The XX Factor
A Chillaxed Look At The Ladies In Bentley

Home of Curtin University’s largest campus, Bentley has an interesting and diverse mix of women living in the area. Let’s use the freely available 2006 Census data to see why!

As of Census night 2006, there were 8,323 persons usually resident in the State Suburb of Bentley, 4,307 (52%) female. This is slightly higher than the total proportion of females in Western Australia which sits at roughly 50%.

As far as jobs are concerned, there were more females working in the Accommodation & food services industry than in any other sector (187 female employees). Of this 187, just over half of these Bentley women were in the 20-24 year old age bracket - nothing like a fast food job to get you through your uni days!

The second most popular industry for women in Bentley was Health care & social assistance with 182 female employees, probably due to Bentley Hospital, followed by the retail industry with 181 female employees.



Interestingly, Bentley had a low proportion of women married in a registered marriage in comparison to the WA figure. Only a quarter of the women in Bentley had tied the knot, which was significantly lower than the 50% or so of females across the state who had made the commitment.

Catholicism was the most dominant religious affiliation (873 females), however the high proportion of females of the Islamic faith was most notable. Eight percent of women in Bentley recorded that they were of Islamic faith, which was much higher than the 1.3% figure for the female population of WA.

Finally, and no surprise, one fifth of the females living in this area attended a University or other tertiary institution when the 2006 Census was conducted, which was five times higher than the WA figure!

A Selection of Statistics for Bentley (sourced from Basic Community Profiles, 2006 Census)
Number of females	4307
Median age of females	36
Proportion of married females (15+)	25%
Number attending an educational institution	1800 (42%)
Most dominant religious affiliation	Catholic (873 females)
Proportion undertaking voluntary work (15+)	17%
Proportion of females participating in the labour force (15+)	38%
Proportion of unemployed females in the labour force (15+)	10%