Clashing political goals and retirement income goals is not helping close the gender gap in superannuation, according to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA).
With the super system maturing and women still retiring on half the amount that men do, it is time to address the gender gap issue, ASFA chief executive, Pauline Vamos told Money Management.
“I think now is the perfect time because the super system is substantial and we’re talking about real money in real peoples accounts, and an ageing population. So the problem is will,” Vamos said.
“But politics is a short-term game and retirement income is a long-term game and they don’t always match.”
Vamos said to move the issue forward the industry needs to show why the cost of the government of improving the position of women is an advantage for the economy and sustainability of the system going forward.
“You can do some modelling that show that women live longer, they are significant consumers in their older age and we’ve started to do work around that,” she said.
“So when you have an ageing population and an economy that does relies on the success of small businesses there’s potentially a very good story there.”
Although there is no current movement from the government on the issue, Vamos noted a roundtable was run by the minister assisting the prime minister for women, Senator Michaelia Cash, on tax and women.
“She’s very enthusiastic, tax is a broad discussion and her job is to drive this agenda in the tax white paper system. ASFA congratulates her for taking the debate forward and running the roundtable,” Vamos said.
“We got to have a process and we have to have the right data on the table and that process must include broad stakeholders, and I think we have that process at the moment. But there must be that desire to do something.”
