Fields dominated by men are among those that have seen the biggest job losses in this downturn. Yet compared with years ago, many are taking their unemployment in stride.
By Catherine Holahan
MSN Money

There’s a gender gap in this recession, and this time men are on the losing side of it.
The unemployment rate for men is nearly 2 full percentage points higher, at 8.8%, than the rate for women. Before the recession, the jobless rate was virtually the same for both genders: 4.5% for men and 4.6% for women in November 2007.
But now, more than two-thirds of those looking for full-time work are men, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Nearly 70% of the extended layoffs in the final quarter of 2008 affected men.
Men have borne the brunt of job reductions because male-dominated industries are facing the severest contractions, according to the Labor Department.
Construction: One in five workers in this field is unemployed, and more than 95% of those out of work are men, according to the department’s March employment report.
Manufacturing: That same data show that manufacturing jobs — of which nearly 80% are held by men — declined 4.5% from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of this year.
Finance: The largely male financial industry cut 260,110 jobs in 2008, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

And there are few signs that these industries are done shrinking: Just last week, banking giant UBS said it would lay off 500 financial advisers.
Meanwhile, industries with predominantly female work forces, such as health care and education, are growing. While nearly every other major industry was laying off workers, education and health services actually added about 8,000 jobs in February and March.
Reflections on the Depression era
The last time the U.S. dealt with such a large gender gap in unemployment was during the Great Depression. During that time, suicide rates for men hit an all-time high, as many unemployed men felt their sense of purpose and identity undermined by their inability to fulfill their traditional provider role. The suicide rate peaked at 17 per 100,000 population during the Depression. It is now around 11 per 100,000 and hasn’t increased in recent years.
But there’s reason to believe that men have become much more resilient about job losses. In the 70 years since the Depression, the male identity has become less tied to that of sole family provider. That’s partly due to the large number of women who help support their families. More than 40% of households now have two wage-earners.
“The idea of being a provider is the bedrock experience of American masculinity . . . but the fact that most of these men are in two-career couples will mute some of the possible depressing elements of their unemployment,” says Michael Kimmel, an author and sociologist at New York state’s Stony Brook University.
Changing attitudes toward family life and employment are also mitigating the disappointment associated with a job loss. Whereas before identity was closely tied to career or a role in the home, Kimmel says, now both men and women have a broader idea of what defines them. Jobs, family roles, hobbies and talents all now contribute to self-identity.

Today’s men are more resilient
The day Bjorn Eriksen was laid off, he went straight to a bar. A portfolio manager for Washington Mutual, Eriksen saw the cuts coming long before the official announcement in January. Still, the warning didn’t erase the shock of actually receiving the news. Eriksen, 27, hadn’t lost just a high-powered banking job. He had lost everything that went along with it: the influence, the status, the salary.
But Eriksen didn’t go to the pub to wallow in self-pity or shame. He went to talk about his newfound joblessness with other unemployed friends and former co-workers. A few days later, he found himself hanging out in a Seattle coffee shop, again chatting with other unemployed guys about their situations.
“I think some of the stigma is gone,” says Eriksen, who admits he was initially concerned that he would be viewed as a guy who couldn’t take care of himself, let alone provide for a family or take a woman out to someplace nice. “If you meet someone who is unemployed, you have something to immediately talk about. . . . It’s almost like a little club.”

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The thing about winning is that it also produces losers. Somebody’s gotta lose. We’ve been winning and losing since we were young. From our earliest experiences, from the kickball field to the career ladder, we have been confronted with opportunities to be winners and losers, and sometimes this becomes such as serious pursuit, that we wrap our sense of identity around whether we win or lose.

It’s hard for many of us men to wallow in loss, because it stokes our experience of shame. Shame as losers. Shame as men. Shame as people who are not the best.

Our development and our culture reinforce the idea that winning is superior to losing. Now, I’m not saying that to be a loser is an admirable quality. But, we learn early on that winning is everything. We have competitions and spelling bees and systems based on GPA that sets up competition from the beginning. We grow into men that seek winning in career, life and relationships above all else, and start to depend on winning for our self-esteem.

Are you this guy? Do you put winning above everything else? Do you have to win at all costs?

Feeling like a loser inside doesn’t change. Winning at all costs brings a lot of fame, power and external success, but men who strive continually for this end up subjecting their self-esteem to the forces at work on the outside. Competition ends up dictating how men feel about themselves, and they end up losing their “inner sense” of self. If you end up needing praise and validation from everyone else all of the time, then you lose that sense of ease inside yourself. Success becomes contingent on people and events outside of oneself, who are bound to disappoint at some point.

To deal with the shame of “being a loser” messages is what men who overcompensate by winning should do first. We have to first get in touch with the shame place, and deal with that face to face, instead of seeking out more people and events that validate our sense of “being a winner.” But does this happen in reality? No. I may be an idealist, but I’m also a realist, too. There is too much to lose in always striving to be a winner, too many material acquisitions and too much external power to have. Why work on it?

Also, just easing up that need to win at all costs is a practice that I would recommend. If possible, try to put some competition in perspective then next time it grabs you and doesn’t let go. The next competition should elicit some fun, whether it’s a pickup game of basketball or video games. Can you play for fun and not to win?

The cost of winning can sometimes eclipse the intial high of the win, especially when messages of shame and self-worth underlie the victories to begin with.

One movie I had been waiting to see for some time, “When Did You Last See Your Father?” is a British movie released onto dvd a couple of weeks ago. It’s the story of a son, Blake Morrison, (played by Colin Firth) who tries to come to understand his relationship with his physician father at the end of his father’s life. His father, played by Jim Broadbent, is dying of cancer. His son tries unsuccessfully to talk and reconcile the anger and the distance between the two men as he looks back over his life.

What struck me was that Blake’s relationship is so similar to so many men’s relationships with their father. Blake’s father never accepted his son’s desire to be a writer, and always encouraged him to pursue a career in his own footsteps as a physician. Blake never felt accepted by his father, and never really knew who his father was, even as he tries to find out near the end of his father’s life.

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I have been struck by how many men use their work or careers to avoid certain problems in their life, or, more specifically, in their marriage. Does this characterize you? Do you find yourself investing too much in your work, and have others close to you told you that this is a problem for them?

It makes sense: in our culture, work is prized over all else. We ask strangers when we meet them, “So, what do you do?” Men are especially guilty of this. We overidentify ourselves with what we do for a living, so it becomes that much easier to escape our everyday problems when we have the safety of our careers to fall into.

So what are we avoiding? Stress at home, marital tension, financial distress, conflicts with wives, girlfriends, or partners, our own anger, guilt, dissatisfaction with family life, boredom, our own fears about connecting with others, and the list goes on.

I work with a lot of men that look back on their lives and regret the time that they spent at work, and regret that they didn’t spend that time getting to know themselves (outside of their careers) or the ones that they love. It’s sad and disheartening to me to see that, and one of the reasons that I enjoy working with guys in their 20′s through 40′s is that I enjoy seeing that process of avoidance get easier, before it’s too late.

- Jason