By Amanda Umpierrez

The pandemic has aggravated financial insecurity for millions of American workers, but data shows it’s affected women more severely than men.

A study by Nationwide found that among 297 women with investable assets of $100,000 or more, 72% believe the pandemic had a negative impact on their retirement savings. Additionally, women listed losses from the pandemic as their top financial concern last year. Other worries involved protecting assets, health care costs and longevity risk during retirement.

“With women, when you think about the impact of COVID-19, that’s entirely profound,” says Lori Hall, director of strategic accounts at Nationwide Financial. “In this pandemic, women are, unfortunately, challenged.”

Women—and especially women of color—are more likely to have been laid off or furloughed during the COVID-19 crisis, according to a report from McKinsey & Co., which means generating sustainable retirement income has become even more difficult. A 2020 Transamerica report found 52% of women said they have experienced one or more negative impacts to their employment as a result of the pandemic, including reduced work (24%), layoffs (16%), reduced salaries (13%), furloughs (13%) and/or early retirement (4%).

Others have been driven out of the workforce altogether due to a lack of flexibility in their work, housework and caregiving burdens, or burnout inflicted by the pandemic, according to the McKinsey research. Without working, many women miss out on key benefits including health care and access to financial wellness programs and retirement planning education.

These disparities add to the existing retirement planning gap between women and men. According to research by retirement plan provider LT Trust, women recorded an average retirement plan balance of $47,276 compared with $69,376 for men—a difference of more than $20,000.

The study, of which 34% of respondents were women and 66% were men, ignited a growing concern that women may be less likely to participate in or take advantage of investable assets to grow retirement income. The LT Trust study found women, on average, had allocated 53.5% of their investments into equities while men distributed 61.4% of their investments in equities.

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