If you are a married woman who works in the home rather than in outside employment, you are likely to either have no personal life assurance or the cover you do have may be as little as £20,000. You are also probably seriously undervaluing your work at home, even if you work an average of 86 hours a week. These are just some of the conclusions reached by a further survey of life assurance coverage, this time dealing with married women. The research was carried out for Ark Life which is to launch a new range of life assurance products shortly.
The Omnibus Survey, which was conducted by Irish Marketing Surveys on behalf of Ark Life, shows that 45 per cent of married women do not have any life assurance. (Three out of four women surveyed describe their working status as "full-time housewife".) Of those who did have cover, 42 per cent said it was worth less than £20,000, 37 per cent said it was worth between £20,000 and £50,000 and the remaining 21 per cent said it was worth between £50,000 and £100,000.
The respondents were asked to put a value on their work within the home (on average 86 hours a week) and the average response was £188.00. Yet according to CSO statistics, the average female industrial wage is £5.55 per hour or £478.00 per week for 86 working hours. This, says Ark Life, is the equivalent of an annual salary of £25,000. Of the women who worked outside the home, only 15 per cent of the respondents were sure that their employers provided some form of death-in-service benefit, which they believed to be a sum that ranged from £5,000 to more than £100,000. Almost a third of them said they were unsure if there were such a benefit. Half of them said that to their knowledge, there was no death-in-service benefit provided.
The results of the report are disturbing and show that there has not been much movement in life cover for women in recent years.
The low coverage rate and the inevitable financial hardship a family faces if the wife and mother dies demonstrate that much remains to be done to raise awareness of the issues among the population in general and particularly among married women.
