More of the unemployed are finding work these days, but most of the jobs are going to men. Women were spared the worst of the recession, while men were hit hard by the devastation, especially in the manufacturing and construction sectors.  So, what gives?

Working Women
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"It's a tale of two chapters. Chapter one was the recession hitting very hard in the male-dominated construction and manufacturing sectors and during that same period of time, the areas of education and health care where women tend to be the majority of workers, were doing better," said Carl VanHorn, Director of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers. "And chapter two, as the construction and manufacturing sectors begin to recover a bit, some of the sectors where women were employed, especially education, have been shedding jobs."

The private sector picked up nearly 2.9 million jobs over the course of the recovery, but women secured only 23.5 percent of those positions according to the National Women's Law Center. Women gained only 12.3 percent of the more than 2.3 million total jobs added to the economy during the recovery. Women lost 396,000 public sector jobs during the recovery, which is 69.1 percent of the jobs cut.

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