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Men losing more jobs than women

By Ellen Wulfhorst

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The global recession has caused more men than women lose their jobs around the world, following a pattern already well established in the United States, according to research released on Friday.

Men held more of the jobs lost in nearly all the nations where executives were surveyed by Accenture, a management consulting firm.

In India, executives said 95 percent of their layoffs were men; in France men accounted for 71 percent of job losses. The survey, conducted between November 2009 and mid-February 2010, asked executives how many men and women had been fired or laid off in the preceding year.

Executives also fired more men than women in Australia, Canada, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, it said. In the United States, men held 54 percent of jobs lost to women's 46 percent.

"In some cases the majority of the work force was men, so most men got impacted," said Nellie Borrero, who heads global human capital and diversity at Accenture. "It could also mean that companies were more vigilant in insuring that a lot of women would not be impacted."

In the United States, men dominate industries hardest hit by recession, such as heavy manufacturing and construction, while women dominate less hard-hit fields such as health services and education, statistics have shown.

A different story on gender and job loss came from the Netherlands, where women accounted for 51 percent of jobs losses, Accenture said. In China the losses were split evenly between the genders.

Accenture surveyed 524 senior executives in medium to large companies in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.