To think the back to 60 campaign is grabby

[Neaoll]

It's been known about for a long time that state pension ages would be equalised.

State pension is just unsustainable, it was never supposed to be something people claim for 20-30 years. Was for people that had a hard time so they didn't starve to death in their last few years. Now it's a top-up to the richest part of society. It should have been linked with life expectancy a long time ago.

I'm in my 40s and dont expect to ever get a state pension. I've been contributing to my private pension ever since I worked to support myself.

@myself2020 every European country sets their retirement age somewhere in the 60s - a few even have women retire before 60 where I guess life expectancy may be lower. And quite a few have it set at 60.

@JinglingHellsBells my mum wasn't a teacher but had to give up her very well-paid job in 1975 and live on my dad's much lower salary while she had my brother. She went to work for the NHS on permanent night shift when he was 8 weeks old to cover the shortfall where - guess what - her pension got fucked over and nobody told her until she was about 58, maybe 59.

LittleAndOften

As a child in the 60s and 70s I had several friends whose mothers were working teachers.

My own mother (not a teacher) gave up work in the late 1950s when I was born, but went back in the early 70s when my youngest sibling was 9 or 10.

In a fair and equal society with no sexism then obviously the pension ages should be the same for men and women.

Women approaching retirement today have never benefitted from a fair and equal society and it is thoroughly unjust that the tiny accommodation for that is being taken away. Women's retirement age was set earlier because of numerous disadvantages - women over 55 find it much harder to find work than men over 55. They are more likely to be burdened with caring responsibilities for their own parents (who will be in their 80s or 90s) and are likely to have been socioeconomically disadvantaged all their lives.

It is quite right and proper that the pension she should be gradually pushed to older but that should go hand in hand with the government providing properly funded employment opportunities targeted at older people who can no longer function in the jobs they did up to the age of 55, to keep them gainfully employed for a further 20 years in jobs that are commensurate with an older body.

Ideally, there needs to be some formula which can be applied to each birth-year as it reaches it's 50th birthday year, calculating the average life expectancy for that specific year group and also calculating the average actual economic disadvantage that women in that cohort have experienced as we travel towards equality. From that, differential retirement ages and state pension levels get calculated and fixed. The calculations being such that when an equal and fair society is achieved, the calculations will naturally have a differential of zero.

@LittleAndOften , sorry, but I think your mother has not remembered correctly.
There will be plenty of women on here who either worked alongside other teachers who had young babies or who were taught by teachers who had babies and young children.

When my mum had me and my DB in the 70s, she had to resign from her teaching job, as did most women.

What you mean is your mum chose to leave her teaching job. The law did not force her to.

I was teaching with women in the 1970s who had children. I was at school as a pupil in the 60s with female teachers who had children.

Your mum could also have bought back any missing years of NI to increase her own pension entitlement. I was offered this many times by DWP but as I've now got enough years of work under my belt I didn't need to and will get the full state pension as well as my teaching pension.

So if you work a low paid job and cannot afford a private pension / have FA in there, how are you meant to live with no state pension as you excevt to happen eventually - they need money from somewhere

I was teaching in the 70s and women were not made to leave their jobs.

In the UK? One of my SiLs was teaching toward the end of that time and was absolutely made to leave. It was still very common for women to be forced out of the workplace when I started work in the 80s.

Even where it wasn't legal there was no support to talke an employer to court and pretty much impossible to win.

Teaching was one of the few areas where part timers could access the pension scheme though. I believe a lot of the public sector pension schemes allowed part timers but private corporate schemes generally didn't not (even in large companies). So many of the women who had tried to get back into work after children would have been barred from joining pension schemes.

Women were also disproportionately employed in organisations small enough to be exempt from the equalities act so whatever the law, they could be sacked for being pregnant, married and certainly were not included in any pension schemes.

There are two main cohorts here - those who expected to retire later as per the 1995 agreement but spent much of their lives excluded from pension schemes who will do worse than men their age. There is also the smaller cohort who 4-5 yrs added onto their retirement age whilst already in their 50s.

