Retirement Income

Female Baby Boomers re-enter workforce to secure retirement funds

Sep 30, 2018

More women than men are heading back into work as they age due to a lack of superannuation. Source: Getty

Women are being forced to hold off retirement or face poverty as they fear a lack of financial stability for the future due to a lack of superannuation.

While it’s a well known fact that female Baby Boomers have less super than their male counterparts, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics has confirmed their greatest fears.

The statistics revealed last year women aged 55 to 64 had a super balance of on average 37 per cent lower than those of men at $196,000 compared to $310,000 respectively.

Sadly this means women women who are itching to enter retirement are instead re-entering the workforce as they try to grow that balance to ensure a happy and secure future.

In fact, according to the ABS, the number of women aged 65 to 74 has almost doubled over the past 10 years, and has risen around 50 per cent for 60 to 65-year-olds.

“A lot of women, if they’re going into old age by themselves, will be staring poverty in the face, so they’ll be trying to work as much as they can,” University of Melbourne professor Beth Gaze told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“Even with compulsory super, women just can’t accumulate the same sort of balance because they take time out for maternity leave and parental leave and so on.”

These latest comments follow the recent announcement by Bill Shorten who claimed women could be set to receive a huge boost to their superannuation.

The Labor leader vowed to inject $400 million into a scheme to narrow the gap between retirement savings for men and women if he is elected into power at the next general election.

Shorten’s scheme would deliver a top-up payment for those on parental leave, which is one of the main factors that causes women to fall behind men when it comes to super. It is estimated that, if implemented in July 2020, it would affect around 167,000 recipients of the Commonwealth paid parental leave scheme and another 80,000 who are on the Dad and Partner payments scheme.

The policy – which would form part of Labor’s wider Women’s Economic Strategy – would also get rid of a rule that means people earning less than $450 a month do not get any super guarantee levy, while making it easier for employers to make extra payments into women’s superannuation funds.