Men are from Ma On Shan, Women are from Wanchai

Here are some interesting observations based in the 2009 figures, from “Women and Men in Hong Kong Key Statistics (2009 Edition)”, the latest publication by the Census and Statistics Department:

• Out of the 6,977,700 people in Hong Kong 3,680,200 are women and 3,297,500 are men. There are 5.5% more women than men.
• There are more married men than women (60.7% vs 55.3%), but there are also more men who never married (34.8% vs 30.5%).
• There are more women than men with no schooling (8% vs 2.6%), but more men than women having attended secondary education or above (80.1% vs 73%) and having received post-secondary education (26.7% vs 22.6%).
• There are 6.8% more men than women in the labour force (1,949,400 vs 1,699,500). Men earn 20% more money than women ($12,000 vs $10,000 in terms of median monthly earnings). There are nearly four times as many male employers as female ones (105,200 vs 27,000), and more than two times as many male directorate officers in the civil service as female ones (838 vs 368).

So it appears that men have a slight social privilege, being better educated, better paid and better positioned in the labour force.

But is it better to be a man than a woman in Hong Kong? The statistics show that men are much more likely to get into trouble – there are nearly three times as many male criminals as female ones (30,508 vs 10,712), and nearly four times as many male drug abusers as female ones (11,275 vs 2,900). And men do not live as long as women – women outlive them by more than 6 years (85.5 vs 79.4 years in terms of average lifespan).