By BERNIE BELLAN
The proportion of females to males within Winnipeg’s Jewish population is almost 50-50 (51.5% female and 48.5% male), according to figures for the number of respondents who reported their religion was Jewish in the 2021 census.
Yet, in the age cohorts 65 and up, women outnumber men by a substantial number (170 more women than men in age groups 65+).
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly though, within the 15-24 age group males outnumber females by a very substantial margin (695 to 570).
Those were two of the more interesting findings to emerge from a study of Jewish population figures in Winnipeg, according to data gleaned from STATCAN.
As I noted in my article on page 1 about trends across Canada as a whole, I’ve been analyzing data produced by STATCAN from the 2021 census. I had requested particular information from STATCAN about Winnipeg’s Jewish population and I was sent tables that were produced specifically in response to my request.
In our last issue I broke down the data that I had been sent by STATCAN insofar as it related to geographic areas, showing that the Jewish population of Winnipeg is very spread out, and that some of the areas traditionally associated with Jewish populations had dwindled substantially – especially West Kildonan, while areas east of the Red River and in the extreme south parts of the city had shown substantial growth in Jewish population.
This time around I was curious to see how the gender divide breaks down according to age cohorts. Again, I relied upon data that was derived from answers to the question about the religion of respondents to the 2021 census. As I’ve noted previously, it would be incorrect to extrapolate the size of Winnipeg’s Jewish population from data about religion alone, since a great many individuals who might be considered Jewish according to ethnic origin might have answered “no religion” on the 2021 census or even that they had a different religion.
Notwithstanding that difficulty, here is a table showing how responses to the question about religion on the 2021 census broke down by gender in different age cohorts, according to those individuals who answered that their religion was Jewish:
