Gender Realities & Insurance
Today's Black Woman
April 1999

According to the Woman’s Life Insurance Society, which is a not-for-profit fraternal benefit society created more than 100 years ago to help women protect themselves and their families from the unexpected and the unplanned, women face some basic realities which are very different from those faced by men:

• Women live an average of five to seven years longer than men; on average, they will spend the last one-third of their lives not married, but single, either through widowhood or divorce;
• Nearly 75 percent of the elderly poor are women;
• Many women are faced with chronic disabilities later in life; 80 percent of the people in nursing homes are women;
• 80 percent of retired women are not eligible for pension benefits;
• 50 percent of working women do not have a current pension program;
• Women still earn less doing comparable jobs in the workplace;
• Many older women are left penniless by divorce or widowhood and can’t provide for themselves in retirement;
• Women often enter the workforce later in life than men and have shorter work histories because of family responsibilities;
• Because of these and many other special needs, women have a greater need to address their financial futures.

For more information, call 800-521-9292.