This year’s Mary Edwards Memorial Lecture, entitled “He-cession/She-cession: The Financial Crisis and its Impact on American Women,”provided vital and pertinent information to several members of the students and faculty at Purchase College last week. The talk revealed shocking details of the nation’s current recession and gender role in unemployment.
Dr. Kim Christiansen, former Purchase professor of Economics and Women’s Studies, and “Girl Economist,” as her plaque read, introduced the audience to the severity of the economy students will be entering into shortly.
“The media shows us that men have been unfairly disadvantaged in this recession, but everyone is suffering tremendously,” Christiansen said.
She explained that because many men work in construction and heavy manufacturing, jobs in the public sector, they lose work first.
“Construction is always a leading indicator of a recession,” she said, “For women, it’s nurses, elementary school teachers, secretaries, and health aides. What economists would call ‘pink-collar jobs’.”
Christiansen outlined a study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that 72 percent of men, and only 59 percent of women are currently employed in this country.
However, she said that women’s unemployment statistics are often debatable. “The majority of women who lose their jobs call themselves ‘housewives,’ rather than ‘unemployed’.”
“Women’s jobs last longer when a recession begins, but they also stay down longer,” said Chloe Heintz, a recent Purchase graduate.
Heintz, who found many of the facts and charts used in the presentation, and helped Christiansen as one of her advisees, expressed her concerns about going out into the workforce. This topic is especially important for students because the U.S. is the only advanced country in the world, with a declining graduation rate according to Christiansen.
“People recently out of school are in one of the worst positions. It takes something like six to nine months on average for graduates to get jobs,” Heintz said.
“Should private sector hot-shots on Wall Street take out billions of dollars in bonuses, and then tell the kindergarten teacher she can’t have her pension?” Heintz asked.
When asked what people can do to achieve this change, Christiansen flashed several slides of protests across the country. People held posters saying, “Tax the needy, not the greedy” and “Workers’ voice to stop CEO exploits.”
“This is what we need to do,” Christiansen said, “We need to shift our attention from big CEO’s to the hard-working people who had absolutely nothing to do with this mess.”
The audience broke their intent listening to burst out in applause, including the family of Mary Edwards, who was a founding member of Purchase College, and was instrumental in building the Women’s Study Program.
“They’ve got money. We’ve got people,” Christiansen said.
For those who didn’t attend the eye-opening lecture, Heintz suggested www.iwpr.org, the site of the Institute For Women’s Policy Research, which can help educate the young generation on the economic crisis at hand.