Downturn Leads Australian Women to Spend Less, Work More - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Australian women report that they are spending less amid the financial crisis, but they still make up the bulk of spending in the country’s economy.

• Not only are they cutting back, but almost half of Australian women are also working longer hours and coming back early from maternity leave, according to a survey for Westpac Banking Corp.

• More than four in five of the 1,006 working-age women surveyed said the global financial crisis, which has hit Australia at least as hard as any other developed economy, had led them to cut back on personal spending, especially given the rising cost of basic commodities, in order to devote resources to other outlays, primarily for their families.

• But that still leaves women in charge of the bulk, and the most discretionary, of Australian spending, which is what gives them the leeway in the first place to short themselves.

• “[T]he resilient nature of Australian women is also shown as they focus on hard work and sensible spending as a way to weather the financial storm,” said Larke Riemer, Women’s Market chief of Westpac.

The Age’s report on the survey