As Women’s Day highlights progress and challenges, experts call for financial systems that support South African women through career transitions to safeguard long-term wealth and retirement benefits.
South African women are being urged to think beyond the moment they change jobs and focus instead on whether their savings, protection and retirement benefits continue to work for them over the long term. In a piece marking Women’s Day and Momentum’s eighth season of its She Owns Her Success campaign, Ntombizamasala Hlophe argues that career mobility can carry a hidden cost when financial systems make it easy to break continuity every time a woman resigns, changes employer or takes a career pause.
The concern is not only theoretical. Momentum and the Bureau of Market Research have found that nearly 80% of financially knowledgeable women are the main decision-makers in their households, yet many still face a retirement system built around a straight-line career that no longer reflects modern working lives. Women are more likely to experience breaks linked to caregiving, maternity leave, entrepreneurship or job changes, and those interruptions can weaken long-term wealth even when pay is equal and performance is not in question.
That problem is part of a broader pattern seen across several financial analyses. Moneyweb has reported that women are increasingly shaping wealth rather than merely entering it, while Kiplinger has noted that women often save diligently but still end up with lower balances because of lifetime earnings gaps, career interruptions and weaker investing confidence. In South Africa, Futuregrowth has also highlighted the underrepresentation of women in asset management, arguing that more female participation in senior investment roles could improve both diversity and performance.
Hlophe’s central argument is that the industry should stop treating withdrawal choices at resignation as a one-off preservation issue and start building systems that follow the worker, not the employer. That matters even more now that the two-pot retirement framework allows annual access to part of retirement savings, making gradual erosion a year-round risk rather than a single decision at the point of departure. The practical case, she says, is for employers and fund administrators to make continuity the default so that retirement savings, risk cover and investment growth move seamlessly from one role to the next.
The wider message is that women’s financial independence depends not just on earning more but on avoiding the quiet resets that can destroy compound growth over time. As other South African and international commentary has made clear, women are increasingly building businesses, leading organisations and taking control of their finances, but they still face structural barriers that can leave them wealthier in effort than in outcome. For Hlophe, the answer is a financial system that recognises real careers are rarely linear and is designed to carry wealth forward with ambition rather than interrupt it.
Disclaimer: This article is intended to inform and educate, not to recommend or endorse any financial product, investment or strategy. Please consider your own financial circumstances and seek professional advice where appropriate before making financial decisions.
