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 was born in 1951 and was lucky, in that I could retire at 61, as when they announced it in 1993, they were graduating the increase in age from 60 to 65.
It was much closer to their retirement for some people, when they suddenly changed it to 66 and increased the speed at which it changed.
I only retired at 61 because like many other women, I needed to spend more time caring for an elderly parent, as the 'cradle to grave' care system had suddenly turned to shit!

First comment dripping in ageism. Surprise surprise 🙄.

The ageism on MN has always disgusted me. I do call it out every time, but it's boring now.

All the "they had plenty of time" posters are missing the point here.
The ombudsman has said there was clear maladministration in a good number of cases and the WASPI women should be compensated. Not massively in most cases, but as principle.
If we let this go because "there's not enough money" this will be used again and again to justify impoverishing vulnerable people and sending a clear message that rich powerful groups or governments can do what they like. It's the very opposite of Gisele's empowering message. It's accepting that people don't matter unless they are "economic units".
Of course it didn't stop many Labour MPs getting selfies with WASPI campaigners during the election. These shocking hypocrites are handing the country to Reform on a platter.

It's for the people who didn't know.

From reading threads on MN it’s apparent that plenty of people don’t understand pensions. How often do we see a poster tell us that they have £50K in a pension pot and expect that to provide them with a decent income in retirement? We can’t compensate for ignorance and while I agree that it’s sad that women may have had legitimate reasons for being unaware, it doesn’t make the public responsible for picking up the tab.

This thread isn't about the pension thing

It's about the fact that threads seem to delight in anything going against older people

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

Reading between the lines, are you a teacher? What is your teacher’s pension paying you as it sounds like you have commenced retirement with that at 60 (or less than 66). I suppose the question is why didn’t you carry on working to state pension age like everyone else has to unless they can afford it?

I can appreciate the upset of having to work more years. But that’s the reality we all face going forward, and for many young people we doubt we will even get a state pension now. I think where a lot of waspi women have lost sympathy is that they just retired anyway, either without checking what they were entitled to or knowing they’d have to manage but then complaining about it. But the state pension age was changed and the option to retire at 60 unless you could privately fund it was gone.
I think the crux of the issue is many didn’t want to work the extra years which is understandable but the reality is most of these women just needed to carry on working if they couldn’t afford to retire.

"Of course they were, but when it's your job to actually make the books balance it's a very different story. You have to make hard decisions once you've got the full picture.

The country simply cannot afford this payout at this point."

And this is the real issue. Labour doing a 360 as soon as they got into power.

It's easy to be in opposition, isn't it. You can promise the earth without having to worry about how you are going to deliver it or where the money is coming from.

Maybe politicians should be held to account for saying one thing for years and then doing the opposite once they've won an election. It might make them more careful about what they promise in order to win votes, and the electorate might actually know exactly what they are voting for.

The ombudsman found there had been maladministration and recommended compensation. How is it that an ombudsman recommendation can be ignored due to cost but train drivers get a large pay rise?
Look at the number of women still winning equal pay claims against councils etc. How easy would it have been for lower paid workers to adjust to this change? The structural misogyny in the workplace is still having to be challenged.

The scale of the unfair treatment of women in relation to earnings is huge - this was a couple of weeks ago
https://news.sky.com/story/birmingham-council-agrees-historic-outcome-to-equal-pay-claims-with-unions-13270822

Multiple other councils are facing claims. Think about it - the public sector systematically discriminated against women over pay. That puts a different context on the Waspi maladministration for me.

The private sector is no better, Next lost its equal pay case earlier this year as it couldn’t provide a reason why mainly female shop floor staff were paid less than mostly male warehouse staff.

All the big supermarkets are facing similar claims.

Women were systematically paid less than men for equal work and yet were expected to make adjustments for their pension age moving.

My mother on the other hand 'left all that' to my father to sort. She has no private pension, a reduced state pension and is reliant on his income. She sees him as provider and never took an interest in planning for her retirement.

Yes that seems to be a common theme with older women, I have relatives in 70s like that, husband was the provider, hardly ever worked, little pension provision.

My mum was the exception, she would be almost 99 if still alive and not educated past 14 but astute enough to have a private pension (which she fought for with union help) and made a big thing of telling me that she paid full ‘stamp’ to enable her to get a full state pension, not rely on my dads.

I am early 60s, always worked, even with very young children, paid NI and into private pensions and now have better provision than my husband.

Do I feel aggrieved not to get state pension until 67, when mum got it at 60 - Yes; do I blame the government for those 7yrs of lost pension - No, they had to equalise the age somehow. I have known for many years that I wouldn’t get my state pension at 60.

