When the economy slows down women do better than men, according to Suze Orman

WHEN the economy slows down and people start losing their jobs, there’s one group of people who shine. And 2016 could be their year.

COULD a sluggish global economy be better suited to women than men?

The potential is there, according to outspoken US personal finance expert Suze Orman.

Orman has advised millions of people, including American talk show queen Oprah, pre and post the global financial crisis.

Ms Orman, who is currently working with the US government to advise military personnel on their finances after service, said the slow pace of global growth was likely to strengthen a woman’s genetic tendency to nurture and therefore her work ethic outside of the family home.

“Women have a whole different set of genes that they have to deal with. We have the ability to give birth, we have the ability to feed those that we give birth to in most cases.

“So our nature really is to nurture and women really will do anything to take care of their families, their spouses, their parents, their neighbours, their employers, their employees, they will do anything to take care of everybody else and it isn’t until they are 50-something years of age until they go, ‘But what about me?’”

Suze Orman (left) is finance guru to the stars. Picture: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

Global economic growth remains modest at 2.4 per cent in 2016 and at a predicted 2.7 per cent in 2017. In Australia, the economy is growing at about three per cent, which is slower than the historical average.

Ms Orman added that expectations of prolonged weakness in the global economy would expose generations of children to families where both men and women work.

“The great thing about the economy not being good is that it takes two people both working to make money, so now little girls are seeing their mums working outside of the family home.

“So little by little with the economy being bad, I really believe that women will have to get stronger to really make everything work in their households.”

Since the global financial crisis, Australian women are advancing at a faster rate than men when it comes to university graduate numbers, becoming the main breadwinner and at starting small businesses.

Ms Orman said weaker growth also comes at a time when male-dominated industries such as manufacturing were likely to see many job losses in the future because of the rise of artificial intelligence — aka robots.

A feature of the sluggish Australian economy has not just been slower growth in mining and manufacturing but increased activity, particularly on the jobs front, in traditionally female-heavy sectors such as education, tourism and health.

According to Westpac data more women are finding employment at a faster rate than men.

Part-time positions have also accelerated with more than double the number of full-time jobs created in the May quarter, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows.

Despite often having the best intentions, Ms Orman said parents, particularly dads with daughters, needed to do more to educate their children about future careers and money so that they are better equipped for opportunities.

“Men have got to stop making their little girls powerless, they can’t be daddy’s little girl their whole lives, and women have got to become stronger so that they can be a strong role model too.”

The attitudes of men and women when it comes to work and investing have been long documented to show that men are more likely to take risk, while women are more likely to be conservative.

Ms Orman said these differences became evident to her during the 2008 financial crisis.

She said women were more likely to take any work they could get to bring in an income for their families, whereas men were more willing to knock back lower paying jobs and stay optimistic on the economy bouncing back.

“What I had noticed is that men that had jobs of $210,000 a year refused to go back to work if all they could get was a job paying $80,000 a year.

“It wasn’t until they lost their homes that the men were forced to go back to work and become drivers and things like that. But for the longest time they refused to settle for less to get money coming in.”

She added that in a previous high growth economic environment, there have been less opportunities for women than there have been men.

Bianca Hartge-Hazelman is the founding editor of women’s money magazine Financy.com.au