Case Studies

The Pacific Private Sector Development Initiative Economic Empowerment of Women team is working alongside the Financing Growth team, the Pacific Islands Investment Forum, and Pacific provident and superannuation funds to establish and support a Women in Super working group to level the playing field for Pacific women in retirement.

Retirement benefits are essential for Pacific women’s economic security as they age. Yet, despite the increased number of women who are entering the workforce, lower wages, more vulnerable employment conditions, and caring responsibilities impact on the contributions that they can make. The Women in Super initiative of the Pacific Private Sector Development Initiative (PSDI), delivered in partnership with the Pacific Islands Investment Forum (PIIF)—the regional governing body of retirement funds—seeks to address women’s disadvantage in accessing benefits from Pacific retirement funds, while ensuring that funds become more efficient and profitable institutions.

The initiative builds on a diagnostic study that PSDI undertook to identify the barriers to women’s access to retirement and non-retirement benefits. PSDI published a report with the title A Secure Retirement: Leveling the Playing Field for Women in the Pacific, based on the study in November 2022.^a The study found that women’s retirement fund balances are often far lower than men’s (figure), and insufficient for retirement—a result of childbearing and caring responsibilities, women’s greater likelihood to be in low-paid or informal employment, the gender pay gap, and women’s longer life expectancies. It also found that women’s full and equal access to retirement benefits was constrained by regulatory impediments, such as exemptions for employees in certain sectors and small businesses, limited coverage of the informal economy (where women are overrepresented), and restrictions on voluntary membership. Organizational policy and practice, including the use of retirement funds for non-retirement purposes, lack of institutional commitment to gender equality, and limited outreach to women as potential fund members, also impact women’s access to retirement benefits.

The report offered a series of priority policy, regulatory, organizational, and outreach reforms to address these barriers. These include enabling women engaged in all types of employment, including in the informal sector, to participate in retirement schemes and make contributions; evaluating the impact of using retirement fund accounts for non-retirement purposes, such as disaster relief and unemployment benefits; and removing barriers for employer contributions.

Building on the recommendations of the diagnostic, PSDI is supporting the PIIF and its member funds to consider the most effective solutions to inclusion issues for retirement funds. PSDI and the PIIF secured endorsement from the PIIF’s member funds to establish a Women in Super working group at the PIIF 2022 Annual General Meeting. Six Pacific funds nominated representatives to participate in the working group, including the Fiji National Provident Fund, Nasfund (Papua New Guinea [PNG]), Nambawan Super (PNG), the Solomon Islands National Provident Fund, and the Tonga Retirement Fund Board. The working group, which will be supported by PSDI, has been tasked to progress three resolutions endorsed by the PIIF members:

• Develop a minimum standard for the collection and reporting of sex-disaggregated data.

• Conduct an audit of current legislation, policies, and practices to facilitate membership and voluntary contributions from those operating in the informal economy. • Improve the financial literacy and understanding of the benefits of retirement funds through outreach, awareness, and training programs.

Women in Super was a key focus at the PIIF CEO Forum, held in Port Moresby, PNG in March 2023. The Women in Super working group also held a workshop as part of the forum, in which chief executive officers discussed best practice on sex-disaggregated data collection; potential retirement fund products and strategies to target Pacific informal sector workers, an outsized proportion of whom are women; and financial literacy programming. Following this, the chief executive officers endorsed the establishment of minimum standards on gender-related data collection among its members. All forum members will now collect and publish sex-disaggregated data on their membership and workforce, and include this data in their annual reports from 2024.

“The collection of these datasets by the PIIF members will be crucial in the formulation of strategies and policies that help Pacific women save for retirement,” said the PIIF Secretariat’s Damien Beddoes. “I applaud the Women in Super working group’s work on this initiative.”

The PIIF members also endorsed Women in Super resolutions on the expansion of financial literacy programs for members, and to develop strategies to facilitate voluntary contributions from those in the Pacific informal economy, including through the development of dedicated products for larger funds.

“Increasing the economic security of women in retirement should be a priority for governments, retirement funds, businesses, and civil society.” PSDI Economic Empowerment of Women Expert Sarah Boxall said. “The Women in Super working group is an important commitment by these organizations to making sure that their funds fully consider the challenges that women face in saving for retirement, and the minimum standards for sex-disaggregated data collection is an important first step to achieving this.”

This case study is taken from the PSDI FY2023 Annual Progress Report. Read the full report here.

a PSDI. 2022. A Secure Retirement: Levelling the Playing Field for Women in the Pacific.