The rapid development of the health care and social assistance industries has provided more employment opportunities for female in Australia

Divyangana is an Indian student studying nursing at Holmesglen Institute, Australia. She has been learning this course for one year.

The main reason she chose this major is that she hopes to find a good job in the healthcare industry in Australia after graduation.

"I would definitely choose to work in the health-care industry as my career as it has been both my dream and passion to be a part of it. I get personal satisfaction working with patients and providing them care," Divya said.

Another reason for her choice was that she saw the rapid development of the health-care industry in Australia. "I feel the nursing industry is one of the most important and without a doubt a growing industry," she said.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics（ABS), from 2018 to 2019, the health care and social assistance industry is indeed one of Australia's most prominently developed industries, with an increase of 109,000 people in one year.

In fact, employment in the health care and social assistance industry has continued to rise over the past decade, according to data from the ABS and Labour Market Information Portal.

For this huge growth, Mark Wooden, a professorial fellow with the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, gave a detailed answer.

He believes that this sustained growth is mainly affected by improving the Australian people's economic level and the population aging.

"As we get richer and wealthier, health is something we tend to buy more services."

"The proportion of the people who are old, are over 60 is increasing all the time. We got the demographics. We have a lot more demand for health and social care. So we've got a lot more people in that age bracket, who need health and health care," Mark also said.

When talking about the big winners in this industry's rapid growth, Mark said that working females are the biggest beneficiaries.

"It's a growing sector. There are more jobs for women until the pandemic," he said.

Data from the ABS and National Skills Commission show that most of the practitioners in the health care and social assistance industry are women. According to statistics in the past decade, female employees account for almost 80% of employees in the entire industry all the time.

Registered Nurses, the largest number of employees in the entire health-care and social assistance industry, has driven the overall industry employment growth. As of 2020, there are 332,267 registered nurses in Australia, of which 88% are women, released by Nursing Midwifery Board.

For the female group working in Australia, registered nurses are relatively high-quality jobs in terms of wages and flexibility of working hours.

In 2016, nearly 65 % of female registered nurses' weekly salary reached 1,000AUD above. But at the same time, from the overall employment situations of Australian working females, only 25 % of female employees may earn a weekly salary of more than 1,000 AUD.

Relatively flexible working hour is another important reason why it is a good job for Australia working females.

"It is in my opinion a suitable for women. With different shifts available, it gives an opportunity for women with kids to delegate their time and work suitable hours and time of the day," Divya said.

In terms of the social assistance industry, Aged and disabled carers is where the biggest increase in female’s jobs has been. In 2019, 181,200 females joined this position, according to the data from the Labour Market Information Portal.

Prof Mark explained that although there are also male carers now, people are still more inclined to engage females in such related occupations.

"Women have long played a caring role in society. Also, there are male nurses now that once would not have been considered possible, but still, we tend to think of women as care. Remember, every man is a potential rapist. I think prefer to be cared for by women, both women and men," Mark jokingly said.

Although the aged and disabled carers also provide more employment opportunities for women, their wages are relatively low. In 2016, more than 68% of this occupation's female workers earned less than A$1,000 per week.

Mark believes that this situation may be because the service agencies and service targets of aged and disabled carers cannot pay sufficient remuneration. In addition, he said that the population aged also makes the young people's taxes unable to support the operation of aged care institutions.

However, the entire health care and social assistance industry has not stop growing since affected by the above problems. On the current growth trend, the positions in this industry will maintain an increase, which means that females will get more jobs opportunities from it.

The health care and social assistance industry is expected to increase 798,000 jobs in 2025, released by Melissa Mack in the New Daily. 

This is good news and will bring more hopes to more female students like Divya. "Of course, the growth trend in this area for women to provide more employment opportunities, and I have observed a growing number of female students like me coming to my college to start learning the nursing profession," Divya said excitedly.