'Mancession' Helps Women in the Workplace
Quick, what do SEC Chairman Mary Shapiro, FDIC head Sheila Bair, California gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman and California Senator wannabe Carly Fiorina all have in common?
If you said they are all women, you receive partial credit. The real answer in they are part of a trend that Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn calls the "mancession." It seems the economic downturn took a disproportionate toll on men, especially in manufacturing, while women-heavy industries such as health care have boomed.
"For the first time in history," Koehn observes in Fortune.com, "women are neck and neck with men in the labor force. Women held 49.9% of 131 million U.S. jobs in late 2009. Their ranks are expected to rise. And I, as a historian, can tell you that the rising power of women in the workforce will have a long-run impact on institutions, the social contract, and the look and feel of work itself."How might the look and feel of work change? For one, "they speak up when established institutions or systems lose their way," as do Shapiro and Bair. They are also are reformers, like Whitman and Fiorina, who vow to fix what the old pols messed up.
As women start to gain more power in the workplace and in government, do you see the "look and feel" of our institutions changing?