It gets worse. The shortage in compensation follows women into retirement.
Did you know:
- Women receive a third less social security than men receive.
- Three fourths of women receive a benefit of less than $1000 per month, while nearly the same percentage of men receive payments over $1000 per month.
- Over half of all unmarried women rely on social security as their only income after 65, while only thirty eight percent of unmarried men do.
We cannot have gender equality without economic equality.
-Martha Pearson, YWCA staff and empowerment advocate
(Editor's note: more on this topic to follow. Martha has a lot to share! Here's a question for you - the title of this blog is "Catalyst". What does this knowledge about economic inequalities inspire you to do?
1 comments:
Martha - I think that retirement funding is a two-track issue.
One is the cascading effects of pay inequities (which you point out so well). I think that cries out for a policy solution.
Another is individual awareness. In my first job out of college, I was strongly urged by a mentor to contribute as much as I could to our 401k plan, to reach the employer match. I didn't realize how important this was at the time.
Do we have opportunities to help educate young women and encourage them to take responsibility for their own financial future?
I've heard of ideas like automatic enrollment (that is, opt-out not opt-in) in retirement plans like 401k. What do you think of that?
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