Focused Research Sheds Better Light on Dilemmas Women Face in Saving for Retirement
Historically, researchers have paid very little attention to studying how women plan for retirement despite the data showing that, on average, women live longer than men and yet often fail to save enough for retirement. Satish Kumar, Sweta Tomar, and Deepak Verma’s 2019 literature review examines nearly four decades of research published worldwide on approaches to retirement planning. What they discovered during their review is a body of knowledge that is disorganized, biased, and incomplete. While women are more vulnerable to poverty, particularly as they age, they also bear more family and care responsibilities that can lead to limited employment choices and low-wage jobs that do not offer pensions. The authors have determined that new areas of study are needed that focus only on women and that measure the combined impact of the unique demographic, psychological, financial, social, economic, and circumstantial factors that influence women when they make their financial decisions about retirement.
To underscore women’s financial vulnerabilities, the authors cite several international studies that find that women are more likely than men to experience poverty in their lifetimes, especially as they age. In general, women outlive men, but they often spend less time in the workforce due to the heavier responsibilities they have within the family. As a result, the amount of time women are employed can be irregular or part time, forcing them to accept lower-paid jobs. These differences cause women to have less access to resources like property. In particular, however, when women leave and then reenter the workforce, the disruption can negatively impact their pension plans and other financial resources that they could use for retirement security.