MAY 5, 2011 - Mother's Day will soon be here. If you're a mother, you will (hopefully) receive thoughtful cards and gifts. But there's one present you may eventually want to give yourself, and it's a gift that truly does keep on giving: a strategy for your retirement. Of course, it's important for everyone to build adequate financial resources for retirement -- but the challenge is even greater for women. Largely due to family responsibilities, women spend, on average, 12 years less in the workforce than men, according to the Women's Institute for a Secure Retirement. Less time in the workforce equates to lost earnings, missed promotions, smaller and fewer raises and reduced retirement plan benefits. In fact, men have, on average, about $91,000 in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), including all IRA types and the amounts rolled over from other retirement accounts into IRAs, compared to just $51,000 for women, according to a recent report issued by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.