Three out of four jobs lost to the recession have been mens’, leaving more women to move into the breadwinner role.  But unequal pay leaves them with less than eighty cents to a man’s dollar.

NPR – Recession Drives Women Into Role of Breadwinner

So far, 7.5 million jobs have been lost in this recession, and the lion’s share of them — 75 percent — were held by men. [Labor economist Heather Boushey of the Center for American Progress] says men have been hit hard during the downturn because they’re concentrated in the industries most affected, including construction, auto manufacturing and Wall Street. Positions in these fields also pay pretty well.

Meanwhile, more and more women have had to become their family’s primary source of income. But women still don’t make as much money as men.

“So because women are concentrated in caring jobs, like child-care workers or nursing or home health aides, many of those are paid far less than comparably skilled male jobs,” Boushey says.

A woman today makes 77 cents to a man’s dollar. That pay gap has held steady for the past decade. It means that when a woman becomes the breadwinner, her family must survive not just on less, but on less than half of their previous income.

Joan Entmacher, a vice president with the National Women’s Law Center, says women are also less likely to get health insurance coverage on the job.

“They are still more likely to work part time and take time out of the labor force for unpaid care giving, which lowers their overall earnings and their opportunity to get other benefits such as retirement benefits,” Entmacher says.

Overall, women’s share of layoffs has been increasing, and could go up sharply if state and local governments shed more jobs, like teachers.

But the disproportionate losses for men in this downturn have given women’s role in the economy a sizable boost. It’s pushed their share of jobs toward an all-time high of 50 percent. Boushey says that rise is part of a long-term trend.

“When you look from the period from the mid-1970s to today, if you are a married couple and you don’t have a wife working — your standard of living is exactly the same today as it was back in the mid-1970s in inflation-adjusted terms,” she says.

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