New research shows the superannuation savings gap between men and women narrowed in the 2016 financial year, however, Australia’s largest super fund believes the gap is not closing fast enough.
The Financy Women’s Index revealed the average woman had about 27 per cent less in her retirement savings than the average man in 2015/16, but it also showed the gap narrowed by six percentage points during the year.
Data provided for the index by AustralianSuper indicated that while the gender gap in super is improving, more needs to be done.
AustralianSuper membership group executive Rose Kerlin said: “Further work is still needed in the areas of equal pay, equality of opportunity and more equal sharing of family responsibilities to close the gap, which results in too many women having insufficient savings to fund a comfortable retirement.”
Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) Inspire chair Dianne Charman said the fact many women work part-time is having a long-term impact on their super.
“The Financy Women’s Index importantly reminds us to work with women to raise awareness about how even a small contribution to superannuation will, over the long term, put women in a better position,” Charman said.
The report showed while the gap between men and women in super savings in retirement in the 2016 financial year was an improvement on 2014/15 when the gap stood at 66 per cent, it was still only one percentage point better than in the 2010 financial year when the average lifetime female super balance was 72 per cent of the average male.
Based on the average balance per age category provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the average female super balance was 73 per cent of a male super balance in the 2016 financial year.
The ABS across all age groups lists the overall weighted average super balance as $216,821 for women and $297,001 for men, taking into account these figures include SMSF balances, which inflate the result.
The report also revealed a national gender pay gap of 15.3 per cent.
AFA chief executive Philip Kewin said the progress towards creating cultural change in relation to the financial well-being of women is happening slowly.
“It is disappointing to see that, at 26.1 per cent, the financial and insurance services industry has the highest pay disparity of all industries,” Kewin said.
