Ireland: Working women almost certainly caused the credit crunch

Submitted by anthony on Thu, 2009-02-26 20:12

Article here. Excerpt:

'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.'

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Comments

I believe the author of this article is dead wrong. It has not been working women but instead a combination of "irrational exuberance" on almost every level of the monetary pyramid, along with a "Well, everyone else is doing it!" attitude, which is also known as The Herd Mentality, combined with simple under-regulated greed. Well we all know that herds will, left to themselves, eventually stampede off a cliff, especially if they think they are chasing some kind of enticing prey (in this case the prey was wealth). That's just what we've done here.

To pin this crisis on working women is as dumb as pinning it on senior financial executives, but just the male ones. The fault is found all around us in a myriad of bad decisions and monetary instrument systems that required financial and mathematical literacy that few people involved cared to be bothered with. Who were those involved? All of us.

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Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2009-02-26 21:47

>>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.'<<

This is nonsense. Why should women be stopping at home. They should be going out to work just as man have had to since the dawn of time.

MORE women should be working, not less.

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Submitted by empirical on Fri, 2009-02-27 01:55