Equal Pay Day, which was April 4 this year, highlights the gap between women's and men's paychecks, calling attention to the fact that women must keep working for more than three additional months in order to earn the same amount of pay that men collected by the end of the previous year.
But that's not all that affects women's lives both now and in old age. A NerdWallet study listed the obstacles to women's ability to end up with the same amount of retirement savings as men: fewer chances to work in upper management positions (with their attendant higher salaries), gaps in working due to caregiving and/or childbearing and a longer lifespan that actually means they need more retirement savings than men do.
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Other barriers to retirement savings include, according to a study from Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, the fact that while 68 percent of women have access to a 401(k) or other type of employee-funded retirement plan, 26 percent of women surveyed are part-time workers and thus less likely to be eligible for a retirement plan and the fact that women are more conservative investors than men and thus pursue less aggressive returns.
Women are also less familiar with retirement planning and would benefit from more direct outreach from plan sponsors on the use of retirement calculators, the benefits of increasing retirement contributions and help in understanding asset allocation.
Arielle O'Shea, investing and retirement specialist at NerdWallet, says in the report that retirement planning measures aside, a sponsor should always give top priority to providing equal and fair pay.
O'Shea is quoted in the report saying, "Auto-escalation and contribution is great for all workers, but that's not going to help women if they're being paid a lower salary than men."
She also says that sponsors should consistently review salaries to be sure that they're reasonable and gender-neutral, and says that if they have problems implementing equal pay for men and women, they should look for assistance from consultants.
"It sounds sort of obvious," she says in the report. "But that's the first thing you can do because that will go a long way to close the retirement savings gap. It's a worthwhile investment."
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