As a woman of a certain age, I’m all too aware of the implications of saving (or not saving) enough for retirement. The dream of sitting on a sun-kissed beach for most of my twilight years (pandemic notwithstanding) is probably now just that, a distant dream. 

As a woman, I’m not alone in this startling realisation. Like many before me, the years in which I should have been building my career were stalled by periods of maternity leave, childcare, and then the years and years of caring for my elderly parents as they were each challenged by the dreaded demon that is dementia.

The upshot of all of this was that for years I had a part-time career. Always carrying my burden of guilt – for not enough time spent with family or at work – I consequently fell behind my male counterparts in terms of speed of career progression and, as a consequence, earnings profile. Despite the challenges, I realise how incredibly lucky I was to have a career (and an understanding employer) and to not have to fit my life around a number of poorly paid part-time jobs. For many women, those jobs are their only option and their lifetime earnings potential is very low.

But the responsibility of caring impacts not just on lifetime earnings potential, it also impacts significantly on the potential for lifetime savings – saving for retirement. This is an issue for women everywhere – and it has huge long-term societal consequences.

I’m not one for dwelling on history – we can’t change the past, but if we want to improve the lot of women in the future, what needs to be done?

It seems obvious to say that women need to save more money and for some that means saving some money rather than none at all. We have to address the issues around auto enrolment limits. For some women doing multiple jobs, the application of multiple AE limits mean they stay outside the system that’s set up to protect them.

We also need to address the issue of ‘lost savings’ whilst women are on maternity leave or taking time out and/or reducing hours for caring responsibilities. We need to engage government and employers alike with these issues – and preferably to contribute to the cause. This could include higher employer contributions on return from maternity leave, or perhaps on a tax break or two from government.

And we also need to engage women themselves. That means segmenting employee communications and driving home different messages about what needs to be saved over a lifetime. The challenge here is that women, with competing demands on their time, are going to be far more tricky to engage. We need to be creative then, in how we land the message. Online ‘Mind the gap’ calculators, using video, animation and social media to promote relevant messages.

We need to talk to women where they are likely to engage and encourage pensions platforms to make it easy for them to make changes to how much they save.

We need to start the conversation, and we need to do it quickly. Women WILL engage with their savings for retirement, but we want them to do it whilst they can change the future – and that’s before they’re of a certain age!