. (2007)
Female: 17%
Male: 14%

A difference of 3%? That is what all the fuzz is about? I couldn´t believe it and searched further.

In 2001, 12.9 percent of the female population and 10.4 percent of the male population lived below the poverty level.

Not surprisingly the gap is raising the older the age group is getting as more and more men die which leads to poor widowed women and are basicly a result of the shorter life expectancy men have.

Elderly women are far more likely to be poor than elderly men. Thirteen percent of women over 75 years old are poor compared to 6 percent of men.

Roughly one quarter of poor women are single mothers which brings us to the factoid that nearly 60 percent of impoverished children are living in female-headed households. It is quite simple remove discrimination in divorce courts and allow men to see their children and you will see that this difference of 8-9% will even out.

The last part about the wage gap is a direct lie. I will talk about the wage gap in the future again but in the meantime wiki gives us a good overview. Even though the feminist article and wiki have the same source the result is quite different. Compare:

Femview:

meaning that women still earn just 78 cents on the male dollar--even for the same work, with the same educational background and number of years on the job.

Realworld:

"in 2004, women's wages were 76.5% of men's wages," or "in 2004, women earned 23.5% less than men earned." This statistic does not take into account differences in experience, skill, occupation, or hours worked.

Ouch...have we been caught lying? Some factoids from the Wiki article that do not work with the discrimination theory:

An article entitled "Gender Wage Gap Is Feminist Fiction" from the libertarian Independent Women's Forum stated: "A study of the gender wage gap conducted by economist June O' Neill, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, found that women earn 98 percent of what men do when controlled for experience, education, and number of years on the job." [^ Gender Wage Gap Is Feminist Fiction by Arrah Nielsen, Independent Women's Forum, April 15, 2005]

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In the book Biology at Work: Rethinking Sexual Equality, Browne writes: "Because of the sex differences in hours worked, the hourly earnings gap [...] is a better indicator of the sexual disparity in earnings than the annual figure. Even the hourly earnings ratio does not completely capture the effects of sex differences in hours, however, because employees who work more hours also tend to earn more per hour. Therefor, a proper adjustment for hours worked would reduce the gap even further"[8]
(There is more on this book in Google books according to this information the hourly gap in 1999 was 16 cents)
)

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A 2009 New York Times article reported that Anne York, an economics professor at Meredith College in North Carolina, had conducted a study of high school valedictorians in the U.S. According to the study, female valedictorians were planning to have careers that had a median salary of $74,608, whereas male valedictorians were planning to have careers with a median salary of $97,734. As to why the females were less likely than the males to choose high paying careers such as surgeon and engineer, the article quoted York as saying, "The typical reason is that they are worried about combining family and career one day in the future." [Do the Ambitions of High School Valedictorians Differ by Gender?, New York Times, June 1, 2009]

Occupational segregation refers to the way that some jobs (such as truck driver) are dominated by men, and other jobs (such as child care worker) are dominated by women. Because jobs dominated by women are, on average, lower-paying than jobs dominated by men, occupational choice is an important cause of the gender gap.

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Thomas Sowell argued in his book Civil Rights that most of pay gap is based on marital status, not a “glass ceiling” discrimination. Earnings for men and women of the same basic description (education, jobs, hours worked, marital status) were essentially equal. That result would not be predicted under explanatory theories of “sexism”.[^ "Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality", Thomas Sowell, 1984. "Markets and Minorities, Thomas Sowell, 1981] However, it can be seen as a symptom of the unequal contributions made by each partner to child raising. Cathy Young argues that rather than men being disinterested in child-rearing resulting in an unequal burden for women, women barring men from taking on paternal responsibilities may sometimes be at fault.[The mama lion at the gate - Salon.com] Many Western countries have some form of paternity leave to attempt to level the playing field in this regard.

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Male activist Warren Farrell has claimed that childless women who have never married earn 117 percent of their childless male counterparts (as revealed by Census data from 2001), when the comparison controls for education, hours worked and age. [Warren Farrell Archive]

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A study at Carnegie Mellon found that men graduating from that university with master's degrees were eight times more likely to negotiate starting salaries and pay than their female counterparts. In surveys, more that twice as many women than men said they felt "a great deal of apprehension" about negotiating.["Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and Gender Divide" by Linda Babcock and Sarah Laschever, Princeton University Press, 2003 ISBN 069108940X ISBN 978-0691089409][# ^ http://www.womendontask.com/stats.html]

The difference on women and men jobs was cited on one of the feminist links as well. Is it discrimination that more women are secretaries than car mechanics?



Last but not least we shouldn´t forget about unemployment rates:



While the difference raised from 1,2% to 1,5% from IV2008 to I2009, it went to 2,3% in April 2009. And when the gap is widening, doesn´t it make sense to support those who are loosing jobs? Not if you want an even wider gap.