Doughney, James (2005) The economic wellbeing of ageing women. In: Beijing International Conference on Applied Business Research, 1 December 2005, Beijing, China. (Unpublished)

Abstract

The economic and financial position of women is still considerably more precarious than is that of men. When in paid work, women occupy lower positions, have more career breaks due to care responsibilities, and have more part-time and casual employment. Many women, of course, do not work outside the home, and a smaller proportion of women engage in paid employment than do men. As a consequence, women have lower incomes, less wealth and less generous retirement benefits. At the same time, more women today are heading households, either as sole parents or living independently. This raises important economic challenges for women as they age, especially regarding the increasingly important concern of superannuation. Our analysis of official data and data from a national survey of Australian women reveals that women’s income level corresponded with their satisfaction with their ‘superannuation situation’. This raises considerable equity concerns for lower income women. In order to rectify the inequality problems, policy measures must focus specifically on the needs of women. Such policy must be framed in terms of women’s labour market status, care responsibilities and income throughout the life cycle as well as on ageing and retirement specifically. We propose radical solutions to the problem.

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