Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Self-employment: is it a long-term financial strategy for women?

Self-employment: is it a long-term financial strategy for women? PurposeBecoming self-employed has appeal to both genders. For many women, balancing work and family is a key motivator. However, businesses owned and operated by women are often very small, with limited turnover. This potentially can have disastrous consequences when these women come to retire, unless a solid retirement savings strategy has been considered. The purpose of this paper is to outline many of the issues and implications of a lack of research in this area.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 201 small business owners via a convenience sample derived from various databases. The survey was completed on-line and analysed using SPSS.FindingsMany self-employed women in Australia have neither enough savings for their retirement, or an actual retirement plan. This is exacerbated by the lack of regulation requiring mandatory contributions into a superannuation (personal pension) fund by small business owners, unlike pay as you go employees, whose employers must contribute a certain about on their behalf.Social implicationsMiddle-to-older aged women are the biggest cohort of homeless people in Australia. This is likely to grow as self-employed Baby Boomers stop working and find they do not have sufficient personal financial resources to fund their retirement.Originality/valueWhereas there is much written about gender and small business ownership, as well as retirement and savings planning, these two areas have not been researched before in Australia. Yet it is an issue for the majority of small business owners, particularly women. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal Emerald Publishing

Self-employment: is it a long-term financial strategy for women?

Download PDF
14 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/self-employment-is-it-a-long-term-financial-strategy-for-women-77SrprPJ5g
Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN
2040-7149
DOI
10.1108/EDI-10-2016-0078
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

PurposeBecoming self-employed has appeal to both genders. For many women, balancing work and family is a key motivator. However, businesses owned and operated by women are often very small, with limited turnover. This potentially can have disastrous consequences when these women come to retire, unless a solid retirement savings strategy has been considered. The purpose of this paper is to outline many of the issues and implications of a lack of research in this area.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 201 small business owners via a convenience sample derived from various databases. The survey was completed on-line and analysed using SPSS.FindingsMany self-employed women in Australia have neither enough savings for their retirement, or an actual retirement plan. This is exacerbated by the lack of regulation requiring mandatory contributions into a superannuation (personal pension) fund by small business owners, unlike pay as you go employees, whose employers must contribute a certain about on their behalf.Social implicationsMiddle-to-older aged women are the biggest cohort of homeless people in Australia. This is likely to grow as self-employed Baby Boomers stop working and find they do not have sufficient personal financial resources to fund their retirement.Originality/valueWhereas there is much written about gender and small business ownership, as well as retirement and savings planning, these two areas have not been researched before in Australia. Yet it is an issue for the majority of small business owners, particularly women.

Journal

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal – Emerald Publishing

Published: May 15, 2017

References

  • Why research on women entrepreneurs needs new directions
  • Strengthening access to finance for women-owned SMEs in developing countries