Economic Crises and Women’s Experiences in the United States

In the intellectual tradition of Thorstein Veblen, the status of women (“woman’s place”) provides insight into the value systems dominant in society. This article asks what we learn about U.S. society when we examine economic crises through women’s experiences. This discussion focuses on the twenty-first century crises of the Great Recession and the COVID-19 recession, both of which were assigned gender pronouns—“Hecession” and “Shesession”—in popular discourse, reflecting in each case a particular pattern of gender differences (“gender gaps”) in unemployment rates. Taking a feminist institutional economics approach, this article briefly examines some key aspects of the experiences of women in these two crises, considering a broad range of demographic characteristics and indicators of well-being, over a timeframe that extends beyond the initial economic downturn. The article concludes with thoughts on what this means for our understanding of societal values and valuing.