I don’t wholeheartedly agree that everyone in previous generations had a much easier deal than millennials.
In some parts of the country, the 80s were horrendous. It was extremely difficult to find or keep work. So women (and men) in those areas would have had very little spare money to build up savings or capital.
Similarly the women affected by the shift in pension age would be of an age group that spent most of their working lives affected by the wage gap between male and female earnings, so again, less opportunity to build up capital. It’s unjust to be treated differently in practice but be expected to achieve the same outcome. There are people who are only now finally getting equal pay for equal work after years of battling through the courts under equality legislation (for example women employed in care, catering and cleaning roles by Glasgow City Council). Not to mention the gap still exists for women working today in many areas and sectors, it’s just more difficult to bring an individual case than a class action backed by a union or two.
The women in this age group would also potentially been affected by having difficulty getting a mortgage on their own when they were younger. That started to shift in the 60s and 70s, but will have persisted a good bit longer in attitudes and in pockets. In these days of online credit checks we forget how much in the 80s and even 90s mortgage decisions often rested on the opinions of a local bank manager and how much discretion they had to say yes or no. When my mum and dad split up in the early 80s, my mum specifically chose a bank (and branch) to move on the basis that a particular bank manager had a reputation for being fair with single women, in contrast to basically every other bank manager in the city. There won’t have been that option in a lot of places, or some women wouldn’t have been socially connected enough to have heard about that type of person on the grapevine.
And again, we really underestimate how much has changed. The women in this age group had far fewer opportunities to get into education or well paid work than women 20 years younger did, and faced even more deeply entrenched sexism and discrimination for much of their lives. It’s still pretty bad now, but it used to be a lot worse.
I also agree with pp that the pensionable age should be tied to when you started working enough to pay full NI. Some people started full-time work at 15 or 16, so face a much longer working life than people who didn’t start working til 21 or 22. I’d include people who worked 20 or 30 hours a week whilst studying (either straight from school or at some later point) because they had family financial responsibilities. So the retirement age could be “age started work + 45 years” rather than a set age for all. The amount is then influenced by how many years people have paid NI.
Even though life expectancy has increased, there are a lot of geographical areas where it is still late 60s or early 70s. These areas correspond with low incomes, early start to working life etc. And people who work in manual occupations have a lower life expectancy too. People in those groups now face literally working til they drop, no retirement at all. And the job market for older people is pretty harsh.