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DOI: 10.1177/2158244015597966
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Article
With increasing life expectancies and the aging of the baby
boomer generation, women more than 65 now make up about
15% of Australia’s population and will live about a quarter of
their life span beyond the age pension entitlement age of 67
(Chomik, 2012). In this context, the inequity of Australia’s
superannuation system for women has long been noted: An
average Australian woman retires with Aus$112,000 in
superannuation, compared with Aus$198,000 for an average
Australian man (Clare, 2011). Public discourse and awareness-
raising regarding superannuation and women typically
target middle class, educated women at an early stage of their
working lives. This has the potential to alienate the many
women who do not belong to this category.
In the academic literature, there is a lack of qualitative
analysis of women’s experiences in and out of the workforce,
and the ways these have led them to a position of inadequate
retirement savings and, particularly, low superannuation balances.
Using data from in-depth interviews, this article seeks
to address this gap in the research, focusing on both direct
discrimination experienced in the paid workforce and barriers
to accessing well-paid work. It aims to put the superannuation
debate—traditionally focused on the lives of those
women (and men) who have access to well-paid, high-status
work—in the context of the lived experience of Australian
women from diverse backgrounds.
Literature Review
Retirement Policy in Australia
Australia’s retirement savings system has three components.
These include government transfers, particularly the age
pension; compulsory superannuation; and voluntary contributions
or private savings (Jefferson, 2005; Sadiq, 2010). In
the context of an aging population and the expectation that
health and welfare expenditure will rise, the Australian government
has implemented a range of strategies to encourage
older workers to remain in the labor market for longer,
including increasing the qualifying age for the age pension
(Hodgkin, 2014; Mackenzie, Keuskamp, Ziersch, & Baum,
2011).
The “compulsory superannuation” scheme was introduced
in 1992. Under this scheme as it currently operates,
employers are required to make contributions to employees’
individual superannuation accounts equal to 9.5% of base
597966SGOXXX10.1177/2158244015597966SAGE OpenWeiss et al.
research-article2015
1Women’s Health in the North, Melbourne, Australia
2Women’s Health Goulburn North East, Wangaratta, Australia
Corresponding Author:
Catherine Weiss, Women’s Health in the North, 680 High Street,
Thornbury, Victoria 3071, Australia.
Email: cathyw@whin.org.au
Living Longer on Less: Women, Paid
Work, and Superannuation in Victoria,
Australia
Catherine Weiss1, Debra Parkinson1,2, and Alyssa Duncan1
Abstract
This article examines the paid work experiences of women aged more than 55 with less than Aus$100,000 in
superannuation living in Victoria, Australia. In Australia, superannuation is a compulsory retirement scheme in which
employers make contributions to employees’ superannuation accounts. This research attempts to discover how
participants’ experiences of paid work were linked to their positions of low superannuation. We interviewed 32
participants, 18 from a metropolitan and 14 from a regional setting, and analyzed the results qualitatively. We found
that although the participants experienced considerable discrimination in the paid workforce, which contributed to their
low superannuation balances, the more important factors were outside the workforce, preventing them from accessing
well-paid work. These factors included the deprioritization of women’s paid work compared with men’s, unpaid care,
disability, ill health and older age, and violence.
Keywords
retirement savings, work, older women, poverty, Australia
2 SAGE Open
salary (as of July 2014), rising to 12% by 2025. Withdrawal
restrictions apply to these accounts until certain age and
employment criteria are met. Superannuation represents a
privatization of the risks of retirement saving (Jefferson &
Preston, 2005) in contrast to the pension, a system of intergenerational
transfer in which the younger generation supports
the older generation’s retirement years through taxation
(Hamilton & Hamilton, 2006). The compulsory superannuation
system disadvantages those whose paid work falls outside
the compulsory superannuation system (such as
low-paid, casual workers), and those who do not perform
paid work for a sufficient length of time (Brown, Brosnan, &
Gallery, 2000; Jefferson, 2005; Sadiq, 2010). Women are disproportionately
represented in these groups (Chomik, 2012;
Jefferson, 2005).
The superannuation structure further contributes to the
inequity in women’s superannuation levels, as it is based on
a model of a “normal taxpayer” (i.e., a male) employed fulltime
for an uninterrupted 35-year period. Under these circumstances,
such an individual should be able to accumulate
sufficient superannuation to support “himself” in retirement
(Chomik, 2012; Sadiq, 2010). However, women are much
less likely to follow this pattern of work. Even when contributing
15% of her salary to superannuation, a woman working
full-time for 40 years at average female wage levels is likely
to outlive her superannuation (Hodgson & Medd, 2013).
Women, Paid Work, and Retirement Savings
A range of different models aiming to describe women’s
experiences of paid work exists. Some of these, such as that
developed by British sociologist Catherine Hakim (2000),
focus on individual choice, assuming women are free to
choose what paid and unpaid care they perform, and differences
between working patterns of men and women are
attributed to innate biological differences. Other theories
focus on the effects of socially constructed normative and
moral frameworks in shaping ideas of what defines a
“mother,” a “woman,” and a “worker” (e.g., Duncan,
Edwards, Reynolds, & Alldred, 2003). A third type of model
focuses on institutional factors that shape the context in
which individual preferences can be expressed and choices
made, for example, through the embedding of traditional
gender ideology in government policy (Crompton, 2006;
Hill, 2007).
