Women's defeat over state pension age

[Orangeblossom78]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49917315

Campaigners have lost a significant legal battle against the government's handling of the rise in women's state pension age.
The retirement age for women rose from 60 to 65, in line with men, and will go up to 66 by 2020, and to 67 by 2028.
Women born in the 1950s claim the rise is unfair because they were not given enough time to make adjustments to cope with years without a state pension.
They argued the changes were discrimination, but judges disagreed.
The fight over women's state pensions
State pension age to rise to 68
In a summary of the High Court's decision, the judges said: "There was no direct discrimination on grounds of sex, because this legislation does not treat women less favourably than men in law. Rather it equalises a historic asymmetry between men and women and thereby corrects historic direct discrimination against men."

I do see how this overall is fair. It is wrong to have different ages for men and women. I wondered what people thought about this decision today.

It's the right decision in my view.

Misogyny.

I think the decision to equal the ages is right, however it is also true that these women worked for decades being paid significantly less than men doing the same job and had less ability to build up a private pension because of that.

I think the lesson if you cannot rely on there being any state pension at all when you retire - which unfortunately is something that has only become really obvious recently. I think some kind of compromise for those women born in the 1950s and early 1960s would be fairer, however I dont know how you would do that without men the same age bringing their own legal action?!?

My thoughts on this were that men have a lower life expectancy than women by a good few years so they in fact could argue for a lower age than women

It's right that the ages are equal. I'm not so happy that women spent most of their working lives expecting to retire at 60 and it changed too late in the day for them to realistically make any other provision.

My retirement age is now 68 but at least I was told in time that I can do something about it

Its right the ages are now equal but the change should have been more gradual reflecting the fact that in the younger years these women would have had less access to pensions schemes and less earning power.

Yes maybe they could have done something like that or given those women some extra support to access e.g. universal credit, or ESA / PIP if they have a health problem.

It is an entirely correct decision. It is putting right an old inequality. It is unfortunate, but we are all at the mercy of the whims of the govt wrt pension age.

"There was no direct discrimination on grounds of sex, because this legislation does not treat women less favourably than men in law.

This may be true today, but it wasn't true when these women were leaving school at 16 and were expected to leave their jobs which paid less than men when they had children.
If divorced they didn'y get help and benefits like nowdays, someworked two and three jobs to house and feed the kids leaving kids as latch key key children after school, then expecting kids as young as 13 or 14 to get weekend obs to help the family.#
Middle class and those who got into further education or who had high earning fathers or educated mothers had a whole different life experience.

I agree with the judge and to be honest I remember being informed about it around 1991ish so it wasn't exactly a secret and they've had over 25 years notice

It's right that the pension ages are equalised. I think they made a mistake with the back to 60 campaign and would have got more support if they'd been a bit more realistic about what they were asking for.

There is another thread on this. The point has been made that women were told that they'd retirement age was going up to 65 circa 1995, when the women affected were 35 or so. They have had literally decades to prepare for this, and the majority of their working lives to make provision. There is no excuse to not be prepared for this.

It is fair for women's retirement age to be the same as men's and they should be grateful it is 65 rather than 68 (and counting) like it is for my generation. I don't think they're farming much sympathy really.

The government will act on inequality when it costs them money but the fact is that these women were paid less than men, weren’t allowed to join company pensions if they were part time (and the vast majority of part time workers of that generation were women), took on the caring duties for children and elderly with no state assistance and the government is not making any allowance for that (and has in fact accelerated the equalisation of retirement age to save money) and that is unfair.

What's unfair about the situation is those men had DECADES of notice to work longer, planned their career etc that way. The women are the first generation who mostly had to earn their own money and pay their own way, but they are still old enough that they were shockingly discriminated against for wages, they have mentally prepared themselves to finish work at a certain point in time (after working about 45 years longer than their mothers who were mostly SAHMs) and they are the ones who have spent the last two or three decades picking up the slack caring for elderly relatives who are living longer but who the state can't support. They have had no free time from first raising children and keeping house (because they weren't of a generation where men pulled their weight) and then had no free time from caring for elderly parents/PILs (because the men didn't pull their weight) and then it got dumped on them with a couple of years of notice that they had to work longer.
While I don't think there's any legal basis for a claim, I can entirely see why these women feel hard done by. Yet again women from that generation have been robbed of any free time. Heaven forbid they ever get a chance to construct a self-identity independent of work or their outside-work obligations.

Correct decision and I speak as a woman who for many many years expected to retire at 60. There was loads of publicity about the raising of the retirement age. I've never bought the excuse that they didn't know.

Yes we knew ( well I did) but George Osborne accelerated the change which gave many women even less time to make up the shortfall. As most of these women would have been doing "traditional woman's work", probably part time and low paid they wouldn't have had the money to put into a private scheme. They'd have paid every penny of their child care costs too out of taxed income. No free provision when their children were young.

It may be legal and in the long run I agree that that the pension age should be equalised but Osborne should be deeply ashamed of himself.

I agree the pension age must be the same for men and women. If women disagree with this it just gives more ammunition to misogynist who like to spout stuff about how we only want equality when it benefits us.

Yes, it wasn't that they should have an earlier retirement age but that the change to their retirement age was recent (2012?) so left no time to save for it. But that doesn't seem to be what the judgement was made on , instead they seem to have just looked at whether men and women should be equal, which they should. Pretty disappointing to ignore the fact women's opportunities were so much more limited in the past.