After the crash, the downturn was dubbed a "mancession." As the meme continues to circulate, the Roosevelt Institute's New Deal 2.0 blog asked leading thinkers to help sort fact from fiction. Are men suffering more than women in a weak economy? Is Washington doing enough to address female unemployment? How do we ensure a jobs agenda that's fair and equitable? In the seventh part of an ongoing series, "The Myth of the Mancession? Women & the Jobs Crisis", Pavlina Tcherneva calls for a safety net that puts women to work.
When the White House released its report on the economic security of America's women, it proposed to improve their well-being with the standard fare of economic policies, usually prescribed for just about any type of problem that ails the job market: more training and education, more tax incentives, and more income support. These prescriptions are already part of the Recovery Act, which for two years has produced dismal economic results. Is more of the same what we need when it comes to improving women's economic opportunities?
My argument is simple: without a serious and bold policy for eliminating unemployment, all of the proposed measures to address women's economic challenges, or those of any other group for that matter, will remain feeble attempts to deal with serious problems.
We need a fundamental policy shift at the macro-level that focuses on job security, not just income security; a shift that stresses first and foremost direct job creation, and then tax incentives and retraining programs as needed. Such a policy shift will greatly benefit both men and women and the most vulnerable members among them, who are persistently left behind in recessions or expansions.
Focusing on incomes in many cases is treating the symptoms, not the disease. When the disease is unemployment, the solution is jobs -- not temporary income support. When the disease is poverty, the solution is both above-poverty-wage jobs for those who are able to work, and income support for those who are not (in particular the young, the sick, and the elderly).
Unemployment insurance is the most accepted form of income support (rationalized as a program for the 'deserving' unemployed, who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own). This is all well and good, but let's be clear: unemployment insurance is a stopgap measure for very temporary job losses, not an adequate safety net for most unemployed individuals, nor a meaningful economic stabilization policy. Unemployment insurance is not only demoralizing, but its meager assistance does not replace the loss of income from employment. This means that unemployment insurance may decelerate the fall in demand, but will not immediately halt it. And, by definition, it does not create jobs.
The White House report boasts that unemployed women have benefited from unemployment insurance because the presidency has "enacted the longest-lasting emergency unemployment program in history and included the first benefit increase in a downturn in history." We have to pause and ask ourselves: Is the expanded unemployment insurance program our great success? Jobless women and men want jobs, not the dole.
The White House has also provided emergency TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy families) funding to states. When every state is slashing social programs for the most vulnerable, this is a welcome, but sorely inadequate, assistance. Welfare support for needy families has never been popular with the American public, and in 1996 it was reformed into a more punitive program. Recipients were required to fulfill certain work requirements (to prove that they too are 'deserving' of government support) in exchange for their welfare assistance or they faced the threat of losing the benefit. But while the requirement to work was applauded by many, the opportunity to work was not guaranteed by the reform. Initially, women were able to transition into jobs during the 1990s Goldilocks economy, but these jobs still did not lift many of them out of poverty. Yet others were unsuccessful in finding employment, lost their benefits, and became chronically disconnected from any type of safety net.
It is time to abandon the tired old paradigm of dealing with income insecurity alone, and to starting thinking of ways to create genuine job security. Direct job creation can achieve this goal. The benefits of large-scale public employment schemes, New Deal-type programs, and targeted investment and employment policies have received a widespread support. But it is essential that these jobs are supplied in adequate numbers by the public sector if and when the private sector fails to do so. In other words, no individual should be wasted in idleness if they wish to be employed into the safety net program. A well-crafted public sector jobs program that fills the jobs deficit both in recessions and expansions can prove to be the only effective permanent solution to the problem of unemployment. Such programs can deliver especially important benefits to women and minorities.
The safety net will have two key objectives: to fund useful projects and provide decent jobs to its participants. Decent jobs are not just jobs that offer useful work experience, opportunities for training and education, and assistance with transitioning to private sector work. They are also parent-friendly jobs that pay above poverty (but preferably living) wages and supply a decent benefits package. A parent-friendly job is also one that affords flexible hours, creates work in the very communities where women and men live and raise their kids, supports their educational and entrepreneurial interests, and alleviates their unpaid care burden by enhancing child and elderly care services.
