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Saving for retirement is an issue for everyone, but it’s especially salient for women.

For one thing, women tend to outlive their spouses, at least in heterosexual partnerships. While the gender gap in life expectancy is narrowing, the 2010 U.S. Census found the proportion of women aged 90 or older still outnumbered men in the same age categories. Earlier census data estimated that nearly 700,000 women lose their husbands every year and remain widows for an average of 14 years. Further, while 32 percent of women aged 55 and older are widows, just 9 percent of men in that age group are widowed.

Though the precise cause and nature of the wage gap is up for debate, what’s not up for debate is that women also tend to make less money over the course of their lives. Perhaps that’s partially due to a tendency to take more time out of the workforce to raise children (and that’s time that they probably aren’t contributing to a 401(k) or other retirement savings plan), and women are more likely to act as the caregivers for elderly parents and in-laws.

But even as women juggle more responsibilities than ever before, they’re also earning and inheriting more.

The BMO Wealth Institute estimated last year that women now control about 51 percent of the wealth in the United States, and an oft-cited 2009 study out of Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy projects that women will inherit about 70 percent of the $40 trillion in wealth that’s set to change hands over the next 40 years.

But when a family’s financial matters have been largely the man’s domain, as has often been the case in older generations, that means a steep learning curve when a death or divorce happens, adding to an already stressful situation.

As a trusts and estates attorney with Day Pitney LLP, Leiha Macauley has seen this all too often.

“We see it quite frequently with widows and it adds an incredible amount of stress to an already stressful situation,” Macauley said. “If you’re coming into unfamiliar territory and sitting down with a lawyer you may not have worked with before and now you’re filing the tax returns. … It’s a lot when you’re also dealing with the loss of a spouse.”

When it comes to actually investing their assets, women famously tend to be more cautious and conservative than men in their investment strategies. Sometimes that makes sense, but sometimes it means that women don’t take the risks that they should.

Paula Murphy, a vice president and portfolio manager with Rockland Trust, said that those conservative investment strategies, coupled with their longevity relative to men, can expose women to inflation risk as opposed to principal loss risk.

“What happens a lot of times is, you’ll have a client who says, ‘I don’t want to have any risk in my portfolio,’ so they become comfortable with a CD, for example,” she said. “They’ll stay in that CD for 20 or 30 years. But if the CD is earning 1 or 2 percent and inflation is 3 percent … When you do that for 20 years, your purchasing power is eroded significantly.”

Women also tend to take a more holistic view of wealth management, Murphy said, while men often like to dive into performance metrics and manage more of their portfolios themselves.

The Confidence Gap

But it’s not that women are lacking in knowledge. To the contrary, the financial planners who spoke to Banker & Tradesman for this article said their female clients are just as competent as their male clients; the problem is, they don’t always know it.

“Women generally feel less knowledgeable even when they’re not,” Murphy observed. “Oftentimes we will see the woman actually have more knowledge but they sometimes feel like they don’t.”

Nora Yousif, a Certified Financial Planner and associate vice president/financial adviser with RBC Wealth Management, agreed.

“The No. 1 issue I see is that there’s a mental block that finances never was for them,” Yousif said. “That’s a mistake because it makes them less apt to talk about finances in the workplace and ask for more money.”

That mental block can also lead to unwise financial decisions after a death or divorce, she said. Sometimes women don’t know that widows can collect 100 percent of their deceased spouse or ex-spouse’s benefits under Social Security, she said. Or she’ll sometimes see women hold onto a house they can’t afford after a divorce or sacrifice their retirement savings to put their kids through college.

But the confidence gap is beginning to close with younger generations, experts say.

“I do see a shift that’s happening. When I meet with younger couples, it’s rare that I will only meet with the husband,” Macauley said. “I see more husbands in Gen X and Millennial couples are consulting with their wives and spouses on retirement decisions, estate planning and tax decisions. There’s much more communication and involvement of both spouses equally.”

The financial services industry is increasingly waking up to women’s increased earning power and their demand for financial education.

Yousif, for instance, hosts a regular educational series called “Wine, Women and Wall Street,” where she pairs a wine and appetizer tasting with financial education and personal development. A third-generation financial advisor, Yousif wanted to create a “fresh, casual and comfortable” environment for women to learn about finances. She launched the series with just a handful of women, but now it sells out to standing room only.

There’s also the Center for Women and Wealth, an offshoot of the private banking firm Brown Brothers Harriman.

“We formed the Center for Women and Wealth specifically to engage women in the planning and wealth management process and to make sure we’re supporting women as they create capital and create wealth,” said Executive Director Adrienne Penta.

Toward that end, the center also works with the Babson Center for Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership on academic research, and it publishes the quarterly Women & Wealth Magazine.  The center has hosted events focused around the themes of women on corporate boards, work-life balance and closing the confidence gap.

Even if you don’t set up a special arm of your firm to tackle the topic or host monthly financial education seminars, financial advisors say it’s still important to engage both partners in the investment management and retirement planning process. It may be uncomfortable to point out, as Yousif did, that the majority of men die married while most women die single, but that doesn’t obviate the need for common sense financial planning.

“The data says that almost all adult women are going to be single at some point in their lifetime,” Penta said. “What we try to do is communicate that you have to be ready and able to make these decisions in a solo capacity.”