During the coronavirus pandemic, more than 38 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance — and for the first time in history, the nation’s unemployment claims have a largely female, non-white face to them.
While the two previous biggest economic crises in U.S. history — the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis — affected men’s jobs more than women’s, the coronavirus pandemic is disproportionately impacting women in the workforce, data shows.
The bleak job numbers for women and the economic uncertainty women now face have put the American economy in a “shecession,” according to C. Nicole Mason, president and chief executive of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a women-focused think tank.
“The way we think about work and women’s earnings is this idea of a 1950s ‘Mad Men’ era where men are the primary breadwinners and women are stay-at-home, and any income they earn doesn’t really matter,” Mason told “Good Morning America.” “That’s just not the case and it hasn’t been our reality for a long time, so when women lose jobs, it not only impacts families, it impacts the economy as well.”
