Women and the recession

Peared

Something I have noticed during the last 9 months or so is the changing roles of many women due to financial circumstances.

Women I know who were career women are now stay at home moms.

The reverse is true also, some women I know who stayed at home are now working (low paid) jobs to make ends meet.

I also know of two girls who had planned to conceive this year and these plans are now on hold. One is 37 and not very happy about waiting.

It looks like various children's payments may be hit again in the budget and this will only add to the situation.

Anybody else noticing shifts? Will the birth rate go down as many people find they cannot afford children? Or will that be cancelled out by women losing their jobs and thinking they may as well go for it now and have a baby?

Personally I am unaffected but looking around I think I am in the minority.

Nevyn

I reckon we will see more people having another baby and choosing to stay at home
knocking childcare costs on the head and having to learn to tighten thier belts.

old boy

couples and singles always had babies regardless of curcumstances, my old granney used to say when a couple started to go out togeather there is no poverty between the sheets the only difference now is contrapection is freely advailable.

Stheno

Thaedydal wrote: »

I reckon we will see more people having another baby and choosing to stay at home
knocking childcare costs on the head and having to learn to tighten thier belts.

I'd tend to have the same view, if tax increases come in in the April 7 Budget, it may well cause people to weigh up the cost of working to pay for childcare versus what it would cost for one parent to stay at home full time.

Traditionally birth rates decrease during a recession.

JC 2K3

Personally, my dad lost his job and now stays at home. Although he does most of the housework and cooks 5 days a week (as well as starting his own business, which is currently breaking even - I admire his motivation) don't think you could call him a "stay at home dad", since my sister and I are 17 and 20 respectively. My mom still has the same job she's had for the last 3/4 years (similiar income to my dad in his old job afaik).

In households like mine, but where the kids are a bit younger, you could see a similar situation arising, where both parents work and by chance the father loses his job and becomes a stay at home dad, while the mother continues to work.

Morgase

In our situation, I'm lucky enough to be working full time. Mr. Morgase finished a course a couple of months ago and can't find work.

I'm really glad that I do have a job at the moment because I think I would find it very difficult to stay at home and mind the house all day. The worst bit would be asking for the groceries money (asking anybody else for money would just go against the grain).

SarahMc

I see a huge increase in the amount of men doing the childcare, picking up/dropping children to school etc. Increasingly women are the main breadwinners whilst men are at home being the primary carers. I'm sure in many cases this is impacting negatively upon marriages, as this is not a choice that couples made, but one that was foisted upon them.

Nevyn

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/health/28patient.html?_r=2

When the Stork Carries a Pink Slip


By LESLEY ALDERMAN
Published: March 27, 2009

HERE’S a pop quiz: Which of the following would violate federal employment law?



1. Laying off a pregnant woman.

2. Laying off a woman on maternity leave.

Pencils down. The answer is “neither.”

It may not sound fair, as the national layoff tsunami is swamping even households with new infants, or babies en route. But it is entirely legal to lay off a pregnant woman or a woman on maternity leave — as long as the employer can make the case that she is being let go for a reason unrelated to her pregnancy.

To be sure, it is illegal to dismiss someone or refuse to hire her specifically because she is pregnant, according to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But few employers are foolish enough to cite pregnancy as the reason for firing or not hiring someone.

Aside from such blatant discrimination, pregnant women have no special protection under federal employment law, says Elizabeth Grossman, a lawyer for the New York district office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Ms. Grossman is among the lawyers who suspect that some employers are now using the law’s laxity and the dismal economy to tacitly discriminate against new or expectant mothers. She and other experts urge women who suspect such discrimination to seek legal counsel.

“Some employers are using the economy as a pretense for laying off just one person,” Ms. Grossman said. “And very often that person is pregnant or the oldest employee on staff. The economy may be the legitimate cause — or there may be discrimination.”

Last year the number of pregnancy-based discrimination charges filed with the E.E.O.C. was up nearly 50 percent from a decade earlier, to a total of 6,285. That number seems likely to rise even higher this year.

At the WorkLife Law hot line run by the University of California Hastings College of the Law, where the phones seldom used to ring, a dozen calls a week are now coming in, according to Cynthia Calvert, deputy director of the Center for WorkLife Law. The free hot line (1-800-981-9495) gives legal information to parents and caregivers of children or elderly parents, who feel they are being discriminated against because of their family obligations.

“Many of the callers,” Ms. Calvert said, “are pregnant women apprehensive that they may be targeted for layoffs, or pregnant women or women on maternity leave who were already let go.”

