The fourth quarterly Qantas Super CBSA Retirement Confidence Index revealed that, overall, women who were surveyed were less involved in their superannuation than their male counterparts.
Qantas Super chief executive Michael Clancy said each quarter the group looked through a particular lens and this time it was through a gender lens.
“How do women and men feel about how involved they are in planning for retirement, how confident they feel about their super and other investments, how confident do they feel about being able to have a comfortable retirement,” he said.
Mr Clancy said there was an almost universal response from women when it came to their financial future.
“The systematic response from that is women, who we surveyed, tended to be less involved and as a result less confident about their retirement future than men,” he said.
Mr Clancy said Qantas Super published these results to hold a mirror up to the industry and encourage a debate with stakeholders about superannuation.
“The purpose of publishing these results is to provide some factual data that helps the industry or indeed the community have a conversation about retirement planning and what kind of community do we want to live in in terms of preparing for retirement,” he said.
The minister for women Kelly O’Dwyer recently released the governments new policies to boost women’s access to Super and Mr Clancy said the group supported the initiatives but there was more to do.
“We support the initiatives that the government is proposing to the extent that we can give more flexibility and control to women around their financial and super arrangements. That’s terrific but at the same time I’d say there’s more we could and honestly should be doing about helping women improve their level of income and therefore improve their superannuation savings,” he said.
Mr Clancy said the superannuation gender gap had been closing over the past decade but there was still a substantial way to go.
“So the announcement that the minister made are welcome but what more can we be doing to actually improve the size of their super balances because that helps them have more degrees of freedom and a better lifestyle in retirement in the future,” he said.
