In general population statistics, some groups of women with special needs stand out.
In August, 1992, there were 1.6 million married women with children, 1.5 million women over 60, 1 million single young women and 2.2 million women living outside major urban areas.
Twenty-one per cent of Victorian women were born in non-English-speaking countries compared to 5 per cent in Tasmania and 8 per cent in Queensland.
71,000 women identified themselves as Aborigines and 9,300 as Torres Strait Islanders. Together they were 1.2 per cent of Australian women. Only 1 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women were over 75 compared with 5 per cent in the total female population.
Among women over 70, two-thirds were not married (mostly widowed), compared with less than a third of men. 700,000 women and 530,000 men lived alone, at August 1992. Eighty per cent of widowed people were female.
There were 310,000 lone mothers, 10 times the number of lone fathers.
The median duration of marriage dropped from 14 years in 1966 to 10 years in the period after the Family Law Act.
The age of marriage has gone up three years in the past 15 years to 24.5 for women and 26.7 for men. The proportion of births to mothers under 25 has declines from 47 per cent in 1971 to 26 per cent in 1991.
Until the mid-1970s there had always been more males than females in Australia. In 1971 there were approximately 69,000 more males that females counted. In 1991, there 53,000 more females than males.
Population projections show that females will continue to outnumber males.
In 1991 there were more women than men over 60, with a ratio of 81.6. Among people under 60, there were mote males than females in all age groups (ratio 103).