We Won’t Fix The Retirement Gap If We Don’t Address Our Pay Gaps

New figures that show a massive gap between men’s and women’s Kiwisaver retirement savings reinforce the need to urgently address New Zealand’s pay gap according to the founders of a campaign aimed at closing the pay gap.

Data released by the Retirement Commission for the first time today shows the average balance for a male’s KiwiSaver is 20% higher than the average balance for a female – males ($32,553) and females ($27,061). The gap is as much as 32% for women in their 50s.

MindTheGap co-founder Dellwyn Stuart says the figures are hardly surprising given that KiwiSaver invests a percentage of an employee’s earnings.

“We’re pleased the Retirement Commission has released these figures today that show a real need to urgently address the pay gap not just for women’s day-to-day lives but to ensure they have enough to retire.

The pay gap between men and women has sat at 9 -10 percent for a decade.

“These figures just released show that the implications of women being paid less than men does not just impact their daily lives but has very real consequences for their retirement.

Less money per week means that women’s standard of living will be lower than men’s. But less money per week also means that the percentage saved to contribute to their KiwiSaver retirement fund adds up to be tens of thousands of dollars less.

The fact that women are statistically likely to live longer than men means this issue is even more dire in terms of the long-term impact on women’s lives.

“Time is long overdue to address the pay gap, we’re calling on the Government to introduce mandatory pay gap reporting and work with business to create standardised measurement and coverage of all employers.

Evidence shows when businesses know and report their pay gaps, they are more likely to work towards closing them,” Ms Stuart says.

We absolutely agree we need to fix the KiwiSaver gap – and the best way to do that is by addressing the Pay Gap. “

Dellwyn Stuart says while the Retirement Commission had been unable to measure the KiwiSaver gap for ethnic groups, its likely to be even greater as the pay gap for ethnic groups is much higher than between men and women.

The MindTheGap campaign launched last year is asking for three things:

• Employees to #Just Ask their employers about their pay gap to highlight it.
• Businesses to publicly register their pay gap
• Government to make pay gap reporting compulsory which international evidence shows will help reduce the gap

“These are very real tangible actions that we know will make a difference to the pay gap – and therefore people’s lives. “

So far over 50 businesses have registered on the Pay Gap registry.

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