Sandra is 76, doesn’t own a property, is a transient house-sitter, has a couple of hundred thousand dollars in a fixed-term deposit and nothing in superannuation. Sarah* is in her mid-forties, rents the house she lives in with her three daughters and has $40,000 in superannuation. Liz is 54, owns her own free-standing three-bedroom home in Canberra, and her super balance is close to $1.7m.
Ages, accommodation and dollar figures – basic information, you might think, revealing little about these women. But show me a woman’s superannuation and I’ll tell you about her life. Women’s super numbers tell stories: about the curveballs, the challenges and the catastrophes; about lives spent caring for children, or elderly or disabled family members, or lives upended by abusive relationships and coercive control; about creative, transient lives or lives in which work has been constant and well-paid but, sometimes lamentably, children have not been a feature.
