Why was the state pension age lower for women?

Its the foolish feminists who dont see they have been used- thabks to them women are exoected to be full time workers and mothers. Dosent work like that you are on or another, if you go to work someone else will raise the child and mother will spend a token amount of time with the child. Being a mother and raising her own children is now a option for only a few whos partner earns enough to support a family

In my homeland women with more than 3 children who have been sahm can retire at 55. Its to do with working years as raising children can elave a gap in women unlike men who dont usually stay at home to raise kids and dont need leave during pregnancies etc

Er no, its because women mostly raise children and dont have as many working years as men

It's crazy to have both women and mens pension age at 66. Again an ambiguous misogynistic policy created by government to save money but with many useful idiots claiming it's fair. In reality you are making it more difficult for women to look after grandkids, putting more pressure on the childcare and the mothers.

Men still die much younger than women (on average), it's why care homes are overwhelmingly female occupants. The big public health interest now is in "healthy Life expectancy" : females may live longer but they tend to start being unwell only a few months later than males, they then have more years of living with poor health, while the blokes get on with dying sooner. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342587699_Population-based_estimates_of_healthy_working_life_expectancy_in_England_at_age_50_years_analysis_of_data_from_the_English_Longitudinal_Study_of_Ageing

I think men do not now die earlier than women, or not to the same extent as they no longer smoke. It’s levelling put.

When men retired, they didn't do the chores. When women became 60, they still carried on doing all the housework. Women never actually retired.

1986 I had cheque, inheritance, to pay in to my then Midland Bank. They would not accept it unless my husband counter signed it. Needless to say I moved my bank else where. People forget how recent women were regarded as second class, unable to do things without a mans approval.

Very true.

Many women still do that anyway and now have to work into their late 60s.

I always assumed it was because female life expectancy is lower than males’

Interestingly the raising of women's pension age has led to an increase in cost of elder care as women are less available to provide it for free.
I did read that this was not factored into policy at all,

Funny how women's free labour is invisible, until it's not done.

I thought it was because women struggled to get jobs, had less work history, and 'aged' out of the marketplace sooner, couldn't get jobs; a 59yo female was less or maybe no more sought after as an employee than a 64yo male

Watched the clip and not sure it actually did suggest that they were doing their fair share even self reported

Thankfully not all men are alike.

Because women were usually younger than their husbands, if they got their pensions at 60 and the men got theirs at 65, they could potentially retire together.

The age gap was introduced in 1940 and I believe the Government also felt able to pay women their pension earlier because very few women were eligible for it in the early days of state pension.
Most married women in professional or office jobs had to leave on marriage, or at least on pregnancy. It was rare for women to return to these type of jobs back then. Working class manual jobs were more likely to be cash in hand and not eligible for pension contributions.
For those married women who did work, most paid the married women's lower contribution which meant no pension.

On a side note I remember when filling forms in at school, it was only ever fathers’s name and occupation which was asked for.

Don't know what age or income bracket you're talking about, but my impression is that often once older couples starting to think about inheritance etc they quietly or otherwise head for the registry office. Paying no inheritance tax on a bequest to a spouse or civil partner is a huge incentive if they own a house and have children they want to inherit in due course.

"Most" women? I would be interested to see stats on that. It's certainly not my experience. In fact, in my friendship group a lot of the men are younger than the women. And very few are married.

My parents were exactly 5 years apart.

They didn't retire at the same time though, they both took different early retirement (both teachers).

It was possible to opt for separate taxation, but in that case you would lose out on the married allowance, so you'd pay more tax if you chose for your incomes to be treated separately rather than handing all your details to your husband for him to put on his form.

A woman with a husband was expected to be supported by her husband. Not only that, I think you could take him to court for not supporting you, though whether anyone did, and what happened, I don't know.

I think the whole idea of the 'nuclear family' being solely responsible for their own children only really started to take place in the 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s with the demise of traditional working class communities and the rise of the culture of individualism. I think in some parts of society it was earlier - direction of labour during the war meant some women met men they'd never otherwise have met, and ended up living far from their family.

Not in our case. We bought our first house in 1986 and the formula for how much we could borrow (I'm pretty sure) was 3 times the larger income plus the lower income, or 2.5 times the joint income, up to 90% of the purchase price (possibly it was 95%) and the rest was deposit which you had to have saved up with your mortgage provider over (IIRC) two years plus. It was when Mrs Thatcher 'reformed' mortgage lending and that link was broken that house prices rocketed. That's a different topic, though.

I have no idea of the reason - but I hoovered mine up at 60 with a smile!!

Wife’s salary wasn’t taken into account for mortgage borrowing until 1970! Hence why house prices rocketed Even then, and into the 80s, it was "3 x man's income plus 0.5 x woman's"