Will Women Become Complacent About Risks Associated With Not Taking Out Life Insurance?

In the past women have been regarded as carrying a lower risk, in respect of health and motor insurance and this has been reflected in the cost of policy premiums.

With the rise of single-parent families, together with an economic climate in which the recession is bringing more redundancies, leaving a greater number of women as the main bread-winners in families, household budgets are seriously stretched. Insurance industry surveys suggest that only about a third of women hold life insurance policies, with less than a fifth having critical illness insurance. The question therefore arises as to whether women are leaving such insurance cover off their list of priorities, as part of stricter budgeting, or as to whether a mind-set persists, where women feel less likely to become ill than men .

Who is more at risk of serious illness?

The World Health Organisation's findings in their report 'Gender, Health and Work', raises some interesting points: "Globally, women suffer more from growing competitive pressures, resulting in job insecurity." As an example of one sector representing increased risk, the report identifies: "Women are the majority of health care workers, exposed to risks of infection (including needle-stick injuries), violence, musculoskeletal injuries and burnout."

In their report on 'Gender, Health and Ageing', the WHO also points out that what were traditionally regarded as diseases associated with older age can begin much earlier in life. One example cited is cardiovascular diseases, for which there has been a tendency to think of this as a male problem, but that this is misleading: "As almost everywhere in the world, CVD is the main killer of older people of both sexes."
As such, it is clear that women can no longer operate on the presumption that their increased life expectancy necessarily equates to evasion of serious health risk, which, in turn, might compromise their ability to work.

Why do women not prioritise critical illness cover?

Some surveys seem to suggest that health insurance cover is a subject women don't think about, or that more than one third of women think they simply don't need it, that their partner's insurance is more than adequate and that they can't afford it.

However, in the past, women have not had such a significant role in the family finances, a situation which has dramatically changed over the last decade. The question therefore needs to be posed from a woman's perspective - Whether they can continue to afford to take the risk of not covering themselves, given that they are now succumbing to stress-related illnesses which were previously associated predominantly with men.