Debates about women and superannuation frequently
examine factors such as the time spent in the paid workforce
and the gender pay gap, while divorce, single parenthood, and
disability are less often considered (Jefferson, 2005).
Furthermore, application of equal pay and anti-discrimination
laws has been slow and erratic, so women’s work histories
can vary dramatically. This is especially true for older women,
who were likely to have more children and less likely to do
paid work (de Silva & Harnath, 2011). Given the long-term
nature of retirement saving, these factors are highly important
to current and older generations of retirees but are relatively
little recognized in the academic literature (Jefferson, 2005).
There are many other factors affecting women’s paid
work and retirement savings, of which this article can give
only a brief overview.1 A particularly important factor is that
of the patriarchal structure of families and society that prioritizes
men’s work over women’s, constructing the male role
as that of the “breadwinner.” Although this notion may seem
outdated as many Australian women expect to earn an independent
living, it is still an underlying assumption of many
societal institutions and policies (Barns & Preston, 2010;
Hill, 2007; Jefferson, 2005).
When women enter the workforce, they are more likely to
enter female-dominated professions, which are devalued and
pay lower wages (Cortis & Meagher, 2012). Once entering a
profession, women have often faced considerable discrimination,
particularly before legislative changes made such
practices illegal (Jefferson, 2005). Nonetheless, discrimination
remains in areas such as hiring and promotion (Australian
Human Rights Commission [AHRC], 2014; Wilson, Marks,
Noone, & Hamilton-Mackenzie, 2010). Such discrimination
has a significant impact on women’s ability to save for retirement
by limiting their income. Consequently, women, much
more than men, tend to rely on pooled financial resources in
a household, meaning that women who divorce are frequently
left with significantly reduced financial resources
(Jefferson, 2005; Sheehan, 2002; Weston & Smyth, 2000).
Gender norms constructing men as providers also construct
women as carers, leaving to them the majority of the
responsibility for unpaid care of children, the sick, and the
elderly. In 2013 in Australia, women comprised 72.5% of
primary carers aged 15 to 64 (AHRC, 2013). Responsibility
for unpaid care work affects women’s paid work: For example,
in 2012, female parents’ labor force participation rate
was 39% lower than male parents’. Furthermore, 66% of
employed females with children under 6 worked part-time
compared with 7% of males, and this reduction in hours continued
as children grew older (Australian Bureau of Statistics
[ABS], 2012). It has been estimated that a seven-year career
break costs a woman Aus$70 000 in superannuation (de
Silva & Harnath, 2011). These Australian findings echo
those of international research on unpaid carers in the labor
market (see Lilly, Laporte, & Coyte, 2007).
Health problems and disability are major causes of early
exit from the workforce, both in Australia and internationally,
for women and men (ABS, 2013; Mackenzie et al.,
2011; Pit & Byles, 2012; Topa, Moriano, Depolo, Alcover, &
Morales, 2009). One third of the increase in the recipiency
rate of the disability support pension over the past three
decades has been found to be due to the increased retirement
age for women (McVicar & Wilkins, 2013), suggesting that
health problems prevent many women from working until
the pension qualifying age. Workers with disabilities, including
mental health problems, generally have lower earnings
throughout their working lives (Brazenor, 2002; Schofield
Weiss et al. 3
et al., 2011). This fact, combined with their tendency for earlier
retirement, means that women with health problems and
disabilities have reduced retirement savings.
Violence against women is experienced by one in three
Australian women and was estimated to cost the economy
Aus$13.6 billion in 2009 (Office for Women, 2012). Such
violence typically has a significant effect on an individual
woman’s ability to work and manage her finances (Murray &
Powell, 2008; Zufferey, Franzway, Chung, & Moulding,
2010). Lack of financial independence prevents women from
leaving violent relationships, and women who do leave face
great financial challenges and may suffer from financial discrimination
(Braaf & Meyering, 2011; Parkinson, Burns, &
Zara, 2000). This financial stress limits the ability of women
victims of violence to accumulate retirement savings.
Finally, many women experience additional forms of discrimination
and barriers to work if they belong to other
groups such as lesbians, migrants or refugees, Aboriginals,
and people with disabilities, and this further reduces retirement
savings (see, for example, Abdelkarim & Grace, 2012;
Frohmader, 2008; Gray, Hunter, & Lohoar, 2012; Smith,
Oades, & McCarthy, 2013).
To these authors’ knowledge, only one recent qualitative
study has explicitly addressed the topic of superannuation
and women in the context of these broader factors that influence
women’s paid work and retirement savings. This important
study, “Super”-Poor but Surviving: Australian Women
in Retirement (de Silva & Harnath, 2011), combined quantitative
data from a telephone survey of 800 women aged 50 to
80 with a small number (12) of qualitative interviews. The
sample did not include women with diverse backgrounds (J.
de Silva, personal communication, 12 February 2013)—a
gap that has been addressed in the current study—but reached
a similar conclusion about the detrimental effect of women
taking time out of the workforce for child raising.
Although superannuation is unique to Australia, the
results of this study have considerable application to other
industrialized countries with similar gender norms. The institutionalization
of gender inequality in societal institutions is
common to many countries (e.g., Crompton, 2006; Duncan
et al., 2003), where women experience similar forms of discrimination
in the workforce and similar barriers to accessing
well-paid work allowing them to accumulate sufficient
retirement savings (see, for example, Amato, 2010; Cohen,
2013; Cotter, Hermsen, & Vanneman, 2004; Crompton &
Harris, 2006; Gazso, 2005; Gibson, Le, & Scobie, 2006;
Hodgson & Marriott, 2013; Jacobs, Laporte, Van Houtven, &
Coyte, 2014; Yeandle, 2006).
