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from The Great Debate:

Is the world any closer to closing the gender gap?

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is out with its 6th annual Global Gender Gap report. The report measures how equitably countries are distributing their resources between women and men -- regardless of their level of resources.

"By and large, the trends are positive," one of the authors of the report Saadia Zahidi, who is the senior director at WEF, told correspondent Reuters Michelle Nichols. "85% of the 135 countries listed have made progress."

Over the last six years, the gaps in health and education between men and women have been closed by 96% and 93%, respectively. However, the gaps in economic participation and political empowerment are much greater -- 59% and 18%, respectively, over the last six years.

"While women are as healthy and educated as men, they're clearly not being channeled into the economy or decision making structures," Zahidi said.

Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Ireland are ranked as the top five countries while Saudi Arabia, Mali, Pakistan, Chad and Yemen are at the very bottom.

Why so many Nordic countries at the top? Zahidi says they have a long history of equality between women and men and, additionally, have removed the barriers to economic participation of women by making it possible to combine family and work. But gender equality doesn't have to be a luxury good. In fact, if poor countries make it a part of their development they can actually grow faster, says Zahidi.

from Reuters Money:

Wells Fargo: Women don’t save enough for retirement

It's retirement survey season. Since the Reuters personal finance team began tracking research on personal finance topics at the start of the year, more than 20 studies have hit our inboxes. Some common themes are starting to emerge: investors are risk-adverse; women are too conservative when it comes to retirement savings; and Americans are financially stressed, so much so that they are even lying to their spouses.

Following a study released last December, the latest installment of retirement research from Wells Fargo focuses on middle-class women. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive last fall and released on Feb. 2, queried middle-class women across five decades, from those in their mid-20s to those who are already retired and in their 60s. Just 54 percent of women say they are confident they will have enough saved to "live the life they want" in retirement. By contrast, 62 percent of men are confident about their retirement goals.

Karen Wimbish, head of retail retirement for Wells Fargo, discussed the findings with Reuters.

What is most surprising about this study? Women are a lot closer to parity in the professional and business world. We represent almost 50 percent of the workforce and have a greater standing in professional jobs. Plus, 35 percent of women in the workforce are college graduates. And three out of five college students are women. But we are definitely two steps back and one step to the left of men when it comes to retirement.

In our study, women estimate they need for $200,000 for retirement, while men say they need $400,000. There’s already a problem because women are going to live longer. This isn’t part of our study, but 75 percent of nursing home residents today are women. Women get a smaller percentage of Social Security benefits than men. They are already behind in terms of guaranteed income. They are underestimating what they need in retirement.

What is shocking about the research? When you look at women aged 40 to 69 –- these are women who should be starting to think about retirement; retirement is knocking at their door; or they are in retirement –- 30 percent said they couldn’t estimate how much they will need to withdrawal from retirement savings annually. They either hadn’t thought about it or didn’t know. That’s head-in-the-sand behavior.

When we looked at women in their 40s and 50s, and asked them how much they need to take out when they retire, 32 percent said they planned to withdrawal 11 percent to more than 30 percent of their retirement savings every year.

from Reuters Money:

Will women save more than men?

Women are ramping up their efforts to meet financial goals in 2011 and feel more hopeful about the economic outlook, but they’re still less certain than men are in their ability to actually meet those goals, a survey from TD Ameritrade shows.

Sixty-eight percent of women said they resolve to save more money in 2011, a steady climb from 66 percent in 2010 and 60 percent in 2009. Only 62 percent of men plan to do the same thing next year.

So what accounts for the difference? "I think women really tend to give more of themselves than men do. They seem to know that saving is in the best interest of their families and they want to make sure their families are taken care of," offers Nicole Sherrod, managing director at TD Ameritrade.

Their shaky confidence may have to do with their financial positions: of those who said they were less likely to make a financial New Year's resolution this year than last year, only 29% of women said they were in a better financial situation this year compared to 50% of men.

This might not come as surprise, given the gender-gap that still exists: women in full-time wage and salary jobs still earn only 80% of what men do, according to U.S. Department of Labor. (The figure rises to 93% among young workers aged 16-24.)

from Reuters Money:

Six ways for women to build retirement security

Women don’t get equal pay, and they’re not advancing into management jobs as quickly as they should, according to a new Government Accountability Office study. Bad enough, right? But there’s more: a yawning gender gap in retirement security. Income determines the size of critical Social Security benefits, and how much workers can contribute to retirement accounts. And women live longer than men, so they need to make their retirement assets last longer. At age 65, a woman can expect to live an average of 19 more years — three years longer than a man.

Those later years pose a big threat to economic well-being. The Center for American Progress notes that nearly one in six elderly unmarried women age 60 and over lived in poverty in 2008, and 16 percent of those 75 and older were poor. The comparable poverty figures for men are much lower.

