Introduction: Women's Fortunes and Economic Restructuring

Little information exists about the effects of economic restructuring on American women. Effects on men and women likely differ because women have the major responsibility for household work and because men and women are segregated by occupation. Women lose jobs less often than men, but are unemployed longer, less likely to find new work in manufacturing, and much more likely to leave the labor force. Women account for the majority of the increase in multiple jobholders. Geographically isolated female workers affect the location, growth, or reorganization of work—in low-wage manufacturing and office functions, for instance. Much remains unknown about the differential effects on men and women of the increase in temporary work and multiple jobholding, for instance, and the nature of economic restructuring stimulated by poor female minority populations in inner cities. Conventional economic development programs are poorly adapted to solving the problems women face during economic restructuring.