The Great Recession has often been referred to as a “Mancession.” But recent findings by the California Budget Project reveal that women have been hit disproportionately hard by the economic downturn. Some of the most startling findings:
- Between 2006 and 2009, the number of married-couple families relying on the mother as sole breadwinner almost doubled, rising from 4.7% to 8.5%
- The jobless rate for single mothers in 2009 was 14.8%, more than twice the jobless rate for married women and men
- The number of older women (between the ages of 55 and 69) in the workforce increased by 2%, whereas the number of older men in the workforce declined by almost 3.4%
These findings provide hard data to show what many of us already sensed: women and their families continue to shoulder the burden of the economic downturn. Women are delaying retirement, single mothers are struggling to make ends meet while the very safety-net programs that would support them are disappearing, and married women are increasingly becoming sole breadwinners of families.
It’s unacceptable for low-income women and their families to bear more than their fair share of the burden for balancing California’s budget.
California Budget Project is releasing these findings in three policy briefs, which can be downloaded from their website. The research for these briefs was made possible by a grant from the Women’s Foundation California.