Superannuation-poor women are an important group to
policymakers as they rely heavily on the age pension, and,
increasingly, the Disability Support Pension (McVicar &
Wilkins, 2013). Policy is formulated to reduce reliance on
government support (Australian Government Treasury,
2013), but little is known about the compounding effects of
different types of disadvantage on these women. This study
aims to address this gap by examining the ways in which
issues relating to paid work have led to low superannuation
balances among Australian women older than 55. This information
is necessary to generate policy driving structural
change that will allow women to support themselves in their
older age. It will address this question by looking first at
issues directly related to paid work and second at wider
structural barriers to accessing well-paid work.
Method
Study Design and Sample
The data used in this article were from a larger study called
Living Longer on Less: Women Planning and Paying for Their
Older Age (see Parkinson, Weiss, Zara, Duncan, & Judd,
2013). A qualitative approach was chosen to examine how
barriers to paid work experienced at younger ages lead to disadvantage
at retirement, and the way in which multiple types
of disadvantage interact to compound poverty in older age.
Data were collected in December 2012 and January 2013 from
a sample consisting of 32 participants (18 from a metropolitan
and 14 from a regional area) ranging in age from 55 to 78 and
with less than Aus$100,000 in superannuation. Participants
were selected using purposive sampling (Patton, 2002) to
achieve a diverse sample including married and unmarried
women, migrants, Aboriginal women, lesbians, and women
with disabilities. Researcher bias in selection of participants
was reduced by discussion between three researchers and
input from contacts with community service organizations
(see below). North East Health Human Research Ethics
Committee gave ethics approval for all study procedures.
Recruitment
Advertisements and articles in local newspapers combined
with contacts with community service organizations were
used to recruit participants. Potential respondents contacted
the researchers by phone or email (those participants who
were nominated by contacts were first contacted by the
researchers), and the researchers conducted a short telephone
conversation to establish the outline of their life history.
Following this initial conversation, a written consent form was
posted to the participants. Participation was strictly voluntary.
Data Collection
At the time of the interview, the consent form was discussed a
second time and participants were asked to sign it if they still
agreed to participate. For those participants who did not speak
English, the consent form and procedures were explained by
an interpreter. A semi-structured interview process was used to
capture the complexity of the participants’ stories (McKague
& Verhoef, 2003). Interviews took place in the offices of one
of the parent agencies or the home of the participant.
4 SAGE Open
Interviews began by discussing why the participants had
volunteered to take part, followed by a discussion of what
was important for them in their older age and what plans they
had made. Subsequently, the researchers asked how the participant
came to be in this position and what they saw as critical
events in their lives that had brought them here. At the
end, the participants were offered the opportunity to focus on
what they considered important to this topic. Interviews
averaged 90 min in length and were transcribed in full, using
pseudonyms to maintain confidentiality. Upon completion,
participants were given an Aus$30 Coles Myer voucher and
a list of free and low-cost economic and psychological counselors
operating in their region.
Data Analysis
Researchers worked together to develop a thematic framework
guided by the interview transcripts and the aims of the
research project: This included topics such as paid work,
unpaid work, violence, and discrimination. Researchers
coded several transcripts together to develop consistency,
before beginning coding separately using QSR International
NVivo 10. Coding techniques were compared regularly,
inconsistencies discussed, and coding processes amended.
Results and Discussion
Overview
Eight of the 32 participants were migrants: 1 each from
England and New Zealand, and 6 from culturally and linguistically
diverse (CALD) backgrounds—2 from Iraq and 1
from each of South Africa, Sri Lanka, Italy, and Argentina. A
further 5 women who were born or grew up in Australia
reported some influence from the culture of their overseasborn
parents. Four of the regional interviewees were
Aboriginal. Only 4 participants were currently partnered,
with 19 separated or divorced, 4 not mentioning a long-term
heterosexual relationship, and 3 widowed. One (unpartnered)
was a lesbian.
The participants’ experiences of paid work varied considerably.
Almost all the participants (31) worked in paid
employment for at least part of their life, and 14 were still
working. Past and present employment sectors ranged from
administration, nursing, aged care, and community services.
More than half (18) mentioned working in the social and
community sector, one of the most feminized sectors of the
Australian workforce. Two (both public servants) worked in
relatively high profile, highly paid jobs, yet even they did not
experience the increasing seniority and pay of the “normal
taxpayer” presupposed by the superannuation structure (see
the introduction). Some participants worked in a large number
of jobs, sometimes up to three simultaneously, over their
lives, while others engaged mostly in unpaid work, including
activism and/or community work. All participants engaged
in unpaid care work. This heterogeneity made it difficult to
identify participants with a single profession, so the profession
following their pseudonym should be regarded as
indicative.
Importantly, many of the participants mentioned that they
had always expected to rely on the age pension in their retirement:
With a significant portion of their working life occurring
before the introduction of superannuation in 1992, they
were unaccustomed to the neoliberal logic underlying superannuation
(Jefferson, 2005). Consequently, the need to accumulate
a significant amount of superannuation was not a
factor in their decisions about paid work. One participant
said,
The pension age eligibility has changed enormously just in my
lifetime—it’s gone from 55 to 67.5 years . . . In my early working
years there wasn’t any super. I then went into my own business
as an artist for 15 years and of course again I didn’t have super.
