Despite the fact that women have disproportionately lost their jobs and hours of work in the recession the Government’s stimulus measures have been disproportionately focussed on male-intensive industries according to new analysis by the Australia Institute.

“Between March and April the number of women employed fell 5.3 per cent compared to 3.9 per cent for men, and for hours worked the pattern was the same with women losing 11.5 percent of their hours compared to the loss by men of 7.5 percent. It is clear that women are facing the brunt of the recession so far,” said Dr. Richard Denniss, chief economist at the Australia Institute.

“But despite the clear evidence that women are disproportionately losing their jobs and incomes, the Morrison Government is developing stimulus policies that disproportionately favour male dominated industries.

The new research paper shows that every $1 million dollars spent on education creates 10.6 jobs for women while every $1 million spent on construction creates only 0.2 jobs for women.

“If the Government is serious about maximising the number of jobs it creates then it needs to focus its stimulus spending on industries like education, health and tourism.

“While the construction industry has a clear role to play in Australia’s economic recovery, spending taxpayer money on construction will do little to create jobs for the hundreds of thousands of women who have lost their jobs in the services sector.

“Well-designed stimulus policy aims to create as many jobs as possible per million dollars spent, and it also aims to create jobs for people with the skills to work in the industries who have recently become unemployed.

“The Prime Minister seems to like wearing a hard-hat when he talks about job creation, but like the Prime Minister himself, the vast majority of Australians don’t wear hard-hats to work each day. Australian policymakers need to focus our stimulus spending on the industries that create a lot of jobs, not the industries that look best in the background of a press conference.”