While gender roles may be changing somewhat, the fact remains that women have a more difficult path to financial wellness.

A new study by Corporate Insight shows that women are not as confident about financial wellness as men, are less prepared for retirement, and engage in fewer employer-sponsored financial programs.

Most women earn less, live longer, experience more work gaps and experience higher health care and caregiving expenses than their male counterparts, leading to far different results when it comes to retirement savings:

● Women make less money than men. The average earnings of women working full time are 80.5 percent of men working full time–a more than $799 billion difference annually.

● On average, women live five years longer than men, thus needing their accumulated wealth to last longer. However, only 54 percent of women save for retirement (versus 62 percent of men), and those who do save have far less. Women have an average of $115,412 saved while men save an average of $202,859.

● Women accumulate more debt than men, especially student loan debt. While 56 percent of college students are women, they hold 65 percent of the country's student loan debt.

● Women are less likely to work through all stages of life before retirement. Women spend 44 percent of their adult life out of the workforce compared to 28 percent of men.

Employer-based financial wellness programs need to address these differences by helping women of all ages, along with their partners, learn how to establish the best financial plan given the many inequalities women face.

Pay gap

A well-known issue with women and the ability to achieve financial wellness is the pay gap. It is true that women only make 81.5 cents for every dollar made by a man, but this is only part of the pay gap story.

Once you add in the gaps in workforce participation due to child-rearing and caregiving, the pay gap compounds and it becomes almost impossible to catch up.

Women participate less in wealth escalators, resources that help build wealth. These include employee-related fringe benefits, government benefits and tax codes.

For example, Social Security is determined by taking a person's highest 35 years of earnings. Due to time away from the workforce, women are twice as likely as men to have a zero-earning year in the 35 considered for retirement pay, resulting in an average of $4,000 less per year than men, according to the U.S. Social Security Administration.

Longevity

In every country in the world, women live longer than men. In the U.S., 77 percent of widowed spouses are women. By age 85, women outnumber men two to one.

Living longer has its advantages, including more time to pursue unmet dreams while in retirement. On the other hand, it can lead to women outliving the money they have saved for the retirement years, especially coupled with other financial wellness risk factors.

Because women are more likely to live longer, they need to create a money saving strategy that will minimize the risk of a financial shortfall.

Life stages

Even though 42 percent of American women fear running out of money before they turn 80, only 9 percent have more than $300,000 in savings. This is substantially less than the current average cost of retirement of $738,000.

About one-third of women between 30 and 44, prime retirement savings years, have no retirement savings at all.

The driving factor behind these statistics is not that women don't care about financial wellness, but that they experience life stages differently than men:

Early adulthood: In this stage, both men and women work to obtain independence. However, during this stage, women accrue more student debt because they are more likely to be balancing school with family responsibilities, taking longer to graduate.

Then, when they move into the workforce, they make less money than their male counterparts. Although this could be a prime time to begin investing in the future, this is more difficult to do when saddled with more debt and a gender wage gap.

Parenting: About 80 percent of women become mothers, which can change their financial plans. Mothers also experience something known as the “mommy penalty,” which is a pay gap three times higher than that of women who don't have children.

Elder caregiving: Women are far more likely than men to care for elderly parents and aging spouses, as well as other friends and relatives. In addition to losing time at work, caregivers typically spend nearly $7,000 each year towards caregiving, thus reducing the opportunity to save.

Retirement: Women not only live longer, but tend to go into retirement two years earlier than men. Studies show that women often do so in order to care for already-retired spouses. Additionally, women spend $194,000 more on healthcare in retirement due to living longer and relying on long-term care in their later years.

Spousal caregiving: It is not unusual for women to care for their aging spouse. Female spousal caregivers often leave work earlier than planned and dip into their retirement nest egg, reducing their retirement savings even further.

Personalized, adaptive financial wellness programs

There is not a one-size-fits-all financial wellness plan for anyone, but this is particularly true with women. Throughout these life stages, women's priorities and obligations change, yet financial planning has focused primarily on men and their salaries, careers, family roles and preferences.

For example, financial planning models that estimate savings over time rarely allow for parenting or caregiving breaks taken by many women.

Financial wellness programs offered by employers should help women understand their unique challenges. They should also help educate partners and family members on the complexities of a woman's path to financial wellness and their roles in bridging these gaps.

Kris Alban is executive vice president of iGrad, a San Diego-based company that provides interactive, personalized financial wellness solutions employers, financial institutions, colleges and universities. Its Enrich™ platform is used by more than 300 employers, banks and credit unions.

Instant Insights /

Financial wellness: Why women have a more difficult path to get there

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