So now I’m left with literally no super . . . the aged pension not
being available till 67.5 years makes me very anxious. (Michelle,
59, metropolitan, artist)
It is important to note that all the participants experienced
more than one form of disadvantage. This was particularly
the case for unpaid care work and disability, ill health and
older age, factors that affected almost every participant. In
every case, different forms of disadvantage interacted in
complex ways over the course of the women’s lives to bring
them to their current position of low superannuation. These
multiple constraints invalidates theories of women’s work
patterns that focus on women’s preferences (e.g., Hakim,
2000), being better explained by the interaction of gender
norms (Duncan et al., 2003) and the institutionalization of
gender inequality in the structure of the workplace
(Crompton, 2006), government policy (Hill, 2007), and the
household (Jefferson, 2005).
A number of participants mentioned experiencing disadvantage
directly related to the workforce. Three themes
emerged as most relevant: the type of work performed, discrimination
in the workforce, and non-payment of superannuation.
What was striking, however, was the extent to which
obstacles outside the workforce contributed to their low
superannuation balances. Outside paid work, four major
themes emerged: deprioritization of women’s paid work;
unpaid care work; disability, ill health, and older age; and
violence.
Factors Directly Related to Paid Work
Type of work performed. The majority of participants had
spent most or all of their working lives in feminized professions;
only three did not mention having worked in such a
profession. Working in feminized professions reduced the
participants’ superannuation as they tend to be lower paid
than male-dominated professions as they are seen as less
Weiss et al. 5
important because performed largely by women (Cortis &
Meagher, 2012).
Many participants who worked in the community sector
mentioned that they enjoyed this work and that it accorded
with their value system. For instance, Elizabeth (55, regional,
community manager) explained that her work was a continuation
of her beliefs in the importance of community, and Peta
(60, metropolitan, migrant, self-employed community
worker) described forgoing a well-paid job in academia to
work in the community sector. Although it seems likely that
the women chose to enter these professions, it is probable
that the socialization of women into caring roles affected
these decisions.
Participants working in other feminized professions generally
did not freely choose to enter them. One said,
. . . in our family you were either a nurse, a teacher or [a
secretary] . . . Career advice for women was limited to three
main occupations . . . I was an outdoor girl [who tried] to help
my father until I reached puberty and then that wasn’t
encouraged. And the succession of the farm goes automatically
to the son. (Fiona, metropolitan, disability support worker)
In most other cases, the participants did not clearly articulate
why they entered feminized professions. Instead, the
need to quickly find a source of income combined with other
disadvantage (such as lack of education and qualifications,
having to look after children, lack of English, health problems,
or disability) pushed them toward feminized professions,
which offered the path of least resistance. For instance,
when asked why she worked in administration, Adele (62,
metropolitan, admin worker) responded “I don’t have a uni
degree” and Bronwyn (57, regional, community worker)
explained that she did community work because “you can
moderate it,” which allowed her to work with a disability.
Two recent migrants from Iraq found that almost all paid
work was impossible because of their lack of English. This
meant they could only access informal, feminized work such
as child care, sewing, and cooking. Being outside the formal
economy, this work was low paid and they did not receive
superannuation.
The influence of compounding forms of disadvantage on
pushing women into feminized work was perhaps best illustrated
by Anu (55, metropolitan, migrant, catering assistant).
As a recent migrant from Sri Lanka, Anu was unable to find
work in banking (her previous profession) due to her strongly
accented English. Furthermore, her need to care for a new
baby led her to seek part-time work, which she eventually
found as a caterer in aged care, a low-paid, feminized profession
dominated by casual shift work.
Discrimination in the workforce. Because of their age, the participants
were exposed to forms of discrimination in the
workforce that have now been reduced or eliminated
by changes to the law. This discrimination affected their
superannuation in various ways. The most significant form
of discrimination in this respect was the fact (mentioned by
three participants) that when they began working, women
were unable to access superannuation at all, even if they
sought it out.
The most common form of discrimination experienced
was unequal pay. The fact that women received lower pay
meant that they were less able to save for their retirement,
and if they were receiving superannuation it would have
been lower than that received by men doing the same job.
The participants frequently expressed emotional reactions to
unequal pay, whether of indignation or sadness, suggesting
that it affected their sense of self-worth and of the value of
their work.
I got a bit sick and fed up of training young men who got paid
more the day they came in. (Esther, 78, regional, Aboriginal,
public servant)
It actually hurt me . . . In the gut, in the heart. Because I’ve
encountered that all my life and I don’t want my daughters to be
hampered by that. (Fiona, metropolitan, disability support
worker)
The lower pay received by the participants again demonstrates
the formalization of gender inequality in societal institutions
(Crompton, 2006): Workplaces could justify paying
women employees less than men based on the assumption that
women were not “breadwinners.” This was untrue for most of
the participants, as only four were currently partnered.
Women were discriminated against for marrying and having
children. Three participants were made to resign when
they married and, upon return to the workforce, were reemployed
under worse conditions or not re-employed at all.
Women who went back to work after having children found
their progress up the promotional ranks interrupted: two participants
(both public servants) reported that when they
returned to work after childbirth, they had to start again at the
lowest level of pay. Measures based on continuous years of
service, such as redundancy payments, also disadvantaged
some participants because every break they had taken to
have children counted against them.