Interesting thread, thanks op

@Anonym00se it's clear that YOU don't understand pensions. While NI is not a personal pot it's intrinsically linked to contributions. It was part of retirement planning for many women and if anyone believes that 11 years contributions will add much to a pension they are a fool. Compound interest needs at least 25 years.
There have been a number of recent cases including the recent public sector remedy which have given WASPI women cause for hope. The fire service won a successful case against an increase in retirement age which has resulted in a complete backpedal by government. Of course they are mainly men.
The ombudsman's decision is just being completely ignored here because the women are disparate and not in one union. And are not men.

One detects a certain partisanship to the current debate. I wonder how many people desperate to argue Labour Are Right right now would have been on the side of these women a year ago when it was all the Tories fault! And how many telling us Labour Are Wrong never raised a finger when the Tories instituted the policy in the first place.

Waspi is a completely separate debate from whether pensions are high enough, or whether older people deserve more (I think the poorest off should be able to afford heating obviously which is not the case now).

The OP really supports the fact that women were not financially disadvantaged by “not knowing”. Because those who didn’t know, were financially clueless and therefore would have not done anything different about it even if they had received a letter.

I’m 63 I voted remain.

@losingweightandgainingconfidence

The people who genuinely suffered the maladministration should perhaps receive compensation

It's not about how much was lost - I think that's the ombudsman's point. It's about the mess that was made and the suffering and the recommendation was that there should be a sliding scale.
ALL of them suffered from the mess!!

Funny that if this was PPI or car finance no one would be complaining

That is what you took away from my whole post on the systematic and unlawful underpayment of women compared to men. How about a thought about the importance of the work being done by the tens of thousands of women who were victims of discriminatory pay practices in the public and private sector.

You appear to value train drivers more than any of these women.

I have been pondering this while walking to the station and I think the real issue is many older people simply have no understanding the atmosphere people born in the very late 70s and beyond have lived their entire adult lives in.

My entire adult life expectations of education funding (student loans, fees), (housing - watching housing affordability and security disappear in to the distance) and pensions have crumbled and been in constant flux.

From the moment I statred full time work in 2001 there has been a constant background of state and occupational pension reform with the message to my and younger generations being - you need to pay more, work longer and get less. And in that context we have seen older worker protected through out. To this day I work with people older than me who pay significantly less than me for a better pension

So, our gut reaction when economic and demographic reality finally catches up with the generations above us, is "pull up and pew and join us, what took you so long?"

Because it wasn’t 11 years for most of us. The 2011 change was made with less than two years notice for me. I wasn’t the worst hit, anyone born in 1954 copped it worst.

Anyway I think it’s the correct decision because the country’s broke and there are far more urgent and important issues that need to be funded. I never expected to receive any compensation anyway, as soon as I started receiving my pension the ship had sailed.

I completely agree that this issue has brought some deeply unpleasant intergenerational views crawling out of the woodwork and it makes me wonder why my generation bothered to fight for equal pay, maternity rights and all the other things that younger women can now take for granted.

It’s not intrinsically linked to contributions. The amount of NI contributions paid is largely irrelevant in determining your State pension, and many people (eg SAHMs) get NI credits during the years they are not working.

The State pension is not an entitlement but simply a benefit payable at any point according to the rules at that point. Those rules can, and do, change - look at the introduction of the Triple Lock in 2010ish, or the recent removal of the Winter Fuel Payment.

In of an age which classes me as a baby boomer , but am not a waspi woman , no because I was born in 1960 so waspi's are born in the 50 's .
When I was young and in the job market and then newly married , retirement for women was age 60 .
Then it was changed inline with men to 65 , then it was announced , pension age would rise to 67.
In my immediate group of friends ,some received pension at 60 , some at 65 , and friends born at the end of the 50s are currently retiring at age 66 .
When it was announced it was changing to age 65 , I was age 35 , working part time in a shop with 2 children , could I afford a private pension ? No .
A couple of years later , I find myself divorced , still no pension .
Then in 2010 it's announced pension age will rise again , this time in 2010 , I was age 50 . Working but in a low paid job which will give me a small pension .
A few years on and I'm back to part time due to caring for a relative , claiming carers allowance .
This person is on PIP , if they lose that , I continue to care from them , but I also lose carers allowance .
So when I reach 67 and start getting state pension , I lose carers , but will still be caring if they are alive . will have a small pension of less than £100 a month to add to my state pension and will be about a few ££s over the limit for getting pension credit .
So I agree with the op , we are not all sat in our own homes mortgage free , sitting pretty with a huge pension , or even looking forward ( ! ) to being topped up with pension credit .
Sorry for the long post .