But women tend to be better educated than men, with more relevant skills, which means economic power will continue to shift toward women, as it has been for the last 20 years. The unemployment rate for women, for example, is 8.1 percent, while it’s 8.3 percent for men. During the recession, the gap was much bigger, favoring women by more than two percentage points for many months. That overall trend is likely to persist throughout the recovery. “Women are uniquely positioned to take advantage of jobs in tomorrow’s growth industries,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote in a recent report, “and tend to enjoy stronger earnings growth relative to men.”
5. No blonde jokes. Men here are very respectful of women, for the most part, in part because they know it’s a good rule that in politics, you should never burn a bridge. Today’s receptionist could be tomorrow’s legislative director. Men actually hold doors open for women around here, and I can’t tell you how many men apologize before they cuss when I’m around. Women love that.
"According to the results of a study in which researchers examined pain scores from tens of thousands of patients in the United States, women experience more intense pain than men."
Some economists began to refer to the depths of the recession as a “mancession,” since the bulk of the jobs lost were among men in male-dominated industries such as construction and manufacturing. During the recession (defined as December 2007 to June 2009), the economy shed more than 7 million jobs. Men fared worse in the recession, suffering more than 70 percent of the job losses. But strikingly, in the midst of a slow recovery, women have lost 117,000 jobs while men gained 1,140,000—a staggering difference of about a million jobs.
"Opportunities for women in astronomy are continuing to increase,” said Wendy Freedman, who led a Hubble Space Telescope project investigating the age of the universe from 1991-2001, and current director for the Carnegie Observatories—where Edwin Hubble did his notable work. “Women can even now be directors of major observatories."
— No longer banned from using telescopes, women are ascending in stellar studies
Because they live longer and take more time out of the workforce, women face some unique financial challenges.
