Report on a seminar on gender equality during the credit crunch: PROFESSIONAL INSIGHTS

The purpose of this report is to review the seminar on “The credit crunch: gender equality in hard times” held 6 March 2009 at Queens' College, Cambridge, UK.

The seminar seeks to inform members of the general public and academia about the – possibly – differential impact of the credit crunch on men and women. The meeting included four presentations by invited speakers.

As of now, economic indicators do not seem to show a differential impact of the economic downturn on men and women. However, unemployment and redundancy rates might underestimate the impact on women because they often do not register as unemployed if they have an employed partner. Past recessions have shown that insecure employment can be as bad as or even worse than unemployment for psychological well‐being.

The seminar brought together four speakers who considered the impact of the current recession on gender equality from different perspectives. It was held shortly after official statistics confirmed that the British economic is now in a recession, and the seminar theme was therefore highly topical.