The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released its latest Gender Indicators publication, showing how men and women fared on a range of economic and social indicators.
- The ABS has suggested that men are doing it tough on a range of indicators, headlining the latest data: “Men fare worse than women in education, health and crime”.
- The ABS notes “This information will assist and inform government policy and decision makers in the development, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs aimed at achieving gender equality.”
Gender gaps
- Economics is much more than just examining how fast retail spending is growing in the latest month. In fact the real value of economics is analysing economic, social and demographic data and answering the “so what?” question – determining what it means for individuals, businesses and government policy.
- The ABS has just released its latest Gender Indicators. And as the purpose is to compare how men and women fare on a range of indicators it should generate a lot of public discussion.
- The value of the information is that it provides a “one-stop shop” of statistics showing how women and men compare across a broad variety of indicators.
- The ABS notes that a fewer proportion of men have a university degree than women but they were more likely to die from suicide or cancer than women as well as a far higher proportion of men were in prison than women. That said, the economic indicators showed that women generally fared worse. New data was provided on people living in low economic households. The good news is that there has been a sharp improvement for men and women. But significantly more younger women (aged 25-34) live in low economic households than men (27 per cent versus 21 per cent.)
- Not only will the government need to offer more carrot and stick “incentives” to get more women in the workforce to address issues with the ageing population, but also to ensure women are at a lesser economic disadvantage. If there were a higher proportion of younger women in the workforce then they will be less at risk should misfortune occur such as becoming a lone parent.
- But governments must also work with business to achieve greater flexibility of labour conditions and lift labour utilisation, particularly of budding female workers.
Economic indicators & trends
- Since 2001/02 the participation rate of men aged 20-74 in the workforce has lifted 1.6 percentage points to 79.7 per cent while the female participation rate has lifted 5.0 percentage points to 65.3 per cent. The ABS notes: “Increasing the Australian working-age population, lifting labour force participation rates, and raising productivity have been identified by the Australian Treasury as critical in addressing the economic challenges posed by an ageing population (Australian Treasury 2010).”
- As is generally assumed, women are primary care-givers for young children. In 2010-11, the difference in the participation rate between males and females whose youngest child was aged 5 years or under was 39 percentage points, but drops to a 14 percentage point difference when the youngest dependent child is aged 6-14 years.
- Male dominated industries: Construction (88 per cent of workforce are males) followed by Mining (85 per cent), Transport, Postal and Warehousing (79 per cent), Electricity, Gas, Water and Waste Services (76 per cent), and Manufacturing (75 per cent).
- Female dominated industries: Health Care and Social Assistance industry (78 per cent of workforce are females followed by Education and Training industry (70 per cent), and Retail trade (56 per cent).
- In 2011-12, 76 per cent of all those aged 20-74 years employed as Clerical and Administrative workers were females, while 65 per cent of all employed as Managers were males.
- Both men and women are working fewer hours than eight years ago. In 2002-03 full-time male workers worked 42.6 hours a week and women worked 38.2 hours. In 2010-11 men worked 41.3 hours and women worked 37.2 hours. In terms of part-time workers, men are working similar hours to eight years ago but work hours of women are up from 16.7 hours to 17.1 hours.
- In 2010-11, 43 per cent of employed females aged 20-74 years worked part-time compared to 14 per cent of employed males in the same age group.
- In November 2011 there were 17.4 per cent of men who were casual workers (“often characterised as those who are not entitled to paid holiday or sick leave, but who might receive a higher rate of pay in compensation”) compared with 22.7 per cent of women.
- Women had a higher proportion of under-utilised labour than men. Under-utilised labour basically means people who were unemployed or wanted to work longer hours. In 2011-12, 9.1 per cent of male labour was under-utilised compared with 13.1 per cent of women.
- In 2011-12, the labour force underutilisation rate for men who had a child in the household under six years of age was 6.2 per cent, and 6.3 per cent when the youngest child was aged 6 to 14 years. The respective underutilisation rates for female parents were nearly three times those of their male counterparts (14.9 per cent for female parents with children under 6 years of age, and 16.1 per cent for those with children aged 6-14 years).
- The proportion of people not in the labour force is at record lows: in 2010-11, 20.3 per cent of men and 34.7 per cent of women.
- In May 2010, the average (mean) non-managerial adult hourly ordinary time cash earnings for females was $28.70, compared to $32.30 for males. The 11 per cent lower earnings for females compared to male earnings is same as in May 2006 but narrower than the 13 per cent gap in August 2008. The difference in male and female earnings was lowest for the Public administration and safety industry and highest in Mining.
- The proportion of people living in “low economic households” has continued to fall. Between 2003-04 and 2009-10, the proportion of men in low economic households fell from 18.4 per cent to 17.9 per cent with women in low economic households down from 20.6 per cent to 20 per cent.
- Overall, a higher proportion of lone mothers were living in low economic resource households (61 per cent) than lone fathers (49 per cent) in 2009-10. The greatest difference was seen in the 35-44 year age group where 66 per cent of lone mothers and 42 per cent of lone fathers were living in low economic resource households.
- The proportion of people living in households with one or more cash flow problems has fallen. Between 2003-04 and 2009-10, the proportion of men living in households with one or more cash flow problems fell from 18.5 per cent to 16.2 per cent with women in low economic households down from 20.1 per cent to 17.2 per cent.
30 July 2012