Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Working women almost certainly caused the credit crunch
NEWTON EMERSON
NEWTON'S OPTIC: THE ANSWER to all our problems is staring us in the face. It may even be quite literally staring at you, right now, across the breakfast table.
So put the paper down, stare back and ask yourself a selfless question.
Does the woman in your life really need a job?
Admittedly, this is not a fashionable question. From Iceland to Australia, men are blamed for causing the credit crunch, while a more feminine approach to finance is proposed as the solution.
Of course there will always be a place in the world of business for exceptional women. Women also have an important role to play in jobs that are too demeaning for men, like teaching. But the general employment of women is another matter. Indeed, working women almost certainly caused the credit crunch by bringing a second income into the average household, pushing property prices up to unsustainable levels.
Whether working women actually caused the credit crunch is now a moot point. The point is that removing women from the workforce would mitigate its effects.
Consider the issue of unemployment. There were 221,301 men on the live register last month and just under one million women in work.
Surely at least half these women have a partner who is earning? Surely at least half would be happier at home? One half of one half is a quarter and one quarter of a million is roughly 221,301. I think we can all see where this argument is going.
It would be ludicrous to suggest that women should be sacked purely to give men their jobs. In many cases, their jobs should be abolished as well.
Women are twice as likely as men to work in the public sector. They account for two-thirds of the Civil Service and three- quarters of all public employees.
Yet they are barely represented in the useful public services of firefighting and arresting people. Encouraging women to leave the workforce would go a long way towards addressing the budget deficit without any downside whatsoever.
Further benefits of sacking women have been uncovered by the Central Gender Mainstreaming Unit at the Department of Justice. According to its research, twice as many woman as men travel to work by bus and train, potentially halving the impact of cutbacks in public transport. However, it is probable that three-quarters of the Central Gender Mainstreaming Unit’s staff are women, so these figures should be taken with a pinch of salt.
While the economic case for fewer women in the workforce is irrefutable, we should also acknowledge the social advantages. Women make the majority of spending decisions in Irish households and make almost all of the purchases. They are far more likely than men to regard shopping as a leisure activity, far less likely to make savings and investments, and were even almost twice as likely to spend their SSIAs.
In short, women were the driving force behind the greed, consumerism and materialism of the Celtic Tiger years and it was female employment that funded their oestrogen-crazed acquisitiveness.
The time has come to build a more sustainable, equitable and progressive society. Why not make a start by telling your other half to quit her job? She can ask you for the housekeeping on Friday.
NOW - My dear dear friend Jane lives in Ireland. She finally, after reading this article - admitted - it was all her fault. She has written the following letter to the Irish Times editor and taken it upon herself to accept responsibility. If only the men who think it's just that simple would do the same.
I invite you to keep reading. From Jane to the Irish Times:
Madam,
It’s unfair for Newton Emerson (Newton’s Optic, 25 February 2009) even satirically to blame all women for the economic collapse, to hold us responsible for the cash-apocalypse that has people hoarding tins of depressing food and choosing which precious child will provide the most nourishment after the lights go out. No, that’s not the fault of all women: it was me, and I’m sorry. I wasn’t sorry before, but now the remorse-induced nausea is making my diet pills repeat on me. They’re not so nice on the return journey.
Maybe it was PMS, or maybe I’m just jealous of more attractive women. Maybe I feel fat or I hate men, or I’m just overeducated and undercultivated, and become unruly when not within view of a kitchen, or I get vertigo when in proximity to colourful accessories. Maybe I have a barren womb or an inattentive husband. Whatever the reason, if idle hands are the Devil’s plaything, mine were Rock Band for Xbox Live and they were playing drums on ‘Expert’.
It’s like with cigarettes. Take one puff, and the next thing you know, you’re eating the things two at a time, collecting used butts in a Tesco bag and re-rolling them at the back of a bus. You just don’t see it coming, and next thing you can’t even see where you came from, or how you ended up on the road to some place called Ongar.
First it was just a little sub-prime lending. It didn’t seem so bad, you know, just like the way the lady at the fruit stand used to slip a rotten apple in with the good ones just to get rid of them. I thought I could just dabble to kill the time while I scrambled up the Birkin bag waiting list. But next I knew I was practically shooting free cash out of my eyeballs, bundling up some of the ugliest mortgages you ever saw and with a flutter of my eyelashes and a collagen pout, passing them off as bags of diamond-studded gold bars, though they were little more than deceptively shiny loaves of my own muck.
I’m sorry for all that predatory lending. I’m sorry for those credit default swaps and for that shameless naked short-selling. I’m really sorry for all that price gouging, and the terrible thing I did with that property market. I’m sorry I made everyone buy second, third, fourth and quadrillionth homes they couldn’t afford and then buy platinum-coated Land Rovers with equity. And for the unpleasantness with Anglo-Irish and the Golden Circle or Maple Ten. I just wanted people to think I was pretty.
Don’t blame all women; I acted alone. I guess now I’ve confessed, someone should mete out punishment, and I guess it’s not gonna be free shoes for life, because it was my tireless lust for footwear that has brought us to the point where we’ll have no choice but to heave a good number of our less-hardy denizens into the nearest sea and fight each other to the death for a sup of briny workhouse soup. Just don’t eat me, I’m a vegetarian and wouldn’t make much of a meal.
Yours, etc,
Jane Ruffino
