This may sound a little paranoid, but I can't help but wonder about it. I intern for a software company that is visibly struggling. Most of the cubicles are empty, strewn with the discarded leftovers of previous occupants, or storing our collection of dozens of no-longer-used office chairs. The company had successes in the past, and it's also had failures. The added burden of the economic downturn has proven to be more than said company can bear; last month, they laid off a huge portion of their staff.

And I can't help but notice that I, the 21-year-old journalism intern, am now the only female left in the building.

There weren't a whole lot of women there before; the picture of the company lunch that remains on the fridge in the break room shows only six women outnumbered by 15 men. I only encountered three other women in the course of my internship there, and only spoke to two. I know that there were men laid off from the company as well; I've seen their empty cubicles, even raided some for some previously unattainble supplies.

But I can't help but wonder when the only female employee isn't really an employee, she's a paid intern, and she isn't even in the information technology or computer science field. I am just there to edit and monitor site content. Like all interns, I am cheap and easily disposable, so they can keep me around for less than half the cost of laying off someone else.

But salaried women are not disposable. They have families, student loans, mortgage payments.  My psuedo-supervisor told me that one of the women laid off had been on pregnancy leave.

Why was it, that all the women were among the first to go? 

I have no evidence to support it at the moment, but I suspect that in "hard times" like these, women in traditionally male or male-dominated occupations are going to be the first ones cut. It's that antiquated idea that the men are the primary bread-winners; women's income is "extra." That they aren't the ones with a family to feed. That they are less competent and capable than their male peers.

I expect the numbers of women in construction, information technology, and the science and pharmoceutical industries to dip in the next few months and years, whereas the ratio of women in caring occupations — nurses, teachers, pink-collar jobs — will swell. Elizabeth Gregory of the Huffington Post confirms the credibility of this:

"...while women's relative labor-force participation rises in recessions, most of the jobs women hold on to earn small wages and low status. In the long-term, recessions can have very negative effects on women's careers — both at the individual and national levels. Gains for women earned through years of effort may be swept away in the undertow of layoffs, when flexibility and diversity efforts suddenly disappear."

I don't just dislike this because I am now the only female in the office. Women only make up about 27 percent [.pdf] of computer and mathematical occupations in the first place, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

I don't want the progress that women have made in these fields to be undone, even though the fields are not mine. Because the thing is, if you pull back far enough, virtually any field becomes "traditionally male," since "traditionally," women worked inside the home.

And as someone who knows for certain that she does NOT want to be a homemaker, that's a stifling thought.