Women need to adopt an aggressive investment strategy if they are to address gender inequity in superannuation, according to a superannuation expert.
"Women's careers are characterised by a broken employment pattern. Women also get paid on average less than men. This puts them at a significant disadvantage in retirement," Queensland University of Technology finance researcher Anup Basu said.
Basu said the current one-size-fits-all default investment options in superannuation were conservative and would not address the retirement shortfall for women.
"By adopting aggressive investment strategies, women give themselves a better chance of keeping up with their male counterparts in terms of retirement wealth," he said.
The research, which Basu undertook in partnership with Griffith University business professor Michael Drew, revealed that if women aged between 25 and 30 took a five-year career break, the disparity in retirement savings between men and women was about $300,000.
Given the average default fund of a superannuation fund had a 60 per cent allocation to shares, the research found default options should be tailored to gender needs.
For example, women on a five-year career break can adopt a slightly more aggressive approach and invest up to 80 per cent in the local share market.
"Women would only need to contribute an extra 3 per cent to their superannuation in order to make up the retirement shortfall," Basu said.
In comparison, these women would be looking at an extra 6-7 per cent contribution to their superannuation if they adopted a conservative investment strategy.
While volatility is associated with aggressive investment strategies, Basu said the modelling proved otherwise.
"Contrary to expectations, our modelling showed that over very long-term investment horizons the risk of encountering extremely adverse outcomes by pursuing a more aggressive strategy was not much different from that by following a less aggressive one," he said.
