Women win at work:young Australians lose

When the economy turns bad, Australian employers are more likely to retain women, on their staff, than men.

This previously unrecognised trend emerges from figures just published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The Federal Treasurer, Wayne Swan, praised Australians yesterday, for their “co-operation” in the wake of the global economic crisis.

He was referring, particularly, to the fact that thousands of Australian companies offered their staff part time work, when they could not afford to retain their services, full time.

There was an element of self interest in this.  Those bosses remembered, all too well, the difficulty they had experienced previously in attracting and keeping the skilled people they needed, in better times.

So retaining their best workers, at least on a part time basis, made good business sense in the early months of the crisis.

The way women won out, over their male colleagues, though, as this was happening has only just become apparent.

The Bureau’s publication, Australian Social Trends, March 2010, tells the story.

The Statistician reported, for example, that more than half of the women who lost full time jobs, in those dreadful months, had been able to find part time work, instead.

Only one third of the men, who were displaced from full time work, were that lucky.

The Bureau also reported, for the first time, that young Australians were hit hardest by the global economic crisis.

“As with other downturns, the impact was greatest among people under 25,” it said.

“…more than half a million young people were not engaged in either full time study or full time work in 2009,” it said.

That’s 19 per cent of those in this age group.

Even more shockingly, the Bureau reported that Australians, from the nation’s poorer areas, suffer significantly worse health than others.

Their rates of heart disease, diabetes and disability are more than twice the national average.

They are also more than twice as  likely to smoke and had a considerably higher rate of obesity than other Australians.