Although more difficult to identify a causal link, general
sexism in male-dominated work environments seemed to
have affected the superannuation levels of some participants
by discouraging them from entering or pursuing a career in
the male-dominated (and often higher paid) professions. For
example, Anna (58, metropolitan, musician, teacher and
composer) explained that the sexism she experienced in her
work as a composer (including being patronized by men
younger than her, exclusion from decision making, and
exposure to pornographic language) affected her confidence,
preventing her from pursuing this career as much as she
would have liked. Another participant changed jobs due to
sexism:
6 SAGE Open
I was the first female graduate clerk and a joke, so I transferred
to the library.
Was it hard being the only woman there?
Oh it was a joke. I used to pour the tea and coffee. (Esther, 78,
regional, Aboriginal, senior-level public servant)
Non-payment of superannuation. Some participants did not
receive their entitled superannuation. Two of these were
migrants, one a cleaner and the other a catering assistant in
aged care, both low-paid jobs in industries with reputations
for exploiting migrant workers. As a recent migrant, Anu
(55, metropolitan, migrant, catering assistant) was unaware
of superannuation and was not paid it for 14 years. Her
attempts to recuperate it were unsuccessful.
Six participants worked for their partner at some point in
their lives, five of whom are now separated or divorced.
Although their partner would otherwise have had to hire someone
to do this work, only one participant was paid and none
received superannuation, meaning that none were able to make
contributions to their retirement savings over this period.
Although these participants benefited from the contributions of
the business’s income to their household, it did not benefit their
retirement savings as paid work would have. Furthermore, this
unpaid work occupied time, preventing them from doing paid
work that could have contributed to their retirement savings.
Stefania was able to work full-time while running her
husband’s cleaning business from home and raising four
children, but her testimony illustrates the difficulty of maintaining
a paid job while doing unpaid work for a partner:
I’d come back, pick up the kids . . . and while I was fixing them,
feeding them, doing everything else, I had the phone, I usually
had about 10 or 12 messages on the answering machine and I’d
have to ring back and make appointments for him . . . Put the
kids down, we’d sit there, fold nappies, blah, blah. Then I’d
book all his jobs. (Stefania, 59, metropolitan, admin worker)
The work of running her husband’s business was simply
expected of these women, part of their duties as “wives”;
those who are now separated receive no gains from the unpaid
work they performed earlier, while their ex-husbands live on
the prosperity of the business they helped to establish.
These discriminatory practices operating within the workforce
demonstrate the institutionalization of gender inequality
in the legal system and the workplace (Crompton, 2006;
Hill, 2007). These practices were applied uniformly despite
the frequency of divorce, and were applied equally to single
women and lesbians despite the fact that they could not rely
on a male breadwinner.
Factors Outside the Paid Workforce
Deprioritization of women’s paid work. The force of normative
ideas about appropriate behavior for women (Duncan et al.,
2003) was prominently expressed by the deprioritization of
women’s paid work within heterosexual relationships. This
included the assumption of a sexual division of labor in
which the man would provide financially for the family
while the woman would perform unpaid housework and
child care (see also “Unpaid care work” section). When it
later came to separation, divorce, or widowhood, as in the
cases of 23 participants, participants were invariably left
with lesser monetary resources, including superannuation, as
a result of the systematic deprioritization of their paid work
over their married lives (Sheehan, 2002; Weston & Smyth,
2000). Never-partnered women and lesbians were disadvantaged
by these same assumptions, as they had to work within
structures that assumed that, as women, they were economically
dependent on a higher paid male breadwinner.
The importance of male breadwinner assumptions was
prominent in the comments of many participants. For example,
Eloise (61, metropolitan, admin worker) explained that
her husband believed that the role of a wife was to stay home
and look after the children, and this was a belief she internalized
after marriage. She later divorced and faced many difficulties
in raising two children and supporting herself.
Another participant described similar assumptions in a past
relationship:
[He] was always . . . of the view that he was a more serious
professional and he was the one who should be thinking about
[financial matters] and I wasn’t that relevant. (Peta, 60,
metropolitan, migrant, self-employed community development
worker)
This deprioritization of women’s paid work was not limited
only to attitudes of participants and their partners: It had
important effects on the participants’ employment behavior,
decreasing their ability to follow the path of the “normal taxpayer”
upon which the superannuation structure is based.
Ellen’s description of her working history illustrates this
phenomenon very clearly:
My husband, from the time we were married to today has always
worked full-time. But [me], I was full time, I had to quit my job
to get married, then I was unemployed for four months, then I
worked, then he was transferred, I had to quit my job, move to a
new town, then got a job after another couple of months and then
I got pregnant. I had to then quit my job, then I was out of work
for seven years and then I had to get a part-time job and I think
it was say, 16 hours and . . . it was on what we would have
termed “pathetic money” type thing and he’s still working fulltime.
(Ellen, 56, regional, community worker)
She further explained that being married meant that she
took a job “for the cash, not for the career” and actively prevented
her from thinking about following a long-term
employment path.
The deprioritization of the participants’ careers often
meant that they invested significant unpaid labor and/or
financial resources in their male partners’ careers, instead of
in their own. For example, Georgie (57, metropolitan, dental
Weiss et al. 7
nurse) supported her ex-husband financially through 5 years
of university, which allowed him to gain skills leading to a
relatively prosperous career. Georgie herself never had the
opportunity to do tertiary study and received little of the
long-term financial gains from her ex-husband’s career.
