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Vaidah Mashangwa
IT is a fact that women are disproportionately represented in well paid industries and this has a negative effect on income from private pensions later in life. Actually because of that gap, very few women contribute to pension schemes.

As a result, women are more likely to be poorer than men in old age. According to research, women comprise 50 percent of all adults living in poverty. One major reason for that is the gendered division of labour both inside and outside the home.

The burden of domestic labour, caring for children and relatives still disproportionately fall on women and this has a negative effect on their ambition to take part in the labour market.

According to the book, “Transforming Economies, Realising Rights,” women participate less in the labour market and are more likely to be unemployed or to work informally or on a part-time basis. Good examples are the flea markets, vending, cross border trading, and so on. While the women can earn as much within these trades they do not contribute towards any pension scheme which is supposed to assist during old age. When a member of the family gets sick, they usually abandon their market-based work for a few days or so to care for the sick thereby compromising their earnings.

If there is bereavement in the family, the women always take their time off their businesses to attend while men continue with their formal employment. As such, women are therefore underrepresented among active contributors to pension schemes in most countries including Zimbabwe.

There are other groups of people who fall in this category of non-contributors of pension schemes such as artists/musicians. Some of them die poor despite having contributed much to the industry and making huge sums of money during their shows. There is need for musicians/artists and other groups to come together and form associations and retirement schemes.

It is unfortunate that gender-disaggregated data is missing in most socio-economic and political driven entities to actually make a comparison between men and women access to services. Gender-disaggregated data is important when it comes to measuring poverty and women’s access to personal income or social protection, the quantity and quality of women’s work including informal employment. It is important to assess the number of women who are benefitting from pension schemes.

Where women do not benefit from pension schemes it means more reliance or dependency on their partners or spouses’ pension in old age. If the breadwinner dies, then women continue to live in poverty. Over the last decade it is postulated that only 47 counties worldwide had produced reliable estimates of informal employment by gender.

Across the globe, men are 10 to 20 percent more likely to contribute to pension schemes than women. In some countries such as Gabon, in Latin-America and the Caribbean, about 24 percent of women compared to 89 percent men contribute to pension schemes. In the Dominican Republic for example, 23 percent men are active contributors to pensions compared to 18 percent women.

These gaps do not only undermine gender equality in old age but also women’s rights to an adequate standard of living. Where the women are single, widowed or divorced, lack of income from pension affects their overall standards of living during old age.

In countries like the United Kingdom, Germany and Czech Republic, pension income for single women is just slightly above or equal to the poverty datum line.

Some people might argue that there is need for individual savings to cater for retirements especially for those in the informal sector but even if they save money, women will still have financial challenges when they retire.

This is because they have different patterns of labour market participation than men and are paid less because of the nature of their jobs. So, generally women will save little. It is a fact that women live longer than men and their savings have to be spread over a longer period of time.

Countries such as Chile created a provision for pension splitting on divorce whereby the main (usually the male) spouse’s pension funds accumulated during marriage are shared upon separation if the judge considers that one of the two parties faced economic disadvantage. This is important especially where the wife was not contributing to her own pension due to household duties such as caring for the children.

Some countries such as Botswana, Mauritius and Namibia introduced a social pension which is granted to all older persons but in Mauritius the majority of its recipients are women. In other countries it is given to an applicant who is not entitled to any other type of pension.

It is unfortunate that there have been a number of reports of various companies who failed to forward their workers’ pension contributions to the relevant authorities resulting in workers losing their pension benefits accumulated over the years.

Aging has specific implications for women and thus for gender equality outcomes. The fact that women have less access to land and other assets that help maintain a decent standard of living in old age means that there is need for reform in assets entitlement.

In most countries including Zimbabwe, 60 percent of women compared to 30 percent of men have no valuable assets in their name and very few widows and single parents can count on family or community support.

Women are more likely to suffer from poverty in old age than men, hence the need for government to have a gender lense on issues pertaining to pensions.

In order to increase women’s income levels, there is need to involve women informal workers in urban planning and decision making to ensure that city environments are conducive to their businesses. There is need to ensure that the informal workers are provided with safe and descent working conditions.

Women should own land and other resources that empower. There is a need to encourage joint land title deeds ownership and provide input subsides for women in farming and also increase their access to markets.

Companies and organisations in both government and the private sector should provide on-the-job training and mentorship to women so that they move up the occupational ladder.

As communities, we should provide career advice to young women and encourage them to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics and other male dominated subjects. This will ensure that they get better remuneration in the long run like their male counterparts.

The country need to also address pervasive sexual harassment and violence in the work place through adequate grievance handling procedures and support for women to take their cases through the justice system. Above all, there is a need to use targets and quotas to increase women representation in male dominated occupations. This will ensure that women remain at their work places and also increase their financial base and also contribute meaningfully to their pension schemes.

Vaidah Mashangwa is the Bulawayo Provincial Development Officer, Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development. She can be contacted on 0772 111 592 or Email: [email protected]