one version of male/female job market parity

A useful piece from syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman in the C-J...

Goodman points to a factoid I had heard but not read recently...

There are a whole lot of folks who once looked forward to the day when women would become equal participants in the work force with men....

What they didn't predict was that women might finally reach the goal of equality, less because they scaled the heights than because men slipped downward. But here we are.

In the winter of our economic discontent, women now hold more than 49 percent of jobs on the nation's payrolls. If we cross the 50 percent line -- hold the applause -- it will be because men are losing their jobs even faster than women.

This dubious equality is in large part an ongoing tale of two economies. Men tend to work in manufacturing and construction, areas that were the hardest and first hit. Women tend to work in jobs such as health care and education that haven't (yet) been as affected.

In the past year, eight out of 10 pink slips went to men. The unemployment rate for women is bad enough at 6.2 percent, up 2 percent since 2007. But the unemployment rate for men is 7.6 percent, up three points. Add to that the fact that more men stop looking for jobs. You not only have a near-equal number of women in the work force, you have a lot of women in formerly two-earner families who've become the breadwinners....