Ageism,ignorance, intolerance. class bias on mumsnet re Waspi women

[CAJIE]

I did not honestly expect any compensation though I might have hoped. Iwas aware of this change but did not have the chance to make extra provision for it.I do have a professional pension but will have to wait a while longer for the state pension which is extremely challenging.My plans were changed by covid and I doubt I will be employed again except possibly on poor and temporary contracts or gig economy.Secondary school supply on a daily basis has more or less gone.
However what appals me is the attitudes of many mumsnetters who assume that everyone has the abiity to understand pensions and that the Waspi women should have taken so called control of their situation.Maybe some could but there is a hell of a lot of class bias towards the women in lower paid jobs who perhaps were overwhelmed by struggling to survive and did not understand or read the news or the pension changes were not clearly explained to them.Pensions can be hard to understand and provoke anxiety.This appalling prejudice that all older people are rolling in it and this nice habit of some younger women to be sadly quite misogynistic and ageist towards women who are in poverty is very concerning.All sections of society should thrive even in older age and perhaps you younger women should be challenging society, housing costs, the whole ideology of owning a house and actually trying to build something new rather than bitching about what boomers have and their endless cruises etc.
.You are turning against your sex and the comments are cruel and harsh.You know nothing about these womens lives.
Starmer wants to punish older people and older women are always a good target.Your spite about all the things that boomers are supposed to have and you apparently dont is unpleasant.Women beware women.Very sad and against justice.

I don't know if they would have been able to get a mortgage easily in 1975 but considering they would have been aged 14 to 24 years then I don't think waiting a couple of years is too much of a hardship. By 1980 they certainly could and would have been age of 19 to 29 years by then. You're not going to get sympathy from younger people by complaining that you couldn't get a mortgage until you were in your late 20s.

Retired men get way more state pension than women on average. Why? Because they earned loads more than women during their working life and the old system was linked to earnings.

And women are still far poorer than men from their workplace pensions - 35% less money on average.

The state pension was based mainly on qualifying years not on how much people earned. AFAIK.

https://pensionaccess.co.uk/discovery/types-of-pensions/what-is-serps/

Most folk were advised to opt out of serps.

Likewise. I have been affected (though not as significantly as women a year or two younger than me) and I don't think compensation should be paid to all WASPI women. I think there are other priorities.

Still existed though, didn’t it?

The first part of that comment isn't true. Anyone will full contributions gets the same level of state pension. It isn't income based.
The second part is true though.

Women born in the late 40s and 50s aren’t some sort of feminist collective. There were plenty of women born during that time who were indifferent to or even disapproving of the fight for those rights, just as there were plenty of women who disapproved of the suffragettes. I’m not indebted to an entire generation just because they happened to be around during the WLM.

I’m not indebted to an entire generation just because they happened to be around during the WLM.

Quite. I've done a lot of campaigning for climate action and I don't expect the younger generations to be indebted to me. If anything I expect them to say we could, and should, have done more.

The first part is true, because women on the whole were less able to work, due to childcare and other factors.

The first part is also true for anyone who had a SERPS pension until they were discontinued in 2016.

I was able to get a mortgage as a single woman in 1986, but there were constraints purely because I was a woman - and additional paperwork which had to be filled up before the bank would grant the mortgage.

Lots of my friends got mortgages st that time too. They didn't mention constraints because they were women. My first mortgage was in 1989. No constraints at all.

Well, there certainly were when I got my mortgage with the TSB.

I'll add that - according to the solicitor - one of the forms that I had to sign was supposedly to prevent the bank's interest in the mortgage being harmed if I were to marry at some point. This wasn't a mansion - it was a 2 bed terraced house in central Scotland.

The solicitor emphasised that only single women were required to sign this.

Perhaps you should have voted with your feet and got a mortgage with someone else then.

I had a mortgage as a single woman in 1981. There were no issues whatsoever. Lloyd's Bank.

Beg your pardon. I was irritated by the lack of understanding and the prejudice

If I'd left a good job because I'd calculated I could last until the state pension came in, then found I had to return to the workforce "in any capacity" (because it is not easy to get a job as a 60 year old woman), when, had I received information on state pension age, I wouldn't have left my good job, I would feel that I had suffered a detriment because of the government's lack of information.

It was the only mortgage available to me at the time.

I'll add that I had - I thought - been sensible. I'd been saving with the Dunfermline Building Society for 6 yrs with a view to getting a mortgage once I had a job. I had been working as a teacher for two years and had a permanent post. Apparently, that wasn't enough.

I'd been a customer with another bank for much longer than that. Again, they wouldn't give me a mortgage. I had no credit problems.

I'm still in the same house (now paid off).

Well said.

I will not get a full state pension. I have worked since I was 16, but paid into an employers pension. I did not know that reduced my state pension.

Then they don't have full contributions.

Full State pension requires 35 years NI contributions and gives the same state pension to everyone. Claiming child benefit gives automatic entitlement for the parenting years.

I'm in my early 60s, and have 44 years contributions so far, despite having raised ds alone as a single mum. I have always worked full time and don't see why anyone would find 35 years NI difficult to achieve, excepting poor health or caring for adult SEN offspring.