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.

There seems to be some confusion that this payment is some sort of compensation for broader inequality in the past.

While there is no doubt women faced significant discrimination in the past due to the way society was structured and viewed women, this doesn’t mean a handful of those women should get a £3k payment in 2024 for… having to retire at what is still a younger age than all other working adults today.

No it’s that the structural discrimination meant women had less financial means / capacity to adapt to a change in their retirement age especially those who were subject to relatively short notice changes.

But surely the Waspi 10 percent who 'didn't know ' wouldn't be working class, working women? I know lots of them and they just kept on working for 5 years longer than planned. It was discussed widely in any workplace, pub or shop, even if you didn't read newspapers or watch the news, and somehow didn't receive the official letter or pamphlet.
Are there really women who just didn't turn up for work on their 60th birthday, and then trotted to the post office to get a pension that wasn't there? I don't think so.

I am a net contributor. I have paid more in tax than we have taken out of the system for years. So I will be one of the one’s directly responsible for funding this compensation. I still agree with it on principle.

@ChazsBrilliantAttitude the solution to that is working until the retirement age - as men already had to do, and everyone after you has to do.

That’s what people do if they can’t afford to retire, they keep working.

Would it be better if everyone could retire earlier? Sure. But it makes no sense for this cohort of women to be compensated - particularly when inequality between the sexes is still an issue in terms of financial parity between men and women born long after you.

We weren’t. Don’t make sweeping generalisations about a whole generation. The 14 years up to July were torture for me. I’ve been incandescent with anger at the destruction of this country for a very long time. I seem to have spent most of my life shouting at the news, certainly since Thatcher’s day with a very welcome respite at the turn of the century.

What some people fail to realise is that a direct result of the raising of the state pension age - for everyone - has meant that more people are looking for employment now. There used to fe a natural drop in employment at 60 / 65 as people took their state pension. That is no longer happening. In addition, many women are jo longer free to support their own children by providing free childcare for their grandchildren. Furthermore, many people will be physically incapable of doing the same job as they age.
The whole situation is more nuanced than “middle class women” waiting longer for a pension they don’t really need

@losingweightandgainingconfidence what is convenient? That I am a net contributor?

I don't think paying all WASPI women compensation is necessary. Everyone's personal circumstances are different and some simply won't need the money. And we can't afford it. As a working woman who can't imagine ever retiring, I can't afford to, I find the idea of retiring at 60 odd. But times have changed massively I know.

I think there is a lot of ignorance/ misunderstanding about pensions. A lot of people tend not to think about it until it is too late. I don’t think this is particularly the fault of women or of a particular age group.

I do worry that politicians today seem to pit one group against another (and this is not just against Labour. Reform/Conservatives do this with immigration). This does not help develop a coherent society.

No it isn’t there. Most of us affected accept that.

Hey@losingweightandgainingconfidence you said you were 25.
I don't think you've suffered for years AT ALL.

The people on this thread who whine
"We will work till we're 80 and never buy a house"

if you don't like this, fight it, change it, improve it!!!

Stop punching down on old people. Working till you're 80, suck it up, you just need to work more... once people get into their 60s they begin to die off from cancer, heart disease or are chronically ill, or have caring responsibilities. The poorer you are, the more likely to die.
In France they took to the streets to stop a raise in the retirement age - to 62. (It was raised by Macron in a questionable presidential decree).
Grow a backbone and fight for your rights to a decent retirement. Life is more than 9-6 in an office.

Your irony detector is broken.

Quite. It suits Starmer's narrative to pretend that all pensioners are comfortably off when the reality is that a sizeable number are already struggling to pay their heating costs.

A 50k pension pot would be enough to purchase an annuity of slightly-less than £200 a month. It's not going to be enough for most people to live on.

If this had happened to men, they wouldn't have laid down and said - roll all over me

Woman had lower pay for the same work, lower occupational pension from the same work, no pay and no rights to maternity or job security whilst bearing babies

and people think they can just magic up the pension money they have lost, then say whats done is done

as if it doesn't fucking matter

It does matter

It doesn’t matter because we’re old. It’s never been a great thing to be but now it’s the most iniquitous crime on the planet.

@Ginmonkeyagain do you think it's fair that a generation where more than 90% of people started work at 15, so will have worked for 52 years by the time the reach 67, who it was perfectly legal and accepted were paid less than men, who had no free childcare or tax free childcare or indeed any childcare unless family stepped up, who got 6 weeks maternity pay, whose jo bs only had to be held open for them for six weeks, who had no discrimination protection and could be sacked on a whim and yet continued to pay NI so that people older than them would get a pension should have the recompense of retiring earlier taken away from them?
The reality is that most of the younger whiners (they're rude about my generation, sauce for the goose etc) start actual work around 22 so will have worked and contributed for 45 years by the time they are 67.
When every person reaching pension age has h ad exactly the same conditions and protections for the whole of their working life then pension ages should obviously be the same. Until then every single person claiming their free childcare should worry that the waspi generation might decide in future that it isn't fair to pay for things that they didn't benefit from themselves and vote with their feet.

If men had been retiring at 60 whilst women had to work to 65 (after all they live longer) I think there would be little outrage about this change and little sympathy for those men who didn't know about it in time to still retire early.

There was already a sizeable number struggling with their heating costs before Labour were elected. Do you not recall the elderly lady who admitted staying on buses to keep warm? Johnson tried using it as a success story for public transport! Everyone is struggling to pay their heating bills, whatever their age. Do we keep pouring money into subsidies for one part of society, or try to fix the problem at source, for the benefit of all who are struggling?