News on 1950s women’s Pension

[Immaculatemisconception]

Women's state pension: Compensation closer for Waspi campaigners www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57900320

Who the hell do you think does those things now? Try reading a few mumsnet threads!

Only on mumsnet! In real life men are so much more involved in family life and do pull their weight. Women stuck in relationships where they do "everything" are told to LTB and quite right.

Exactly - some of the claims on here are simply nonsensical. I can count on one hand my friends who had mothers who NEVER worked and that is because they were very wealthy!

Yes, most women returned to work but they'd had a much longer break than most women do these days. They returned disadvantaged in the workplace and many worked part-time.

My own mother never worked after children but she was born in the 1920s.

@Immaculatemisconception

Exactly - some of the claims on here are simply nonsensical. I can count on one hand my friends who had mothers who NEVER worked and that is because they were very wealthy!

Yes, most women returned to work but they'd had a much longer break than most women do these days. They returned disadvantaged in the workplace and many worked part-time.

My own mother never worked after children but she was born in the 1920s.

You have basically just proved my point for me. Thanks

@Immaculatemisconception

Who the hell do you think does those things now? Try reading a few mumsnet threads!

Only on mumsnet! In real life men are so much more involved in family life and do pull their weight. Women stuck in relationships where they do "everything" are told to LTB and quite right.

I can only assuming you are trolling your own thread now!

You have basically just proved my point for me. Thanks

What is your point? Apart from you being antagonistic and goady about 1950s women, I can’t see what your point is.

As for trolling my own thread, I’m actually beginning to think you have troubles in real life. Do you want to talk about it?

@Immaculatemisconception

As for trolling my own thread, I’m actually beginning to think you have troubles in real life. Do you want to talk about it?

I am good thanks. I am sorry that you can’t accept that not everyone agrees with your viewpoint, that must be difficult day to day.

I am good thanks. I am sorry that you can’t accept that not everyone agrees with your viewpoint, that must be difficult day to day.

I'm sorry but that did make me laugh.

I'm glad you're good, I'm sorry you feel so angry with 1950s women.

I'm 33- I absolutely support the WASPI women, my mum is one of them. Would support them anyway!

I think that women of all generations have had things difficult. I agree that overall the previous generation had things easier with buying houses, despite the massive interest rates, because the prices were so much lower. I think this is borne out in stats as well that show far fewer people are able to buy houses now.

However, women were treated appallingly with regards to sexism and equal pay etc. Things aren't perfect now but my generation clearly haven't had the same struggles in that regard. So yes, I absolutely support them.

I would also like to see some support from the WASPI women and that generation in doing something to put pressure on the government for a correction in house prices- build more affordable houses etc, to help younger people today. I think we should be showing solidarity with eachother.

I think we should be showing solidarity with each other.

Absolutely @StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind

@Bythemillpond

ancientgran

I knew people who gave up work when they had married in the 60s and some who gave up work on finding out they were pregnant in the 70s
I think it depended where you lived. Around our area it was looked on as a really bad thing if you went to work once you were married. I do remember one woman who did carry on working after her wedding and the neighbours almost needed smelling salts with the shock of this couple moving in and the woman going to work.
I worked with a woman in the 80s who was pregnant with her 3rd and absolutely grateful that the company had allowed her to stay working

Yes some people in some areas carried on working and in other areas it was definitely not something you did

Oh I knew women who gave up work but in the post I was replying to it was referring to women being forced to give up work. I think it was either a choice or lack of childcare, I know there were less choices for childcare in the 70s, hence the playgroup movement came about. I did a paper on it when I was studying, doing day release, and there were fewer nursery places in the 70s than there were 30 years earlier.

@Immaculatemisconception

I am good thanks. I am sorry that you can’t accept that not everyone agrees with your viewpoint, that must be difficult day to day.

I'm sorry but that did make me laugh.

I'm glad you're good, I'm sorry you feel so angry with 1950s women.

i don't feel at all angry with them. I have a lot of sympathy on many levels I just really don't agree with this particular court battle!

This thread has been massively derailed which is a shame. The women affected by the change in pension age were born in the 50s not working in the 50s. The debatable point is, did HMRC give them enough notice so they could make up the shortfall because I don't think anyone can successfully argue that their pension age shouldn't have been increased to match that of men. As to compensation, there's more chance of hell freezing over with the state of the country at the moment and the need for funds to improve end-of-life care is much more important.

My mum was married in the late 60s. Her employer a local council had only changed their policy on married women a couple of years before she was married. So mid 60s maybe. But it was definitely a thing that employers didn't want married women.

Remembering WW2 finished in 1945 so twenty years earlier. I have heard the theory that it was a policy to try and get men who'd been called up to serve in the military back into work.
But ultimately it forced women back into the home instead of holding down "mens" jobs as they did in the war years.

@Billandben444

This thread has been massively derailed which is a shame. The women affected by the change in pension age were born in the 50s not working in the 50s. The debatable point is, did HMRC give them enough notice so they could make up the shortfall because I don't think anyone can successfully argue that their pension age shouldn't have been increased to match that of men. As to compensation, there's more chance of hell freezing over with the state of the country at the moment and the need for funds to improve end-of-life care is much more important.

That is the debatable point, however:

Government officials were too slow to tell many women they would be affected by the rising state pension age, the Parliamentary Ombudsman has ruled.

did HMRC give them enough notice so they could make up the shortfall because I don't think anyone can successfully argue that their pension age shouldn't have been increased to match that of men.

