The sexist downturn

It's still a month before he's even inaugurated, but feminists are already raining on Barack Obama's parade.  Writing in the November 28th issue of The Boston Globe, feminist Randy Albelda complained that Obama's economic stimulus plan ignores jobs held mostly by women in favor of those held mostly by men (The Boston Globe, 11/28/08).  Women, after all, make up only a small percentage of the construction industry workforce, at which much of Obama's spending is targeted.  Over in her Amen Corner at The Nation, Katha Pollitt calls the economic stimulus "a great place to start addressing gender inequality." (The Nation, 12/22/08)

 And who would argue that women don't need jobs just as much as men?   So why not a stimulus package that targets "women's" jobs as well as men's?

It turns out there's a very good reason - over the past year, men have lost almost 1.1 million jobs in the U.S. while women actually increased their presence in the workforce by 12,000 jobs.  That's according to the U.S. Department of Labor as reported in this article  in - you guessed it - The Boston Globe (12/5/08).  Who'd have guessed that the crash in the housing industry would have affected, you know, construction jobs?

Albelda and Pollitt aren't content with that, though.  They go on to prescribe for the President-Elect just the type of women's jobs that need a government boost - those in healthcare and education.  (Leave aside the fact that educational employment at the local, county, state and federal levels, is already one of the largest government spending efforts in the entire economy.)  What Albelda and Pollitt ignore is that those two areas have seen the greatest increase in employment percentage-wise over the past year, up 2.7% and 3.1% respectively.

If you're going to write an article about unemployment and the stimulus plan, who'd think to check the facts at the Bureau of Labor Statistics?  These two champions of gender equality prefer to spread disinformation in the service of ever-greater governmental largesse for women.