Financial journalism wizard Felix Salmon brings up a nice counterpoint to the prevailing wisdom that working women are coming out ahead of men in the current recession.

Chris Swann reports that, yes, men have suffered 75% of the job losses in this recession. But look at the last recession: they suffered 86% of the job losses in that one. And the recession before that? More than 98% of the job losses.

He said it here.

Looking at it that way women are being proportionally hurt more in this recession than previous ones. They account for 25% of layoffs today, 14% in George W. Bush’s recession, and only 2% of layoffs in George H.W. Bush’s recession in the early 1990s.

And, as Swann notes in his article, it’s not because there were fewer women in the workplace in the 1990s: women were 47% of the workforce back then.

Swann adds

Progress on the desegregation of the workforce and attitudes to gender roles have not advanced since the mid-1990s. This is despite the fact that women are now outpacing men academically — earning 58 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 60 percent of master’s.

Since superior academic performance doesn’t seem to be narrowing the gap, we need a renewed drive by government and companies to root out discrimination and create a more family-friendly work place. Although the United States has excellent anti-discrimination laws, enforcement is woefully underfunded.

Another necessary but more expensive step would be greater provision of childcare. Increasing the length of the school day, lowering the starting age and reducing school vacations would all help — as could more generous paternity leave. Larger employers should be encouraged to expand the provision of workplace nurseries — a reliable way of attracting highly skilled mothers.

As the slide in manufacturing and production tails off, male workers can expect some relief. The problems of many women in the workforce are far more ingrained and harder to deal with. Man-cession aside, it’s still a man’s world.

He said it here.

That sounds about right.

And just for the record, now that my own children are independent and my role as a stay-at-home dad becomes less necessary and more economically unfeasible I’m getting a real birds-eye view of the big thumping hit time out for kids has on one’s employment prospects, in or out of a recession, yes, but especially in one. If I can find a job it still has to be part-time, my resume has this giant gaping hole in it, I’ve got tons of (sometimes strikingly sophisticated) volunteer experience and a ton of skills associated with running a popular and successful but, um, anonymous (oops!) blog, but it doesn’t look that good on paper.

So I’d just like to a) echo Swann’s points about what’s needed for the economy to benefit from the (overwhelmingly if not exclusively) female two-track workforce and b) tip my hat to journalists like Swann and Salmon for shining some light on the issue. (Yes, women, and some men, have been saying it for years. It’s been an exceedingly rare item in business publications though so this is a good thing. Due, I might add, in part thanks to the rise of the new generation of business and labor journalists. But I digress…)

I’d also like to say that to the extent I’m likely to get back on my feet career-wise it’ll be thanks to pioneering, sometimes harrowing and humiliating efforts begun by 2nd-wave feminists 30 years ago to clear a path for “mommy-track” and re-entry women back into the workforce. Even if you’re not affected by the recession chances are you’re benefitting from it too — part-time work, flex time, employer-offered childcare (if you can get it), family leave, job sharing, resume footnoting, even white-collar contracting and telecommuting… and even the possibility of men taking time off to raise their children… are available thanks almost entirely to feminism and the rise of women in the workforce.