Women face retiring in poverty

NEW research has shown women are more likely than men to spend their retirement years in poverty.

A study from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency found women were also more likely to re-enter the workplace in their retirement years in order to afford the cost of living. Author and financial investor Nicola Mcdougall said the WGEA research highlighted the inequitable financial outcomes between genders in Australia.

“About one in three Australian women retires with no super,” Ms Mcdougall said.

“Even women who do manage to save often still wind up with less than half the retirement funds of their male counterparts.”

The gender pay gap is at its widest for women aged between 35 and 54, with the gap peaking in their mid-40s.

The gap does not measure the difference in people being paid unequally for the same work; rather, it is an internationally established measure of women’s position in the economy compared to men.

The Australian government describes the gap as “the result of the social and economic factors that combine to reduce women’s earning capacity over time”.

Ms Mcdougall said the current superannuation framework did not account for common female experiences in the workplace, such as temporary leave for maternity care, resulting in major financial imbalance between genders.

“Women have lower lifetime earnings and are more likely to take time out of the workforce for unpaid caring responsibilities,” she said.

Unpaid domestic labour tasks are valued by the UN to account for up to 39 per cent of global GDP.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data has shown the fastest growing category of homelessness in Australia is women over 55.