Women in Super (WIS) celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2024, and it has come a long way from being a breakfast networking event to now being a 5000-member-strong organisation.
Chief executive Jo Kowalczyk says one of the unique things about having advocacy as part of the job is “always trying to work yourself into redundancy”, but for now, that task remains unfinished.
As the organisation founded by the late industry super architect Mavis Robertson opens its next chapter, Kowalczyk tells Investment Magazine that its focus will firmly stay on advancing a more equitable retirement system for women and fostering female talent in the super industry.
A big project scheduled for February 2025 is the launch of a pilot long-term mentorship program, where several senior women in the industry will each lead a small group of three to four mentees.
The program, designed to span several months and various fund departments, will begin in Melbourne and potentially be replicated in other states later. It will alternate between mentoring and professional development sessions, top and tailed with a launch and a graduation event, Kowalczyk says.
Prior to joining WIS, Kowalczyk spent more than 25 years as an organiser with the NSW Teachers Federation and the National Tertiary Education Union, with virtually no superannuation experience.
Reflecting on her own journey, she highlights how easy it is for female talent to be trapped by the psychological pitfall of thinking that they are underqualified for a position because “they only ticked nine out of ten boxes”.
“I was looking for a bit of a change, and I came across this ad actually on a friend’s Facebook post for the Women in Super role,” Kowalczyk says.
“[I] read it several times, thought, ‘that sounds great, I tick all of those boxes’. And even though the final line in the job ad was, ‘you do not need to have superannuation or financial services background’, I talked myself out of doing it.
“It really was with the support of my close network, who said, ‘what’s the worst thing that can happen?’ [that I applied for the job].”
To get more women into the industry, and especially in departments where there is greater gender imbalance, such as investment, Kowalczyk says funds can and should learn from each other’s success stories, such as utilising gender-blind selection during recruitment or introducing support programs for women re-entering the workforce.
On the consumer level, Kowalczyk says the most urgent issue that WIS wants to move the dial on is the low-income super tax offset (LISTO). Workers can receive LISTO if they earn less than $37,000 annually but that number has not changed since 2017. Kowalczyk says as the lowest tax rate has moved over the years, LISTO requirement has become “misaligned” with reality.
According to a WIS submission to the Treasury in 2023, there are 632,000 Australian women who could accumulate more money in retirement if the LISTO threshold were raised to $45,000 – the new upper limit of the 19 per cent tax bracket.
But importantly, Kowalczyk says the imbalance in the super system is often part of bigger gender equality problems in society, which means WIS needs to work more closely with women’s advocacy organisations outside the industry.
“We’ve basically spent 30 years looking internally into the system, [thinking about] what are the levers that we can pull, and where is the disadvantage that needs to be adjusted,” she says.
This has led to significant achievements including paid super on government-sponsored parental leave, the abolition of the $450 super payment threshold, and easier super splits after separation with a partner.
“[Super splitting] was a piece of work that we’re really proud of, particularly because it was collaborating with organisations outside of the industry – the Victorian Women’s Legal Centre,” Kowalczyk says.
“We’ve made some significant gains, but the gender super gap is not demonstrably changing.
“We did for the [WIS national] conference bring together a number of representatives of other national and state-based women’s organisations, and there is some real, natural alignment.
“So we want to be very careful that we are seeking out collaborations where we recognise some of the work’s already being done and say, ‘can we add value to that work?’”
