Only 8% of female retirement fund members feel confident they can retire comfortably. Ninety-two percent face their financial future with uncertainty, anxiety, or fear.
The assumption is that women do not save enough. Boardrooms repeat it. Policy discussions assume it. The entire retirement industry has organised itself around fixing women’s saving behaviour.
The assumption is wrong.
Women are 1.2 times more likely than men to contribute above their employer’s default rate. When given the opportunity to save more, they do. They are outperforming men on effort, and still falling behind on outcomes.
In analysing our retirement fund data of South African employees, as CEO of Discovery Corporate and Employee Benefits, I realise that the patterns are unambiguous. The gender retirement gap is not a behaviour problem. It is a design problem.
The numbers behind the gap
Our data shows that South African women retire with 21% less in savings than men. This gap persists despite women demonstrating stronger saving discipline when circumstances allow. The causes are structural, not behavioural.
Earnings shape contributions. According to Discovery Corporate and Employee Benefits data, women earn 76 cents for every rand men earn. For older women approaching retirement, this gap widens to 39%. A lifetime of lower earnings translates directly into smaller contribution bases, regardless of how diligently women save.
Caregiving compounds the pressure. Statistics South Africa’s 2021 General Household Survey found that 43.4% of children live only with their mothers, compared to 3.9% who live only with their fathers. Women carry financial responsibility for dependants throughout their working lives, forcing trade-offs between immediate needs and long-term security that most men never face.
The two-pot retirement system has exposed this strain. Since its 2024 introduction, women have been 1.3 times more likely than men to withdraw from their savings component. These are not impulsive decisions. They are rational responses to school fees, medical bills, and family obligations that cannot wait. Every withdrawal is a woman choosing her family’s present over her own future because the system offers no alternative.
Longevity makes it worse. Our data reveals that a healthy 65-year-old woman typically lives two years longer than a man of the same age. A smaller pot must stretch across more years. The mathematics are unforgiving.
The real problem
None of this explains away the 1.2 times higher contribution rate. Women are not undersaving. When the system lets them, they save more than men.
The problem is that benefit systems were designed for financial lives most women do not lead: uninterrupted careers, consistent earnings, minimal caregiving. When we build retirement structures around a male default, we systematically penalise women for realities beyond their control.
The challenge is not effort. It is structure.
What employers can change
Employer-sponsored funds form the backbone of South African retirement savings. Design choices made in boardrooms directly determine whether women can build adequate security.
Start with visibility. Show every employee their personal retirement gap in rands, not percentages. A woman who sees she needs R1.2 million more to retire adequately makes different choices than one told she is “15% behind”. Specificity drives action. Abstraction invites delay.
Remove barriers that punish career breaks. When a woman returns from parental leave ready to increase her contributions, she should not wait 30 days for administrative processing. Systems that respond in days, not weeks, let women recover lost ground while motivation is high and circumstances allow.
Connect debt support to retirement planning. Women withdraw from savings because immediate obligations overwhelm them. Debt and retirement are not separate problems; they are the same problem viewed from different angles. Integrated financial wellness support addresses both pressures together, helping employees manage competing demands without forcing impossible choices.
What this means for advisers
For employee benefits consultants, this data changes the client conversation. The question to ask corporate clients is no longer “Are your employees saving enough?” It is “Does your fund structure accommodate how women’s financial lives actually unfold?”
This reframes the adviser’s role entirely. Instead of reviewing contribution rates and fund performance, you are asking whether benefit design reflects workforce reality. You are surfacing a problem most employers have not considered, with data they cannot access themselves.
Advisers who raise this question position themselves differently. They move from transactional to strategic. They become the consultant who sees what others miss.
The path forward
The 8% of women who feel confident about retirement cannot remain an outlier statistic we cite and ignore. Systems built around outdated assumptions will continue producing the same outcomes. Systems redesigned around how women actually live will produce different ones.
Women are already doing their part. They contribute more when they can. They make difficult trade-offs to keep their families secure. They stretch inadequate resources over a longer retirement period than than men will ever face.
The question is whether we will do ours to create benefit structures and products that takes the uniquely woman experience and reality into account.
