The typical woman is retiring with a quarter less super than the typical man and with Australia's gender pay gap growing in the last six months the savings gap could also widen.
The median super balance for a woman in her early 60s is just $131,352 lagging the male median of $177,882 (See table 1).
Nationally women trail men at all ages, but the gap widens dramatically when women are in their 30s and 40s – at an age when many women take time out of the paid workforce to care for children.
Yet the government still refuses to pay super on the Commonwealth parental leave scheme, costing a mother of two more than $14,000 at retirement.
New analysis for Equal Pay Day shows that in all states and territories women's super-balances are falling dramatically behind men.
In Victorian the female median super balance is just $41,260, the lowest in the country. The gender rift is widest in Western Australia where the typical woman has 39% less super than men. Tasmanian women have 28% less super than the typical man.
ACT women have a comparatively healthy $67,278 median super balance and the gender gap is the narrowest in the country but is still 18% less than the ACT male median balance of $82,348.
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency has estimated the new national gender pay gap increased to 14.2 per cent in the past six months - a 0.8% increase. The pay gap is now $260 a week.
This pay gap will flow on to the gender super balances over time unless action is taken to boost women's savings.
On our current policy course, Treasury's Intergenerational Report found there will still be a gender super gap in more than four decades.
A recent retirement survey, commissioned by ISA, found that on average women spend 12 years less in the full-time workforce than men, this time away from work is having a dramatic impact on their super balance.
One in three women retire with no super balance at all, according to a 2016 Senate report.