The GAO report found that women managers in the United States are paid 81 cents for every dollar earned by male managers, and that they account for just 40 percent of management jobs — numbers that haven’t changed much since 2000. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a Paycheck Fairness Act early last year that would make it easier for women to sue companies for unfair compensation practices. The bill has been bottled up in the Senate ever since, so don’t hold your breath.

But while gender gap problems persist in the workplace, there’s plenty that women can do on the retirement planning front. Here are six ways that women can improve their odds for financial security in retirement.

Get educated and make a plan. “Many women are missing an opportunity to learn the basic principles of saving and planning for retirement,” says Catherine Collinson, president of the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. “By simply getting educated, they could make more informed decisions and improve their retirement outlook.”

One approach is the old income-replacement rule of thumb-to retire comfortably, you must replace 80 percent of your annual pre-retirement income. But at best, this is a rough estimate. For example, it doesn’t take into account unforeseen spending needs such as higher health care expenses or a long-term insurance policy.

Instead, construct a detailed plan that takes into account what you spend now and try to project your expected retirement needs. The Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER) recommends using the retirement planning planner offered by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Also watch out for problems to avoid with some of the free retirement calculators on the web.

from Reuters Money:

Are women really closing the paycheck gender gap?

Are women at long last closing the pay gap with men?

Median pay for American women was 22 percent lower than for men in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That gap hasn’t changed much over time, and it’s a key factor in the economic security challenges that women face in retirement.

But one group of women has not only caught up with men, but they’re taking home significantly bigger paychecks. Working women under age 30 who are single and without children have opened up an eight percent income lead over men in the same age group. Private research firm Reach Advisors came to that conclusion based on an analysis of Census Bureau data of pay levels in the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas. And the lead for women ran as high as 21 percent in some cities.

The gains are driven by higher graduation among women from college and graduate schools, according to James Chung of Reach Advisors, who notes that women are collecting bachelors and advanced degrees at 1.5 times the rate of men. And Chung’s research shows that the biggest advances in pay came to young women in cities with a heavy dependence on knowledge-based jobs—and in cities with decimated blue-collar employment bases where men were less likely than women to pursue higher education.

“We’re not saying women have caught up categorically, or that a woman in a similar situation as a man earns more,” Chung says. “What our research does say is that there are so many more women graduating college than men that there are more women filling high paying jobs than men.”

The big picture isn't very encouraging.

Census Bureau data on all working women shows that the income gender gap persists. For example, in 2008, women with bachelor’s degrees earned 33 percent less than men. And median income for all women with post-graduate degrees was 11 percent lower than men who had a bachelor’s degree.

from The Great Debate:

The gender gap in personal finance

It's not surprising that men and women handle their personal finances differently. Yet, data collected by the employee benefits company Financial Finesse shows that men trump women when it comes to managing their wallets.

Out of the 3,500 U.S. workers polled, 90 percent of men said they pay their bills on time each month compared to only 74 percent of women. Also, 71 percent of men said they have a handle on their cash flow so they spend less than they earn each month, while only 53 percent of women could claim the same.

Manisha Thakor, a Houston-based finance expert for women, explains that women tend to be less educated in personal finance.

"Men talk socially about money and business," said Thakor. "Women are talking about nurturing subjects."

Also, women are paid less than men, making such things as paying bills and credit card balances harder, she said.

Who handles finances better in your household?

from Global News Journal:

“Frauenpower” at Siemens: another crack in the glass ceiling?

Siemens’ announcement this week that it has appointed a woman to its management board has generated a loud hullabaloo in the media, with newspapers trumpeting “the womanless age at Siemens is over” and “Barbara Kux, the strong woman at Siemens.”

But how was the news of a woman’s appointment to a senior executive position deserving of a celebratory press release and the ensuing excitement? Surely in an era of equal opportunities in developed countries, such news should be commonplace.

The fact that this news is not self-evident, and that Barbara Kux was the first woman appointed to Siemens’s managing board in its 161 year history, goes to show how far we have yet to go before women are equally represented at leadership levels.

Fifty-four year old Kux , who will be responsible for Siemens’s annual global procurement of 42 billion euros ($52.02 billion), will be one of a handful of women  on  the management board of a German blue-chip company. 

German management boards are notoriously white, male and middle-aged. As a young, female journalist in Frankfurt, it is hard not to feel like the odd one out at annual general meetings and corporate events.

Earlier this year, even Siemens' own chief executive said his company’s top management was too German, too white and too male for its own good.

“We are too one-dimensional,” Loescher told the Financial Times in an interview, publicly subscribing to the theory that a company that does not represent its customer base can not tap its full potential.