I'm in neither group and thankfully not dependent on the state for a pension but I do think people underestimate how difficult accumulating pensions has been for working women in that generation.

@TalbotAMan not sure what your point is. My mum went back to teaching when I started school in 1982. She had to resign when she was pregnant.

@YobaOljazUwaque , not a 'little adjustment' but billions. Why should it go to healthy women in their early sixties rather than education and the NHS

jingling it wasn't law! But employers could basically do what they wanted.

You worked in the public sector and probably don't have much experience of commercial employment.

I don't have a private pension. Grabby cow aren't I.

@AudacityOfHope well your mum clearly missed the headlines in 1995. I don't understand your point that nobody told her- it was headline news. And why can't she /couldn't she work longer anyway? I haven't worked full time for life- I spent a lot of it p/t - but have continued to work into my 60s. We too took a cut in living standards because I worked p/t to avoid child care costs. That doesn't mean I am bitter and feel the state owes me a living now at 60.

Why should women have different rules to men? We have on average a life expectancy of 83 or more. Why should we expect the younger generation to fund our life for 20+ years when we could so some work?

I was teaching with women in the 1970s who had children. I was at school as a pupil in the 60s with female teachers who had children

Women with children re-entered teaching (often on request as there was a chronic teacher shortage to teach the 50s/60s generation) but plenty of women were removed/pushed out as a result of pregnancy.

Because having healthy and happy older population would probably be more economically efficient for the nation than throwing money into the black hole thst is education and the NHS as both are hugely inefficient organisations .

@Treser- what do you mean? Employers could choose? Are you talking about discrimination if women had a child? (And for your benefit, over 40 years I have worked in more than JUST the public sector.)

healthy and happy older population
I'm not sure retirement does that for you though.

C8H10N4O2but plenty of women were removed/pushed out as a result of pregnancy*.

You are talking rubbish and assume you never taught or really know anything about teaching.

This is not true. The vast majority of my colleagues had children. The vast majority of teachers are women anyway.

As it has already been said on here women in their 50's and 60's gave up their jobs to raise children and then often went back part-time. To suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them is disgusting.

Judging by threads on here, this hasn't really changed. It always 'makes sense' for the woman to downgrade her career when children come along. I can't judge, I didn't work/was very part time for years when the children were wee. I am now working full time in my 50s to build my pension back up - state retirement age for me is 67. For my younger colleagues it is 70 and they can't afford to buy a house, so I don't think it is fair for me to complain.

I haven't worked full time for life- I spent a lot of it p/t - but have continued to work into my 60s

Yes the women i employ would have probably loved a cushy part time teaching job. They are not educated enough and they have worked in hard manual jobs full time all their lives. They deserve retirement.

@AudacityOfHope the ones with a reasonably healthy budget have it around 65. 60 is extremely early

The Employment Protection Act of 1975 enshrined the right to Maternity Leave in law. Although you had to have worked for the company for a minimum of at least a year before you had the right to return.
Lots of teachers took maternity leave before that though. I think there are some women who claim they were forced to resign as teachers after 1975 are not remembering correctly.

@FaFoutis well you are wrong there because every bit of scientific evidence shows that retirement is bad for health. People who carry on working live longer and have healthier lives.

Those waspis who say they knew nothing of this- please, where have you been for the last 22 years since it was in the news in 1995? You only have yourselves to blame if you hadn't heard about it because it has been on women's radars for 22 years. It's hit the headlines time after time so you must be living under a rock

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jun/05/women-born-in-1950s-take-fight-against-rising-pension-age-to-court

See the bit about not notifying people personally.

@shearwater how did your mum continue to work if there was no free childcare? or did she have the luxury of her own mother, mil or others helping her? Just because she managed to keep working doesn’t meant it was possible for every other mum to do that.

Are you talking about discrimination if women had a child?

Yes. Absolutely rife in factory working in the 60s and 70s.