The average woman now spends 11.5 years out of the workforce to attend to caregiving responsibilities. That's time she is not vesting in a pension or paying into Social Security. Most women do not have access to pensions. The flexible work that allows women to be caregivers is usually low-waged with few benefits, especially pensions. Only one in five women who work for firms with fewer than 100 employees are covered by a pension plan.
Women also change jobs more frequently than men, making vesting in a pension difficult.
The reality is that poverty for women in old age too often begins the first day they enter the workforce. When they make decisions about the kind of job they will hold, few women understand the consequences these decisions will present when they retire. Women are more likely to work part-time. More than thirty years after passage of the Equal Pay Act, women still earn only about 74 percent of what men earn for the same work. Marital status is a primary determinant of the amount of pension benefits and income that an older woman receives.