Shellharbour grandmother Danna Nelse is turning 60 next year but will keep working for years to come.
“There’s no way in the world I can retire on the super I’ll be getting,” she told BuzzFeed News. “I’ve had to take time off for caring and looking after kids.”
Nelse has been a community worker at the Albion Park Youth and Community Centre for three decades.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics this week released data on the nation's "gender indicators" and found super balances for women approaching retirement are 37% lower than men.
The average super balance for women aged 55 to 64 years old was $196,000, but for men it was $310,000.
The bureau noted a key influence on the superannuation balance gap was the higher proportion of women employed part-time.
Just under one in four women aged 15 to 64 years old had no superannuation coverage at all, compared to one in five men of the same age.
Nelse, who has three children and eight grandchildren, facilitates group activities and support in crisis interventions for some of the most vulnerable people in her community. It isn't news to her that older women are the fastest growing cohort of homeless people in Australia.
“We look into food and housing for homeless people or anyone who needs emergency payments for electricity, gas and water accounts," she said.
Nelse's position has always been permanent part-time as that is all funding allows for.
“It is probably the only industry where you have to apply for funding for your own salary,” she said. “When I first started as a youth worker in 1987 super wasn’t even mentioned."
Nelse, who is also a single mother, said her sector is predominantly women and while many of the men her age who worked at the local steelworks had just enough to retire on, her female friends did not.
She wants the rules to change so that superannuation is paid on every dollar women earn, including on amounts below $450 per week.
“From the day you start earning a dollar, you should start having to contribute to super,” Nelse said. “Because we have this casualisation and short hours and people can’t afford to live.”
She also believes women should be paid super while on paid parental or carers' leave.
These are both reforms currently recommended by Australian Council of Trade Unions, which also argues restrictions on bargaining should be removed so women can negotiate with someone who has the capacity to say yes to a fair pay rise.
Last week the Labor party promised that women on maternity leave or juggling several low paid jobs would be paid superannuation under a $400m plan to close the retirement gender gap.
The party's deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said if elected Labor would phase out the $450 per month minimum income threshold for eligibility for the superannuation guarantee from July 1, 2020, reducing it to $0.
The government's minister for women Kelly O'Dwyer said Labor should support the government's proposed reforms to superannuation fees.
"Before you can consider further changes to the superannuation system you've got to fix the current structural problems that exist right now," she told ABC radio on Monday.
“I think it’s all well and good for Labor to say that they’re concerned about women’s retirement incomes, but ... they are blocking the government’s ‘protecting your super’ measures that are currently in the Senate right now, which for millions of Australian women would mean billions of dollars."
The package O'Dwyer is referring to was announced in the government's Federal budget in May and is designed to protect Australians’ superannuation savings from undue erosion by fees and insurance premiums. The government has argued the measures would improve outcomes for superannuation members including those with interrupted work patterns and low incomes – which disproportionately includes women.