The participants did not have support in unpaid housework
and child rearing as their partners did. This prevented
them from studying and fundamentally altered the kind of
paid work they could do, as their work had to fit around their
unpaid duties in the home. As one participant remarked,
wryly,
He was a hard worker but he could be a hard worker because he
came home [and] everything was clean. (Giulia, 68, metropolitan,
migrant, bookkeeper)
Migrant participants described ways in which their culture
involved stronger or different norms relating to women’s
roles compared with mainstream Australian culture. These
cultural values often had a significant effect of discouraging
or preventing them from pursuing better paid, higher status
work. Peta (60, metropolitan, migrant, self-employed community
worker), for example, explained that norms around
the type of work appropriate for women, and its value, were
very strong in South Africa, suggesting that this had an effect
on her sense of her own worth.
Huda’s (regional, migrant, child care worker) explanation
of the expectations placed on women in her culture was similarly
illuminating. She explained that in Iraq, culture, tradition,
and religion combine to prevent women from acting
independently. Even living in Australia with her daughter and
infant grandson is considered unacceptable by her community
as they are living without an adult male. Huda’s example
suggests how older migrant women from cultures where
women are expected to rely entirely on a male “breadwinner”
are particularly disadvantaged when moving to Australia,
where the retirement savings system expects women to have
worked independently for their entire adult life.
Unpaid care work. The corollary to the deprioritization of
women’s paid work was the prioritization of their unpaid
care work. High unpaid care workloads, by occupying women’s
time and attention, reduced their ability to do paid
work. Every participant mentioned having spent a significant
amount of time caring for others over the course of her
life. Some cared for an extraordinary number of people:
Lorna (59, metropolitan, community worker) cared not only
for her daughter alone but also for her grandson, her stepson
and stepson’s son, a second stepson, her god-daughter and
god-daughter’s daughter, her sister, brother-in-law, and
niece, her father, and the child of a close friend. Another
participant, a lesbian feminist activist, described the large
amount of time she has spent and continues to spend caring
for her friends (now aging) in the lesbian community. These
examples show that care commitments were not limited to
blood relations.
Many of the participants had children and changed their
pattern of paid work to care for them, either stopping all
together or working part-time. This reduced their superannuation
in every case. Furthermore, re-entering the workforce
after having children was difficult for many participants
due to the gap in their working history and the lack of affordable
child care. Two participants even mentioned that it was
more economical for them to stay at home because what they
were capable of earning, as women who had just spent time
out of the workforce, was less than the cost of child care.
Having children therefore prevented women from following
the path of the “normal taxpayer.”
The Aboriginal participants’ accounts suggested a somewhat
different relationship with care, as they all brought up
more than one generation of children. As Rosalie (77,
regional, Aboriginal, community activist) explained, “ . . .
this is a part of our community. We do that, we bring up
grandchildren.” Another participant, Iris (55, regional,
Aboriginal, self-employed caterer) cared for six of her own
children, then later four grandchildren, a nephew, and multiple
unrelated children, mostly after separating from her husband.
The other Aboriginal participants had similar stories:
Mel (regional, Aboriginal, never in paid work) was even
known as “Nanna Mel” “because it looks like everyone in
[town] are my grandkids. I’ve looked after my four and then
I looked after my daughter’s four.” This greater care load
affected their ability to work and earn superannuation.
Unpaid care work was clearly gendered, with none of the
participants’ male partners ever reducing or ceasing paid
work for caring responsibilities. Care of the elderly was also
heavily gendered, with a number of participants commenting
that caring for their aging parents was expected, even
demanded of them, but not of their brothers.
Even though [my parents] have got six kids, I’m the only one
who really does anything. Which gives me the shits as a feminist
because most of them are boys. (Lesley, 60, metropolitan,
activist)
Some participants gave a concrete explanation of how
their unpaid care work reduced their ability to do paid work,
thus reducing their superannuation. This was particularly
stark when they spent a protracted length of time out of the
workforce due to caring. Lavender (72, regional, medical
secretary) cared for her husband for 3 years until his death
from cancer and then had great difficulty re-entering the
workforce. Iris (55, regional, Aboriginal, self-employed
caterer) had to stop paid work when her mother had a stroke
because she was driving more than a thousand kilometers
every week to care for her, while also caring for four grandchildren.
Joan (64, metropolitan, small business owner) had
to give up the business she started with her husband when he
became a quadriplegic following a car accident.
We had a pet shop at that time and a two-year-old. [My husband]
spent two and a half years in hospital with bad head injuries. I
8 SAGE Open
cared for him for the next 19 years. (Joan, 64, metropolitan,
small business owner)
A number of the participants were heavily involved in
activism and/or community work (caring for the community).
The time and energy they dedicated to these activities
reduced their ability to engage in paid work and accumulate
superannuation. One participant explained,
I’ve lived in poverty all my life, more or less voluntarily because
my primary thing was my activism and not making money or
establishing any security for myself. Which may have been a
mistake but that was the judgment I made. (Lesley, 60,
metropolitan, activist)
Lesley was clear that activism was significant work, saying
“I work all the time, I do my voluntary activist work,” and
felt it unfair that activists are not supported in old age despite
the contribution they have made to society. This theme that
caring work was real work that should be recognized
with support into old age was echoed by a number of
participants:
I feel really sad more than anything that with all I have
contributed . . . I’ve contributed so much, family and community
that it’s coming down to this. (Helena, 57, metropolitan,
psychotherapist)
Disability, ill health, and older age. Although only one participant
was disabled in the common-usage sense of the term,
almost every participant mentioned health problems that
affected their ability to work; in many cases, these were conditions
linked to growing older. These health problems limited
the participants’ ability to accumulate superannuation in
the last years of their working lives, usually by forcing them
to quit or reduce working hours.
