Equality of unemployment

Getting more women into the labour force and into employment has been a deliberate aim of government intervention over the last 30 years or so. Benefits, training, flexible working and childcare schemes have all focused clearly on encouraging women to work rather than to choose not to do so. Your study of employment figures in the UK will show that the increases in employment over the last 10 years or so have favoured women; more of them are in work, women now earn more than men in a fifth of couples, and more households depend upon a woman’s wage. A quarter of households with children are headed by lone parents, 90 per cent of whom are women.

The flip-side of this shows in analysis of figures for those losing their jobs in the recession; a report carried out by the TUC which shows that redundancies are now hitting women harder than men and the redundancy rate among women had risen by 2.3%, almost double the rate for men, since last year. Many of the job losses are coming in the retail and hospitality sector, which employs more women, many of them in part-time and flexible jobs which have been a major part of the expansion of employment through the last decade. The TUC is now urging the government to continue the focus on female employment by ensuring that there is specific help for them to cope with the loss of job opportunities.
You can read a summary of the TUC report , with some useful statistics, here.