Figure 3. Ratio of non-managerial female to male pay in Australia: pay rate and total earnings (2014). What’s more, superannuation is predicated on the fact that every worker is an employee. But the rise of non-standard work means that almost a quarter of female workers (23%) aren’t in a traditional permanent employment arrangement (ABS Series 6306). Instead, they are casuals, contractors, subcontractors, labour-hire workers, self-employed or on zero hours contracts. In all of these arrangements, superannuation is less likely to be paid. Women are overrepresented in the industries where these forms of precarious work are most common, with the result that the growth of these forms of work hits women’s retirement incomes hardest. Analysing the ASU survey data We now turn to the analysis of the 3,021 respondents from the second survey,in October 2016. We first examine respondents’ estimated superannuation balances by gender and age bracket. In Figure 4, we see that women dominate the lower superannuation balance brackets, while men almost exclusively occupy the upper ones. Percent Women Men *Note: N = 3,009 Source: ASU Superannuation Survey 2016 Figure 4.“What do you estimate your current superannuation balance to be?”
Figure 3. Ratio of non-managerial female to male pay in Australia: pay rate and total earnings (2014). What’s more, superannuation is predicated on the fact that every worker is an employee. But the rise of non-standard work means that almost a quarter of female workers (23%) aren’t in a traditional permanent employment arrangement (ABS Series 6306). Instead, they are casuals, contractors, subcontractors, labour-hire workers, self-employed or on zero hours contracts. In all of these arrangements, superannuation is less likely to be paid. Women are overrepresented in the industries where these forms of precarious work are most common, with the result that the growth of these forms of work hits women’s retirement incomes hardest. Analysing the ASU survey data We now turn to the analysis of the 3,021 respondents from the second survey,in October 2016. We first examine respondents’ estimated superannuation balances by gender and age bracket. In Figure 4, we see that women dominate the lower superannuation balance brackets, while men almost exclusively occupy the upper ones. Percent Women Men *Note: N = 3,009 Source: ASU Superannuation Survey 2016 Figure 4.“What do you estimate your current superannuation balance to be?”