A number of participants had recently been forced to stop
work or reduce hours due to health problems. Adele (62,
metropolitan, admin worker) could not work because of
advanced osteoarthritis. Brenda (59, regional, migrant,
nurse) stopped work after a workplace-related injury, for
which she was denied compensation. Lorna (59, metropolitan,
community worker), suffering from the long-term effects
of being hit by a bus as a child, was unable to cope with the
physical stress of working the day shift as a nurse. Fatigue
prevented Giulia (68, metropolitan, migrant, bookkeeper)
from returning to work since being diagnosed with breast
cancer 9 years ago.
Some participants’ paid work was affected by mental health
problems. Moira (73, metropolitan, migrant, nurse) stopped
working due to nervous stress following an attack by a male
psychiatric patient. Eleanor (metropolitan, public servant) left
her high-pressure job at a police station following a “nervous
breakdown,” and ongoing mental health problems have since
left her struggling to retain short-term casual jobs, which do not
pay superannuation. Fiona (metropolitan, disability support
worker), suffering from post-traumatic stress due to childhood
sexual abuse by her grandfather, had to leave jobs
because they were not flexible enough to accommodate her
needs.
I’ve got to be realistic about what I can do because healing from
past trauma is also work. You have to work at being mentally
well, [it’s] not an automatic. (Fiona, metropolitan, disability
support worker)
What is notable about these circumstances is that many of
the women were not very old: At least 19 of the participants
were younger than 65, the current age of age pension eligibility,
increasing to 67 by 2023 (Department of Human Services
[DHS], 2014).
Violence. Nine participants mentioned experiencing violence
from their male partner or a family member, even though this
question was not asked. This may be evidence of both its
prevalence and its significance to women’s retirement savings.
In some cases, the effect of this violence on paid work
and superannuation balances was clear. The clearest example
was that of Mel (regional, Aboriginal, never in paid work),
who described being abused by her father and bringing up
her brothers after her father murdered her mother. Later, she
went through a series of violent relationships with men, some
of whom stalked her even as she moved interstate. Living in
shelters for many years, it is hardly surprising that under
these circumstances she never did any paid work, and has no
superannuation. Another participant, Elizabeth (55, regional,
community manager), pulled all her savings out of superannuation
to move herself and her children interstate, to escape
a relationship that threatened to become violent. Withdrawing
her super at that time meant that, despite having had relatively
well-paid work, she now has little superannuation.
One participant, a lesbian, described the physical and sexual
violence experienced by lesbians in the 1970s and 1980s.
This included rape “as punishment for being lesbians,” indicating
that high levels of homophobia in mainstream society
posed additional obstacles to lesbians in obtaining paid work.
Although the participants did not usually make an explicit
link between experiences of violence and paid work, these
testimonies nonetheless suggest how violence can have a
significant effect on women’s ability to work and therefore to
earn superannuation. Although these findings are consistent
with what little research exists on this subject both internationally
and in Australia (Moe & Bell, 2004; Zufferey et al.,
2010), there is a need to explore this question further; particularly
the effects of violence during childhood and early
adult life on employment and retirement savings.
The results of this study are not well explained by theories
relying on women’s preferences for work (e.g., Hakim,
2000); they are better understood in terms of constraints
operating on women’s ability to engage in well-paid work
that would allow them to accumulate sufficient retirement
Weiss et al. 9
savings. These constraints take the form of gender norms
(Duncan et al., 2003) and the institutionalization of such
norms of gender inequality in society (Crompton, 2006; Hill,
2007). These results suggest that researchers and policymakers
should focus their analyses of women and paid work
around constraints rather than preferences.
Implications
Cohort effects are important in this study: Some of the results
are most applicable only to women aged more than 55,
whereas others are applicable to all Australian women.
Particularly, a large part of the working lives of the participants
in this study took place before the introduction of compulsory
superannuation in 1992 and related measures such as
the 2002 legislation allowing for superannuation splitting in
divorce settlements. This contributed to their low superannuation
balances, as they were not building up superannuation
over the entire course of their working life; indeed, they
were operating under the assumption that the pension would
be available to them in older age (see Jefferson, 2005).
Similarly, they did not benefit from higher levels of awareness
of superannuation and retirement saving existing since
1992. The participants also experienced greater discrimination
in the workforce than younger women, especially
because some forms of discrimination, such as women’s lack
of access to superannuation, have been eliminated. The existence
of these cohort effects suggests that government policy
should provide additional support for older women, perhaps
by lowering the pension qualification age or providing an
increased pension allowance for older women.
There are positive aspects of Australia’s employment
regime, such as the strong minimum wage, and significant
progress has been made on reducing gender inequality
through legislative change. However, discrimination and disadvantage
persist. As of February 2015, the gender pay
gap—the difference between women’s and men’s average
weekly full-time equivalent earnings—was 18.8%
(Workplace Gender Equality Agency [WGEA], 2015), and
in 2012, the difference in pay between new male and female
graduates was Aus$5,000 per annum (WGEA, 2013); an
ongoing investigation has found that pregnancy discrimination
is experienced by 49% of mothers (AHRC, 2014).
