Women are saving more for pensions, but still falling short as motherhood gets in the way of preparing for retirement.

The savings gap has narrowed over the last year – but still only 46 per cent of women who could and should be are saving adequately – those earning over £10,000 – compared to 55 per cent of men.

The research by Scottish Widows shows 27 per cent of those polledwith dependent children had stopped or reduced their contribution to their pension in some way.

Ian Naismith, head of pensions market development at Scottish Widows, said: “Although women are slowly beginning to catch up with men, the gap in pension provision is still too high and there still needs to be a dramatic shift in women’s attitudes to pensions saving.

“While having children and irregular working patterns hugely affect pensions savings, there is more that women can do to save for the long term and they should start saving consistently, early in their working lives to make up for the time that may be lost should they have children.”

A quarter of women believe their partners’ income will help to keep them comfortable in retirement, the poll revealed.

However, this is leaving those facing divorce facing retirement with few resources.

Despite the rules being changed back in 2000 to enable pension splitting on divorce, 81 per cent of divorcees still do not consider the pensions assets when discussing a divorce settlement.

For those women getting divorced aged over 51, 79 per cent do not take into account pensions as an asset, and these women will have less time than younger women to make alternative arrangements, warns Mr Naismith.

“We believe it is particularly important that women should build up pensions in their own name, rather than relying on their partners,” he said.

“For many women their partner’s pensions will not be enough and if they did ever get divorced then they will not have sufficient savings to fund them through retirement.

“From April 6th 2009 the government intends to relax the rules applying to pensions arising from a pension sharing order on divorce making them more flexible, but it remains to be seen if this will result in an increase in sharing orders.”