A carefully designed program would provide meaningful work and training opportunities to women who have been outside the labor force for too long and may be regarded as 'unemployable' by private sector employers. It can also provide women with jobs in traditionally male-intensive sectors. Women can get experience as workers, managers, supervisors, project leaders. For some, the program will provide the experience and know-how to start their own businesses. For many, it will simply provide a decent job and an opportunity to start climbing the economic ladder. These women will work to transform their communities while transforming their own lives.
It is time to stop treating women as 'patients' of public policy and to see them as agents of economic change. Paid work from public service employment has the potential to transform the welfare state from a paternalistic institution to one that empowers the very citizens it wishes to serve, by giving them opportunities for paid work with which to reshape their own destinies and those of their communities.
Clearly our men and women are worth far more than the dole they receive; a permanent direct job creation policy is a safety net that recognizes this fact and mobilizes their potential.
Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.
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Does anyone really believe retailing Asian products and govt bloat are real businesses creating products of value? Neither are phoney jobs for the sake of appeasing large lobbies,
Govt bias schemes encourage sloth and kill morale (when a worker's pay is given to another).
Old elite (wealthy) + new elite (huge govt, unions) have broken the middle class.
Real industry will take decades to re-grow.
Child and family poverty are women's poverty. Eliminate women's poverty and child and family poverty will be eliminated.
I'm a white male, but I'm not wealthy enough or christian enough to appear on the repub radar. At least I'm close, I guess, but why do women and minorities fall for the BS?
‘The benefits of large-scale public employment schemes, New Deal-type programs, and targeted investment and employment policies have received a widespread support.’
What wide support? In fact the drubbing that the Democrats just took is ample evidence that the American tax-payer, as well as the other 50% that do not pay taxes, are tired of big intrusive government programs.
Ms. Tcherneva:
If a women want equality, which what I assume a well-educated, well-meaning women such as yourself wants, then go out and compete for it like a man on equal terms. Have an equal chance of failing to get a job. Why should women get ‘protection’ and ‘government assistance’ while men are left to compete and foot the bill for that protection and assistance.
Looks like you are begging for a handout to me.
Kai
It has contributed to the chronic lack of U.S. competition and the virtual destruction of Real industrial businesses.
I guess laws could be passed to give everyone a govt job- and pay them by borrowing more:(
They are the new elite, based on their generous union contracts.
A WPA type program has to be sold as a universal solution. Any implication (even the slightest hint) of favoritism will kill the idea's political feasibility, especially in today's Tea Party environment.
I have not done the level of research that you have, but I think there are three key things that might make such a program feasible. First, an emphasis on the private sector. Participants should be paid at below market rates and be required to spend one work day searching for work in the private sector or regular govt' openings.
Second, good marketing of the type of work participants would do, e.g., environmental clean up, partnering with police who normally patrol alone, non-combat military support, infrastructure work, etc.
And third, moral persuasion. Convincing the public that if someone wants to work, and they've made a good faith effort at finding work, and they've been routinely rejected, it is not moral to let them waste away.
So, when are you and I going to create an advocacy group to make this happen? (:
Keep fighting the good fight!
My friends and I have many ideas for a small business and this may be my only option if businesses continue to sit on capital and not be the business leaders, risk takers that supposely claim to be.
Where should gov't and business invest to create sustainable living wage jobs? I have my ideas but I never hear anything from businesses or the GOP to suggest they have any real ideas?
What services do people need: health care, preventive care; child and elderly care; aftercare programs for children; community wellness and nutrition programs; what about food safety and the food industry - we need more alternative healthy manufacturers; We need new vendors to provide health school lunches - let single or small school districts try this out and not be prevented entry into such markets from the established vendors.
Where do you suggest we invest to create real jobs?
For entrepreneurs like you, I would like to see the government set up a grants program with calls for proposals for innovative projects. You will supply your ideas in those proposals by outlining what you believe is need in the community and how you can specifically fill those needs with the skills you have. Just like any grant, your proposal will be assessed and funds will be provided on the merit of the project. I would like to see the government provide people like you with a grant to get your business on its feet and become viable, so that you can become self sufficient, hire workers, contribute to the community, and empower the people around you. Although the current political environment is toxic, sooner or later the electorate will probably start demanding precisely this kind of program from our politicians. I wish you best of luck.