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The Impact of the Terrorist Attacks
of September 11, 2001
on Women's Employment
Summary of Paper prepared for the Policy Integration
Department
International Labour Office
Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg Professor of Social
Work Adelphi University School of Social Work, Chair, National
Jobs for All Coalition
Helen Lachs Ginsburg Professor Emerita of Economics
Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Publications
co-chair, National Jobs for All Coalition
July 30, 2002
The full paper is available at the ILO website: "Assessing the Impact of Attacks of 11 Sep 2001...", Working Paper #6, Oct 2003.
Summary
This paper investigated the following hypothesis:
Women's employment is likely to have been more affected by the
impact of the events of 11 September 2001 and their aftermath
than men's employment. Many of the affected industries employ
a larger share of women in those categories of employment that
shed the most jobs (e.g. flight attendants, lower paid jobs in
hotel and tourism). Women are more likely to be employed on a
precarious basis, being the first to lose their jobs. Even with
the United States economy and productivity growing by mid-2002,
women
remain more adversely affected as regards employment than men in the post-
September 11 scenario.
The investigation was fraught with difficulties, not the least
of it the two-months time limit given to us. It was difficult,
if not impossible, to disentangle the effects of the terrorist
attacks from the economic slowdown that had begun in the United
States some six months earlier. We examined existing studies
and reports, gained access to a number of data sets (published
and unpublished) of the U. S. Department of Labor's Bureau Labor
Statistics, and held interviews with researchers, academics,
and representatives of labor and industry who were knowledgeable
about national or local conditions in the areas affected by the
attacks. We concluded that all existing analyses fell short of
answering our question. Was it, we asked, the tendency to neglect
women's issues or the fact that gender did not, in this case,
seem to be a salient variable.
Our investigation led us to concentrate on non-farm payroll
data collected by Bureau of Labor Statistics and to compare changes
in employment in the year preceding the attacks with changes
in the year of the attacks. These payroll employment figures
were available by gender for all industries and the industries
most seriously impacted by the events of September 11. These
data, while showing somewhat less job loss for women than men
in the entire, very large U. S. economy, did reveal more employment
loss for women than men post 9/11, in the following industries:
manufacturing; transportation by air and particularly its sub-category,
scheduled air travel; transportation services and its subsidiary,
travel agents; retail trade, hotels and motels; and eating and
drinking places.
We stress the tentative nature of even these findings, given
the difficulty of disentangling the effects of cyclical changes,
secular changes, especially in manufacturing, and the unprecedented
terrorist attacks. Further, the results of our analysis of national
payroll data do not tell another part of the toll of the combined
effects of recession and terrorism, that is, reduced working
hours, pay cuts, and changes in working conditions. These hardships
were visited on workers, but we did not obtain systematic data
regarding extent or gender. Locality data were either without
gender distinctions or incomplete so that it is hard to generalize
about reported hardships for women workers in hard-hit cities,
metropolitan areas, or states.
It was clear from a number of studies that lower-wage workers,
including immigrants, tended to be hurt more in the post-9/11
scenario. Women, we hardly need to point out, are over-represented
among the lower-wage workers and the working poor.
Part of the post 9/11 scenario is compensation for job losses
in the aftermath of the attacks. The unemployed and underemployed
fell into a safety net, never very supportive, that had been
tattered-if not battered-in the preceding decades. The paper
details the problems in coverage and benefit levels of the Unemployment
Insurance system and shows how lower-wage workers and women,
particularly, are poorly compensated, if at all.
The paper takes into account the responses to 9/11 of voluntary,
particularly labor, organizations, and government. The advocacy
and service provided by nongovernmental organizations increased
access to Unemployment Insurance and other benefits and, in some
instances, affected actual eligibility rules. The aggressive
and admirable response of the labor movement not only aided both
union and non-union workers but, by winning respect for and loyalty
to organized labor, may have offset potential losses.
The paper also calls attention to some consequences of the governmental
response to the attacks that, like increased defense spending
and possible further neglect of social programs, have implications
both for women's employment and income support. The governmental
response in the months following 9/11 was greater than in an
ordinary recession and may well have kept both the terrorist
attacks and the gathering economic clouds from creating an even
more stormy economy. Yet, it was a lopsided approach, quicker
and more generous to business than to workers. In fact, the government
made some loans to airlines contingent on their gaining concessions
from labor-a choice that could have ominous implications that
could go well beyond that particular industry. Further, Washington
failed to address the serious inadequacies of the unemployment
insurance system.
A renewed attack on economic inequality and the disadvantaged
position of women in the labor market would, in the future, make
it unnecessary to raise the question of this paper, namely whether
women suffered greater employment losses than men. It would both
reduce women's hardships and equalize residual disadvantage.
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