Labor law’s flimsy shield often comes as a shock to women. Last December, Sarah Feider, 39, suspected layoffs were imminent at her workplace — a large publishing house in New York City. Citing her severance agreement, she insisted that the employer not be identified.

“My friends were saying: ‘You’re fine. No way would they lay you off,’ ” Ms. Feider recalls. Not only was she seven months pregnant, but her husband had recently lost his job. “Everyone assumed it was illegal or against some moral code to fire a pregnant woman,” she said.

But five days after she and her husband moved into a new apartment, Ms. Feider got the news. She was being let go as part of companywide cutbacks.

“It was awful — I was planning to work until I went into labor, and to return after taking my allotted maternity leave,” said Ms. Feider, the mother of a 5-week-old boy, Roman. “Instead of being given an office baby shower, I was given a pink slip.”

She talked informally to a few lawyers about her situation. “I did wonder if my being pregnant factored into their decision,” she said. “They knew I was going to be out for at least three months, and they needed bodies in the office to get the work done.” But because she was part of a larger downsizing by the employer, the lawyers said discrimination might be hard to prove.

Ellina Kevorkian was laid off from the Neiman Marcus store in Beverly Hills when she was eight months pregnant. Her position, office coordinator in the precious jewelry department, was eliminated companywide.

“In order to collect unemployment, you are supposed to be looking for a job,” she said. “But who can look for a job when they are in their last weeks of pregnancy?” After Ms. Kevorkian’s doctor vouched for her inability to work, she was able to start drawing state disability benefits. “At a time when you’re so vulnerable, you have so little protection,” Ms. Kevorkian said.

Ginger Reeder, a spokeswoman for the Neiman Marcus Group, confirmed Ms. Kevorkian’s account of the layoff, adding that “everyone whose job was eliminated this year was offered a similar severance package.”

If a pregnant laid-off employee worked for a small company — fewer than 20 employees — affordable health insurance can be difficult to find. That is because small employers are not required under federal Cobra law to offer medical benefits to former employees.

And most individual policies people can find on their own, if they can find them at all, do not cover childbirth — except with the purchase of a special rider that in some states may require a wait of up to two years, notes Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, an advocacy organization based in Washington.

Fortunately for Poonam Sharma, 36, an architect in Los Angeles, she and her family were eligible for Cobra coverage after she was laid off. She got the news in early February — when her daughter, Noor, was 2 months old — that she was one of seven people being let go from her 70-person firm. Ms. Sharma had planned to return after a maternity leave of three and a half months.

Because of the recent 65 percent reduction in Cobra premiums under the new federal economic stimulus package, coverage for Ms. Sharma, her husband and daughter will be manageable, at $231 a month. But that is small solace for being laid off.

“I was shocked and disappointed,” Ms. Sharma recalled. “I don’t think they were singling me out, but it is convenient to lay off a woman on maternity leave. She’s not working on any projects, so nothing gets disrupted.”

allabouteve

If the reason a woman is being laid off is unrelated to her pregnancy, then it is no more or less awful than a man who's partner is pregnant being laid off.

Nobody should be denied employment because of pregnancy, neither should it be a sort of employment insurance.

Blangis

Maybe being a bit overweight will come back into fashion, as it will be a sign of prosperity, and the recession will be a neat solution to a lot of women's body hangups.

panda100

Quite an intresting article here on how unemployment is pushing women towards prostiution/lap dancing/selling their body in order to make some money.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0323/topless.html

LouOB

I read a good article recently about womens attitudes to career v's motherhood

I dont think the recent recession has anything to do with women choosing to go to work or stay at home. IMO I think its a step forward for woman's choices. Hence a woman can and has the freedom to make the choice.

scary_tractors

I can see some women who are laid off deciding to have a baby now rather than waiting as planned for their career to reach a certain level, if only because now they have the time and are at home anyway.

Strikes me as making sense - women who might have liked to stay at home to look after kids but thought they couldn't afford to or would lose status, or momentum in their careers, in one sense have a hard choice taken away from them. I think for me it would be one (maybe the only) positive about being made redundant - it would also make redundant the debate I'd otherwise have with myself about when, or if, I should give up work for kids.

Of course, that reasoning can be dangerous too as you could find employers using it as rationale for letting go women of child-bearing age rather than men of the same age who could be 'breadwinners'.

In relation to it affecting women I think a lot of the social welfare cuts are going to have worse effects on women than men - such as carers allowance, childcare benefit and other child-related payments.