Women and Men in the Great Recession
There is a lot of nonsense being perpetrated about the differential impact of the economic recession on men and women. The prevailing wisdom is that men suffer more anxiety and stress over the loss of a job than women. It is reasoned that because the self-identity of men is intrinsically wound up in their work and role as “breadwinner” (is there a more odious term?) that it is inevitable they suffer greater loss of self-confidence and self-esteem. It’s time to set the record straight.
The great psychiatrist Vicktor Frankl, who was incarcerated in a concentration camp in the Second World War and who lost his entire family in the camps wrote that human suffering is like a gas in a glass container, it expands to occupy every space in that container equally, whether it be a little bit of gas or a lot of gas. He reasoned that human suffering, be it from loss of job or loss of loved one or death in the family is equal and that is is unreasonable to speak of a “little suffering” or “great suffering”. In fact for Frankl suffering has potential meaning for all and therefore should never be diminished.
I don’t understand why we partition the impact of economic hardship and make it more damaging to one gender than the other. It seems obvious to anyone who cares to look that if a householder loses a job all living in that house suffer the consequences. If it is a man his partner will feel the pain and struggle just as greatly as he to cope. If it is a woman the man feels the pain and struggles to cope. Along with the adult partners the children often become stressed as they witness parents under stress, struggling to make ends meet and bearing the burden and stresses together.
The notion that men suffer more than women demeans the role of women and robs them of the essential humanity. How is it that one human being with a partner will suffer less than the other partner? Why do we want to believe that men are somehow more delicate than women (or women more than men)? Why do we ignore the impact of our current national distress on our children? Is it not a fact that some of our children are being deliberately disadvantaged by government cutbacks? Does no one notice or care that the only legislation protection the educational rights of children with disabilities has been deliberately stalled? Does no one notice that the governmental body vested with authority to protect our rights against discrimination (the Equality Authority) has been deliberately rendered impotent?
If a man has such a delicate constitution that loss of job results in a decrease in self-esteem and self-confidence his partner will notice and will struggle to support him through his burden. This struggle to support will mean less focus on self and children, thereby stressing the partner as much as they man.
I think it’s time we recognise, in the words of the Irish American psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan, that we are “…all more basically human than otherwise.” We are in this struggle together, we must support one another together and realise that when it comes to human suffering we all suffer in equal measures.
David J. Carey, Psy.D.
297 Beechwood Court
Stillorgan
Dublin, Ireland
http://www.davidjcarey.com