Media Releases > Press Articles 2002

COTA looks at female workforce retirement issues

Sunshine Coast Seniors Newspaper, March 2002, p3

While the general issues of an ageing population and an ageing workforce are important, COTA calls for an examination of the specific issues and problems facing women, as they are quite different from those of men.

Veronica Sheen, COTA's Deputy Director has told "Australian Women Speak", a conference organised by the Office of the Status of Women in Canberra, that older women that older women were not necessarily faring well in Australia's ageing workforce.

She explains that the idea of retirement and early retirement in the debate on the ageing workforce has been largely based on male experiences of full-time, full year permanent employment. The traditional idea of retirement – stopping full-time, full-year waged employment - has been irrelevant for most women. We cannot even speak of an average retirement age across the population. It is 58 for men and 41 for women because so many women leave the workforce for family reasons.

While there are important similarities in employment experiences– both men and women can both suffer from discriminatory practices – the starting point and background to these experiences may be different.

The Government, policy makers and the community must recognise these differences between older men and women in the labour market and come up with solutions that assist both groups rather than a 'one size fits all' approach.

Males are more likely to:

• have a substantial retrenchment or redundancy package to cushion themselves in unemployment

• be long-term unemployed

• have problems in the labour market which relate very strongly to self-identity.

By comparison females are more likely to:

• be returning to work or full time work after an extended period out of the full-time work force especially due to bringing up children

• have undertaken further education and training

have experienced divorce which has influenced their need to work to make up for lost earnings and asset depletion after the divorce, and to work for savings for retirement as they have little or no superannuation.

There has been strong growth in the employment of older women in the last 20 years.

Around 66 per cent of 45-54 year old women are now in either a full or part time job compared to around 45 per cent just 20 years ago. Around 40 per cent of women in this age group are now in full time work compared to 29 percent, 20 years ago.

The proportion of women aged 55 to 64 in full time or part time work has risen by over 10 percentage points to just over 30 per cent while those in full time work has risen from 12 per cent to 15 per cent over the past 20 years.

Much of the job growth for women has been in part time and casual work in parallel with the growth areas of the economy.

Women are likely to continue to be disadvantaged in terms of accumulating sufficient savings for a comfortable retirement as a result of their disrupted labour force experience, late starts in careers, and their predominance in part-time work.

At some levels they will and have benefited from the changing structure of the labour market and the changing face of work but much employment in the new sectors of the economy is at the lower end of the wage scales and provides fewer benefits such as superannuation.

Solutions to the particular problems of work and retirement experienced by women must be based in whole-of- life approaches to women's labour market experience. Programs and approaches must start when a woman is young, not wait until she reaches 50 – although support must be there for those who need it at 50 and over.

In addition, we will need well-developed retirement savings policies to ensure adequate incomes for both men and women in retirement and we will need ongoing promotion of equal opportunity in the labour market for women across all ages.

For older women- and men – federal age discrimination legislation as promised by the Federal Government in the election campaign will be needed to ensure that all older workers are given a fair go.

Veronica Sheen is deputy director at Council on the Ageing (Australia)