Education and equal pay the answer

The inaugural Money Management Women's Wealth event pointed to equal pay and financial literacy as being two key pillars for achieving equity in women's wealth accumulation.

When the Federal Treasury produced Australia's first Intergenerational Report in 2002, one thing was made very clear — the nation was facing a major challenge in the form of its rapidly ageing population.

That challenge was identified as being made up of higher social welfare and health costs and looked to the nation's superannuation regime as being at least a part of the answer.

What was not directly mentioned in the 2002 Intergenerational Report narrative was that as much as Australia was facing significant challenges in terms of meeting the broad budgetary demands generated by an ageing population, women represented a particular problem.

Why were women a particular problem? Because they were ultimately going to live longer than men, and the evidence had already been produced in 2002 and earlier that they were at a significant disadvantage across a range of measures including pay equity and broken work careers.

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When the second Intergenerational Report was published in 2007, the picture being painted around the ageing population had not changed substantially. When the third Intergenerational Report was published in 2010 there was no significant alteration in the scenario and the latest Intergenerational Report continues to point to the challenge of an ageing population with little progress having been made with respect to the plight of women.

All of this therefore represented the backdrop to Money Management's Women's Wealth event in Sydney last week where an expert panel concluded that much work remained to be done not only in dealing with an ageing population but also in helping women achieve equity in terms of wealth accumulation opportunity.

The panel, made up of Workplace Gender Equality Agency acting director, Louise McSorley, former Financial Planning Association (FPA) chair, Julie Berry, Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) national president, Deborah Kent, Adviser Intelligence head of marketing and sales, Jacque Henderson, and Australian institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) senior policy adviser, Karen Volpato, concluded from the outset that the starting point for addressing the issue of women's wealth equality was education and financial literacy.

However, in doing so, they agreed that much of the work already done with respect to lifting levels of financial literacy in Australia had lacked a women's perspective because the development process had not been viewed through a women's lens.

What also became clear from the panel exercise was the degree to which female financial advisers were much more keenly aware of the challenges confronting women in terms of wealth accumulation and, by definition, retirement incomes adequacy.

Women in 2015 not only faced the same issues of wage disparity and broken work patterns which impacted previous generations, but also had to contend with the high costs of child care which could mean that their re-entry did not help overcome the hurdles they faced with respect to wealth accumulation.

What was agreed at the Women's Wealth event was that a bipartisan approach was needed to address the problem in the long-term; that changes might need to be made to the tax system to take account of the disadvantage experienced by women and that there is a genuine need for restoration of the Low Income Superannuation Contribution scheme (LISC).

So what would represent a good start for addressing equity in women's wealth accumulation?

Wages equity and financial literacy.

Address those two policy issues and some of the broader questions may address themselves.