I do acknowledge that an encouraging amount of progress has been made and the divide is no longer as black and white as it once was, but nobody can deny that it does not still exist.
And perhaps nowhere is it more pronounced than in retirement, and critically in retirement planning.
Financial planners have to deal with this gender divide every day, even down to the nuance of considering the hard fact that women tend to live four years longer than their male counterparts.
Broadening our approach
It seems obvious that there might be different considerations to the retirement plans of men and women.
But I would like to take this a step further and put it out there that this discussion should no longer be restricted to a discussion on financial planning for opposite-sex couples.
We need to expand this to planning for divorced, single and same-sex couples.
Clearly as an industry we need to get it together and address the issues arising from a gender divide, but might it be more efficient to reconsider our overall approach?
Adapting to new environments has always been a challenge for the industry.
To consider the make-up of society we live in today demands flexibility, with a robust and coherent outcome.
This, I believe, is key to delivering the best possible outcomes for all.
The world is changing, fast. We only need to look at the past decade, or even just the past three years, to see how quickly the world is changing.
And in just those brief few years what was once relevant has become obsolete; iPods, DVDs and mobile phones with physical buttons have all disappeared into obscurity.
But we must ask ourselves the hard questions: are we changing fast enough as an industry?
Are we reacting not only to the challenges of a gender divide, but to the changing shape of society? And what does this mean for financial planning and us as an industry that supports financial planners?
We need to be an industry that shows our relevance to our clients.
If we do not show that we know them and that we change in tandem with them, we will simply face irrelevance.
Staying relevant
Adapting to new environments has always been a challenge for the industry.
The world is changing faster than ever, driven by the choices and decisions we make every day.