Furthermore, the abuse experienced by Australia’s first
female prime minister, Julia Gillard, suggests that women’s
right to high-status work in the public sphere is still contested
(Summers, 2013). Consequently, superannuation
imbalances between the sexes are projected to continue
(AHRC, 2014).
As a result of this continuing inequity, acknowledging the
fact that many women will have no choice but to continue to
rely on the pension (Jefferson, 2005; Sadiq, 2010) by raising
the payment level and lowering the age of eligibility for all
women is an appropriate short-term policy change. However,
a key aim of Australian government policy is to reduce
reliance on the age pension and increase reliance on personal
assets (Australian Government Treasury, 2013). In the long
term, the implementation of policies addressing the barriers
to well-paid work for women will help to achieve this aim.
Addressing the deprioritization of women’s paid work
and its effects should be a key policy aim. This can be
achieved through new legislation over unpaid care. Policy
should both challenge the assumption that women will perform
the majority of unpaid care work and ensure that carers
are compensated for the unpaid work they do in their retirement
savings. An example of the first type of reform is the
introduction of incentives for equal take-up of parental leave
in couples: This could take the form of a government-funded
time-bonus of additional paid leave when it is equally split.
An example of the second type of reform is the introduction
of “carer credits” paid directly to individuals’ superannuation
accounts while they are caring for children; such a
scheme could be extended to all carers (and perhaps even
activists) as well as parents (AHRC, 2013; Hodgson &
Marriott, 2013). Carer credits would also provide recognition
of unpaid care work as valid, important work.
Many women experience poverty following divorce due
to the imbalance of paid and unpaid work between partners
within heterosexual couples. To reduce this, incentives to
increase superannuation contributions from one spouse to
another could be strengthened (Hodgson & Marriott, 2013).
Changes to the Family Law Act could also work to increase
instances of superannuation splitting as part of a divorce
settlement, which is currently rare. A key possible change is
to move from the current arrangement in which a superannuation
split is only considered if one or both parties ask for
it, to one in which the court is required to consider whether
or not a split be made, or be satisfied as to why it is not provided
for (Parkinson et al., 2013).
The results of this study indicate that disability and health
problems, often relating to aging, are a major barrier to continued
paid work for older women (see also McVicar &
Wilkins, 2013). Measures such as greater flexibility in working
hours will help to retain older people with disabilities and
health problems in the workforce (AHRC, 2012). Workplace
policies must reach a balance between protection from risk
of physical injury while preventing stigmatization of older
workers: The most effective policies involve systematic initiatives
preventing the accumulation of injuries over the
course of working lives (Brooke, Taylor, McLoughlin, & Di
Biase, 2013).
The results of this study suggest the significant impact of
male violence against women on women’s poverty in later
life. The universal provision of paid domestic/family violence
leave, which would allow women to take leave to, for
example, attend legal appointments and find alternative
accommodation, would help women to keep their jobs while
experiencing violence (Australian Council of Trade
Unions [ACTU], 2014; Australian Law Reform Commission
[ALRC], 2012).
10 SAGE Open
Limitations
The small sample size, although typical for a qualitative
study, is a limitation. Not all characteristics of poorer older
women were represented: For example, there were no homeless
women or refugee women, and no metropolitan
Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander women. Although these
findings may not be generalizable, however, they are potentially
transferable to similar groups.
Conclusion
The failure of public and academic debate to place the issue
of superannuation in the wider context of women’s lives,
including the barriers to their securing well-paid, superannuation-
providing work, contributes to the neglect of disadvantaged
older women by public policy and wider society. This
increasing neglect is particularly concerning given the continuing
reliance of older women on the pension (Jefferson,
2005) and the fact that the first generation of retirees whose
entire working life has taken place since 1992 will not retire
for another 30 years (de Silva & Harnath, 2011). Meanwhile,
the challenges in saving for retirement faced by women have
by no means been solved, meaning that women growing old
in the future will face similar deprivation and inequity in
superannuation balances.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Claire Zara and Kei Judd for their contributions
to the Living Longer on Less project, Women’s Health in the North
and Women’s Health Goulburn North East for funding, and two
anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
for the research and/or authorship of this article: The Women’s
Health in the North and Women’s Health Goulburn North East provided
funding for the Living Longer on Less study and for the writing
of this article.
Note
1. For a more extended discussion of these factors and their
effects on women’s retirement savings, see Parkinson, Weiss,
Zara, Duncan, and Judd (2013).
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Author Biographies
Catherine Weiss has a BSc in ecology and a DipLang in Arabic
from the University of Melbourne, and is currently a candidate for
the Master of International Relations. At Women’s Health In the
North, she was an associate researcher on the Living Longer On
Less project, and has also conducted research on climate change,
economic disasters, environmental justice and legal responses to
domestic violence.
Debra Parkinson is a social researcher, focusing on gender issues.
She was awarded her PhD in Social Sciences from Monash
University in 2015. Debra is currently an adjunct research fellow
with Monash Injury Research Institute, and a long-time researcher
for both Women’s Health Goulburn North East and Women’s
Health In the North.
Alyssa Duncan is currently a juris doctor candidate at Monash
University. Originally a geographer, her other work has focussed on
the effects of climate change on women’s health.