Women in the U.S. are being disproportionately affected by the recession which has been handed to us by the banks and Wall Street, with their extraordinary and un-abashed greed which has put us all in jeopardy. Top Wall Street executives and automakers, when bellying up to the trough and taking a publicly funded hand out, may have to rein themselves in and make do with a $500,000 salary.(Perhaps they saved something from the prior years’ $15 million plus bonuses and can dip that to make ends meet.)  But women may lose their jobs and there is a statistical likelihood many of them will lose their homes.

According to Senator Ted Kennedy:  “Women’s wages fell six times the rate of men’s wages last year. And despite their better overall credit scores, women are over 30 percent more likely to have expensive subprime loans, and are therefore much more likely to face foreclosure. Not surprisingly, many women are falling into bankruptcy at alarming rates. Single women, including those with children, account for 40 percent of all bankruptcies….. Women, who earn 77 cents on the dollar for men….have lower savings, fewer assets, and smaller pensions. Unmarried women in the United States have, on average, less than half the net worth of unmarried men.”

But,  if the thought is that keeping women in financial serfdom will be best for all concerned and the good old boys really know how to run things, think again.

“Finance has always been dominated by men and driven by a testosterone-enhanced culture. If women had been running our banks, might we have avoided the sub-prime mess and the resulting economic meltdown?”  Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy points to research in an article, Too Much Testosterone on Wall Street- HarvardBusiness.org, which seems to indicate the answer is yes.  More women at the top provides more stability in organizations. This, despite the fact that research also indicates women face a “Glass Cliff”;  they are frequently given top positions at a time when a company is in peril and on a downhill slide so that, if things don’t miraculously work out for the best, the woman can take the fall.

And that dynamic carries all the way down the chain of command to the bottom.  The first to get canned are women. Sylvia Ann Hewlett said of  her own career: “My first female boss warned me, ‘When the going gets tough, women lose out.’  The top brass, who are looking at the lists of which positions to eliminate and whom to fire are mostly men.  People like to hire and retain in their own image. Men certainly do.  And they are playing golf, taking expense account lunches and knocking back a Scotch or two with other men. The top brass in a corporation are usually not networking with women.  They are not personally invested in them.  And they are not going to stand up for them when the discussion around the table turns to whom to fire.

When women do get the ax, according to Kennedy, the unemployment insurance system is weighted against them. “Because of outdated eligibility requirements, only one-third of unemployed women receive benefits, although almost all workers pay into the system.”

Because only about 16% of legislators are women,  we don’t get a fair shot at writing the rules which could protect us. So we bear the brunt of the consequences in this economic meltdown.

Nina Easton writes in Fortune of Obama’s economic team trying to write and pass legislation designed to slow down the economy’s slide and turn things around.  It remains to be seen how much real help is there for women.  At one point,  Easton compares the frenetic atmosphere to the movie “Speed” in which  Sandra Bullock is trying to control a runaway busload of passengers before the bomb goes off.

Well , at least we’re glad Sandra Bullock was at the wheel instead of a super daredevil co-star.

And despite the presence and influence of Larry Summers of “women are genetically inferior in math and science”  fame, it could bode well that Christina Romer has been named chair of the Council of Economic Advisors.

And that could be a bit of a silver lining in this imploding economy.

The idea that we need more women in top jobs in finance is gaining traction. “The current crisis gives us the opportunity to insert gender into the re-writing of the rules” says Nadereh Chamlou, a senior adviser at the World Bank. “We need more women at the table.”

Amen to that.  A place at the table and a voice in the room.  That would be a start.