Women's Life Insurance Policies

With this in mind, we turn our sights on women's life insurance.

In this country, in the early years of the insurance industry, the trend was to insure only male lives. The logic was that the female of the species was home-bound anyway, wasn't exposed to any risk, and consequently didn't need any sort of insurance. The bread winner was the male and it was against his lost income that cover was required. A major additional disincentive was the extra risk to female lives that was an inevitable part of the childbirth process.

All that has changed with women rivaling men at the workplace (and frequently doing a better job than them). In addition, better education for the female child, increased economic contribution by women, better medical facilities for safer childbirth and post-natal care have all contributed to more and more insurance products that are women-specific.

In life insurance terms, women are broadly divided into three categories:

• Working women
• Women with income by way of interest, dividend, rent, etc., that are taxable
• Housewives/home-makers who (in purely technical terms) do not have an income

The first two categories are no different from their male counterparts i.e. they are treated on par with them for insurance purposes. A housewife, on the other hand, has her insurability tied to adequate life insurance cover for her husband as well as his income. For instance, a housewife's life insurance cover cannot exceed her husband's.

Apart from this caveat, all basic covers such as life, personal accident, mediclaim, critical illness etc. form a part of women's life insurance policies too.

There are also some special covers afforded in women's life insurance policies that include:

Now come the exclusions to the above-mentioned special covers:

Most of these policies are benefit-only policies i.e., they come to effect on the specified event happening. Another important point - most pre-natal and birth-related policies have to be taken not later than the 20^th week of pregnancy.

Womankind carries the future of the race, literally. They can never be thanked enough for the commitment, pain, and dedication they bring to their various avatars as home-maker, mother, wife, and professional. Having said that, these insurance policies can go a fair bit in reducing the monetary impact of the loss of the woman in a home.