I think it's easy to successfully argue that actually their pension age shouldn't have been increased to match that of men. Did these women have the same opportunities in their working lives as men, the same career choices? Was there the same expectation on men to give up their careers to bring up children? And then end up in lower paid work or start at the bottom of the ladder again when they did return to work? Did these women receive equal pay to men? Did men experience the same workplace sexism that these women experienced throughout their working lives?

If you can answer 'yes' to all of those questions, then yes, the WASPI women's pension age should have been brought in line with men's. But you obviously can't answer yes to even one of them.

This thread is an eye opener - so much of who we are stems from our upbringing. Thank God for my parents.

I was born in 1959 - my parents had been married for 11 years and really wanted kids. I always remember my Dad telling me 'you can do anything you want to'. My brother was told the same. As was tradition, when they had been married for a little while, Dad wanted Mum to stop working - she didn't. Their compromise was to buy a little corner shop, where she worked harder than ever. Working his way from the shop floor of a steelworks through the main board director of a quoted company, he was always the first to tell us that Mum 'was the clever one'.

I left school at 18 and chose not to go to university. I au-paired in Germany for a while, then at 19 started my first job. Also got my first credit card - so they were available to single women! I also bought my flat when I was 22 - again, my own mortgage. My Dad was right - I could do anything I chose - because I was brought up to believe that!

I tell the girls at work some of the things that were said and done to me during my earlier working life, and they can't believe that people (men) could get away with that sort of behaviour towards women. Suggestive, personal comments were the norm. Fortunately I was able to brush it to one side, and not let it affect my confidence nor entitlement.

DH and I met and married in 1985 - but I looked after my own taxes. We started our business in 1988 - 50% for each of us, and that has been the way everything has been since.

I knew this hit to pension was coming, but knew that we would be able to cope with it. I know people who struggle, and who have had to carry on working when it's really pushed them, because they need the income. I can't help but feel sad for them.

My DC were born when I was 32 and 34 - they're now adults living their own lives, and I'm very proud of both of them. They too can do anything they choose.

I really can see how bloody lucky I have been with my family and the men in my life. They have always known that women are their equals, and treated us as such.

@StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind women still don’t have equal opportunities and earn less (as a group of course not necessarily individually). Why should only older women be given a lower pension ag3?

TheWASPI women spent the vast majority of their working lives after the equal pay act and sex discrimination act had been passed. There may have been different expectations on some, but that doesn’t mean they were bound to follow these expectations.

The younger generation of women (as a whole) have challenges that the WASPI women (as a generation) did not have or had much less of. Obvious things being the current huge cost of housing and general loss of pension wealth (particularly final salary schemes) by younger workers). Why should WASPI women have lower pension ages than these younger women (who are as a whole paying for the state pension for the boomer generation). It’s not really fair to ask them to pay even more for something they are not going to get themselves.

I left school at 18 and chose not to go to university. I au-paired in Germany for a while, then at 19 started my first job. Also got my first credit card - so they were available to single women

I actually worked for Barclays in a bank in the late 70s and they were not available to women single or married.

Also @StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind - some racial groups have lower expectations on them and indeed are often sidelined into lower paid work. Should they have a lower pension age?

But why blame the previous generations? This is all the fault of successive governments. It was Thatcher that was obsessed with home ownership. That’s when housing prices started rising.

All this obsession about who gets what. In Germany the state pension is 30k l think.

We should be aiming at this for everyone, not sniping about who gets what. We are all individuals, no one is particularly to blame for anything, Directivrs come from central government not people.

@Bythemillpond

I left school at 18 and chose not to go to university. I au-paired in Germany for a while, then at 19 started my first job. Also got my first credit card - so they were available to single women

I actually worked for Barclays in a bank in the late 70s and they were not available to women single or married.

Mine was an Access card with NatWest. I chose NatWest because they had cute little animal prints on their cheques!

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow because if we spend money on one thing it’s not available to spend on something else. State pensions are hugely expensive and as they are currently universal they are not even targeted based on need.

We have a massive deficit after Covid and are not raising anything like the funds we spend every year. We are borrowing currently just to keep going as we are. Giving huge amounts of money to everyone regardless of need isn’t an option.

Have you any idea how much a universal state pension of 30k at 60 would be? The current state pension is half of all welfare spending. How much do you think what you suggest would cost? We would probably have to abolish the NHS and everything else to pay for it!

@CayrolBaaaskin I know women now still don't have equal opportunities, believe it or not- I am one. I was just musing on the sexism I have experienced throughout my working life, mainly in my first job aged 17 in 2005. Most of the time on Mumsnet you'll find me banging on on FWR, mainly on the naughty step.

I think it's incredibly naive to assume that because WASPI women spent the majority of their lives after the equal pay act and sex discrimination act that things magically changed. You've said it yourself- women still don't have equal opportunities. So if things are still unfair now, what do you honestly imagine things continued to be like in the 70s and 80s?

Yes we have different challenges to WASPI women. Hence my previous comment that I would like to see them joining forces and making some noise about the issues that younger women are affected by. Such as house prices. And yes maybe they should be making some noise about wanting to ensure that their children still receive a state pension.

I wasn't comparing them to women of today or any other group of society today - I was comparing them with men of their generation, and make no mistake those men had far, far more opportunities in their working lives than women at the same time. And I think it's easy to argue that the pension age for these women should not be the same as for men the same age as them. Its nothing to do with how things are for this generation- on this one point it's the unfairness of how things were for them compared to men at the time. It's also very flippant to say they weren't bound to follow expectations of the time- you know it isn't that simple.

ajandjjmum

I am presuming you had a father to sign the application forms. I didn’t so had to wait till 1980