LANSING – Women in Michigan have fared slightly better than men in terms of jobs during this recession, but not as well as women nationally, a panel said Wednesday.

Michigan women also have struggled more with basic financial issues, such as managing subprime mortgages, said panelists at an event held by the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.

Single women, even well-educated women, still do not earn close to parity with men, the panel said, and since the state is making an effort to encourage entrepreneurship, it should focus on encouraging entrepreneurship among women.

Jason Palmer, an economist for the Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth, said that while unemployment in Michigan averaged 15.8 percent for men in 2009, it averaged 10.3 percent for women. While better within the state, it was not as good as the 8.1 percent unemployment rate women had nationwide, he said.

In part, women had a lower jobless rate because they were more likely to work in service-related companies that had suffered less than goods-producing companies where employment is more heavily male, he said.

Women also tended to be unemployed for a shorter time than men in Michigan, he said, going without work an average of 28 weeks compared to 32 weeks for men. Even so, one in five women had been jobless for more than a year in Michigan, he said, compared to one in six nationally.

While they had slightly better employment statistics, Louise Jezierski, an associate professor in MSU’s James Madison College, said women were still far more vulnerable financially. Along with tending to earn less, they had smaller financial cushions to buffer them and their families should they lose work.

Single women are especially vulnerable, she said.

Plus, women, especially minority women, were more likely to have used risky financial instruments. Women were 32 percent more likely to have bought a home using a subprime mortgage, she said.

And while most college students now are women, and while women have made great strides educationally, Paulette Granberry Russell, director of the MSU Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives, said statistics show that 29 percent of girls still drop out of high school in Michigan. A number of factors are involved in that statistic, she said, including bullying, sexual harassment and image issues.

Girls and young women need encouragement both to stay in school and to study for technical degrees that often provide the core of economic development, she said. Most women in college are studying so-called “soft” degrees instead of scientific and technological degrees, although the number studying the “harder” degrees has increased, she said.

And Donna Addkison, director of the Family Economic Self-Sufficiency at the Washington, D.C.-based Wider Opportunities For Women, said it is critical for women to become involved in entrepreneurial efforts. Nearly a quarter of the U.S. population consists of unmarried women, and even well-educated unmarried women earn 56 cents to every $1 a man earns, she said. Developing new businesses will help not only supplement their income, it will provide a major boost to the nation’s employment, she said.

To encourage that entrepreneurial effort, women have to get instruction in thinking in innovative business terms. For example, to take advantage of the growth of the so-called green economy women could start green catering businesses, using only organically grown food, or open a green bed and breakfast, she said.

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