The most popular story on the NYT's website today is a business piece about how women are getting ready to overtake men in the workforce--not by salary or prestige, but by sheer numbers. The reason: They're not getting laid off as much. The reason they're not getting laid off as much: They do crap jobs for no money.
Although Times reporter Catherine Rampell opines that this shift may "challenge long-standing gender roles," this story is not at all about women getting ahead. It's about class--or it would be, if the Times had just a little more huevos. It's about the fact that the only jobs surviving this wretched econocaust are low-paying, have no health insurance and can barely keep a family of four in dry beans, let alone afford the mortgage. Insofar as this story is about women, it's about the fact that women do a disproportionate share of this great nation's shitty jobs.
Somebody over at Feministing drank the You Go, Girl Kool-Aid, though.
Aside: Why are all the economic-hardship stories in the NYT about people a couple of tax brackets up from me? I'm very sorry you lost your $150K/year job, my friend, but I will not weep too hard into my Pot Noodle about it. Ryan Weaver agrees: "The NYT apparently cannot locate one person who falls between the extremes of Latina babymamas in Harlem and hateful, repugnant, rich Manhattanites. To read this paper you would have to assume that all of the predictions about the middle class disappearing are correct -- because not one reporter from either the NYT or the Globe can seem to fucking find it."
Aside aside: My household consists of two female reporters. God help us. I may have to start renting out the baby.
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I would totally rent your baby if I could, but I have to keep my puppy in kibble on my own pathetic journalisty salary.
ReplyDeleteI trust you saw that Times piece about how difficult it is to survive on just $500,000 a year and have refrained from commenting on it only because you're still in shock at the inhumanity of it all.
ReplyDeleteAdam, I feel I have nothing to add. The idea that anyone could possibly survive in New York on less than a mil is clearly preposterous. Just ask DABA.
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