Are women getting their fair share of the recovery?

Republican candidate Mitt Romney is fond of telling crowds that women have lost more jobs than men have under President Obama’s economic watch. Is he correct?

Kind of. But it’s not like the Obama administration deliberately targeted women.

Rather, women took an especially rough economic pounding because they play a disproportionately large role in our public schools. And public schools have suffered mightily in recent years.

According to the National Women’s Law Center, women lost 396,000 public sector jobs during the recovery, or more than two-thirds of all such jobs cut.

The economy may now be on the mend, but it’s not like the public sector is rushing to fill all those vacancies. So, yes, Romney is correct when he says women have suffered more job losses than men.

But I haven’t heard him say anything about expanding hiring in the public sector. In fact, he’s said he plans to cut even more government jobs. So it’s disingenuous for him to portray himself as the economic savior of women.

Unless, that is, he has some grand plan for public schools that he hasn’t told us about.