“Initially, it looked as if male workers were suffering more from the recession because men outnumber women in fields like construction, manufacturing, and other areas that retrenched at the recession’s onset. Women, on the other hand, had jobs in industries such as teaching that, at first, avoided cutbacks.

‘ It’s a tale of two cities,’ explains Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, which tracks the labor market. ‘Women and men tend to work in different sectors of the economy, and some of those sectors are recovering faster than others.

“For example, more men than women have gotten jobs in business services,’ she says. ‘Perhaps men are being hired as engineers or computer scientists by high tech firms, which are growing.'”