D----- just sent out this list of all of the people we are hiring for the economic stimulus deferred maintenance projects. 62 men and 1 woman. I know there may be a factor that women might just prefer not to go into trades work and probably the vast majority of people who submitted applications were men. I just wonder what kind of effect it will have on society. Most of this economic stimulus money is for construction-related projects and 99% of the people being hired will be men. Are 99% of the people that have been laid off in the last year men? If not, we'll have a much larger percentage of unemployed women than men. Will that have some unintended/unforseen consequences or does it not really matter? Is just reducing unemployment quickly the most important thing? Have people been talking about this in all of the media that I rarely bother paying attention too?
Thursday, April 23, 2009
At Least the Dishes Will Get Washed, No?
I got this email from a concerned member of our society, I thought I'd pass it along:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
It's a fair question, I think, but there's a lot of layers of the onion to peel back.
1. First, not all of the stimulus money went to physical infrastructure projects. A lot went to states in order to prevent cuts in services. This, of course, doesn't add jobs, but prevents job losses, and in areas where the gender distribution in jobs might be different.
2. Also, the construction market has borne the brunt of the recession - other job losses might be seen as a consequence of all the money flowing out of the construction sector disappearing. So it seems somewhat logical to me to stimulate the primary area of job loss with the hopes that that money ripples out into secondary areas, affording new job creation there.
At the very least, I think it's asking a little too much to render judgment on the entire stimulus package's gender equity based on the jobs created by one tiny part of it.
But like I said, I think it's a valid question.
Other questions: Were the gendered impacts of the stimus considered in planning? Should they have been? What does that kind of consideration look like when we're talking about this sort of program?
Post a Comment