AIBU to think that WASPI women should not be entitled to compensation?

[mugglewump]

They've been on the news again marching for compensation in a climate where the government is having to make very difficult decisions about funding to stop our debt ever increasing.

I think there are far more deserving cases for goverment money than women who didn't act on information at the time and sort their pensions out or keep working (p/t or f/t) until retirement age.

Moreover, the people paying this compensation are those who will be working until they are 67 to 70 to claim a state pension. Surely, it's a bit ick to expect them to bail out women who retired at 60?

Sorry, but I still think the onus was still on you to do your own due diligence. If you choose to rely on a state pension from the UK but are completely out of touch with anything that is actually happening in the UK over a period of several decades, I think you have to just accept that things might have moved on a bit in your absence.

If you weren't maintaining any ties with the UK at all, wouldn't it have made sense to stop paying the NICs and invest in a pension where you were actually living?

I think that's really quite an overstatement of what was in the report. It states they were 28 months late writing in the 2000s - so the 90s, which is mostly what people seem to be talking about here, is irrelevant. They reviewed a big sample of pamphlets etc produced about it and found errors in a couple (and some of those were tiny). As I said, I disagree with the logic of the report but I think it's worth noting the very small scale of what they felt was done wrong: 28 months late in the mid-2000s. Hence the relatively small compensation suggested. They didn't back, at all, the idea put forward by some of the WASPI campaigners that they should be compensated just for not being able to retire at 60 or given the money they would have received if the policy had never changed.

Well I wasn't informed but I knew about it. Would I qualify or not? Honestly I think people need to move on. I think the WASPI women have all got their pensions now so it's over.

I knew about the changes and I was still in my 20s. I find it strange that people are falling over themselves to say they’d never read a paper.

Why should you get compensation for a policy change when I won't?

Because that particular policy change was botched. The gap between the retirement age those women expected and the actual retirement age was 6 years. The notification period allowed was outside the governments’ own guidelines to start with, and some women received less than a years’ notice. In addition, much of the information in the DWP notifications was incorrect - they made a pigs ear of notifying the women affected.

Or watched the news on TV..... I'm not sure of people should be proud of that lack of interest in their financial future or current affairs. They should be embarrassed. This happened in the mid nineties. Mumsnet was founded only 5 years after the change was made - it wasn't the dark ages.

Plenty of WASPI women worked after having kids. Staying at home instead of working had already become a personal preference rather than a necessity by 1980, if not earlier.

Compared to today, more women in employment would have received DB pensions as more companies offered them.

My mum is a WASPI woman and wouldn’t dream of campaigning for compensation given how widely promoted the changes to SPA were at the time. I support her view.

The idea that we must all support one side of an argument because we are all women makes no sense to me and does us no favours

You weren't "paying in". National Insurance isn't a pension scheme whereby the amount you receive is proportionate to the contributions you made. WASPI women paying NI were paying the pensions of the (far, far smaller) number of those who were, at the time, receiving pensions. As a generation, the WASPI women (born 1950-1955) were significant beneficiaries of the welfare state - their parents received child benefit, universally, for each child after the first. Social housing was more readily available from the 1960s onwards, far more so than now. If they went to university or other higher education, it was significantly subsidised for every student, and large grants for those who were eligible.
There was significant sexism, in access to grammar and university education, and also to the workplace. But that is not a reason for women now to have to pay towards older women who were the victims of it.
Compensation, whether the £70 billion or so promised by John MacDonnell, the £36 billion often mentioned now, or the £11 billion the government said it would not pay in December, is utterly unaffordable. People are living for far longer than they were in the 1950s, and there are more of them reaching retirement age in the first place because of demographic change.
There was 15 years' notice at the least, and people unaware of it must really have been paying absolutely no attention to anything. I remember hearing about it and I was doing GCSEs at the time!

"Because that particular policy change was botched."

@Lovelysausagedogscrumpy show me a policy change that is enacted fairly, accurately and successfully and I'll eat my hat.

You are correct. This second, pretty major change was definitely insufficiently communicated. There are only a couple of months worth of birthdates in 1954 which lost out hugely when the sliding scale was suddenly accelerated. I had to work two extra years more than my friend who was a week older than me.

Well, you don't know me and all my friends - we all joke about how the compensation would be lovely, but the reality is we'd much rather not receive it, and we have all known for decades when we would receive our state pensions.

No, we didn't all get the information at the time! I was a couple of weeks away from SP when I was told 'sorry, you've got to keep on working'!

I’ve never had social housing or free childcare but it’s ok for young women to say I shouldn’t have my pension yet - the same women who gave decades to build up a private pension and might yet retire before their state pension becomes payable.

@MyDeftDuck please explain your situation. Because even in the WASPI evidence there is nothing that suggests women were told mere weeks before they were due to retire. So I'm afraid I don't believe you.

Plenty of WASPI women worked after having kids. Staying at home instead of working had already become a personal preference rather than a necessity by 1980, if not earlier.

Bit of a sweeping statement there. Staying home to look after kids was a necessity for many - no wrap around childcare, no government funding for child care even if you could find it outside of family - and no statutory maternity pay or conditions until 1987. The first maternity leave legislation was provided via the Employment Protection Act 1975 and then the Employment Act 1980 but for the first 15 years, only about half of working women were eligible for it because of long qualifying periods of employment. In 1980 you could still be sacked when you told your employer you were pregnant.

I've never had social housing or free childcare either, and I will have to work until I'm at least 67. Not sure what your point is, exactly?

It's a shame that we can't all retire as early as we'd like, but we're all living longer than previous generations did, so the system had to change. All people are saying is that, if you don't have other savings to tide you over, you will need to work until retirement age. Most of us will have to do the same.

Do you think a private pension is free money or something?
If you were working you could pay into a private pension if you wanted. Literally nothing stopped you investing your own money.

Actually those if us born at the end of 1953 were affected pretty badly and there's always a cliff edge. If my mother had only got a move on and had me 8 hours earlier I could have haf my pension six months earlier. She didn't so I waited.

The second change was originally pretty brutal but they did change it so the second change was limited to 18 months from what I remember. I was born late 53 and my pension was delayed by a further 18 months so you must have already been due to retire later than her.

I can’t pretend I know the entire ins and outs of the issue, but I can speak from experience of my ex-mil who is a WASPI woman.

She 100% knew about the changes, I remember speaking to her about it years ago.

Her main gripe (and in my opinion this is true for many of the women), is that she feels angry that she didn’t get the earlier pension/retirement.

She too will speak on all the inequalities of days gone by, how much harder women had it and that they deserved to retire at 60 for various reasons.

I just wanted to say that I don’t think women have it a whole lot easier these days, it’s not my experience and that of my friends anyway.

My ex-mil didn’t work for years once she had children. This was 100% a choice, she’s told me herself there was a nursery in the village. Nothing wrong with not working, was more common then I suppose as families could survive on one income. She simply won’t accept that this was a privilege though. When she did go back to work very part time when all the children had left home and were grown up, it was just her “fun” money.

Her husband had a professional job which would now require a degree, however back then didn’t. They were able to afford a lovely home and decent standard of living on one income. The house value skyrocketed.

I feel like men took more responsibility for the family in those days and didn’t just take off as easily as they do now (but I could be wrong!).

Me on the other hand- her son took off and left me as a single parent, pays the legal minimum through CMS which is a terrible service as anyone has used it knows. He’s self employed so can play the system, less than £40 a month he pays towards his kids.

I have no choice but to work. I would have loved to stay at home while my children were young, I was devastated leaving my 6 month old in nursery for 50+ hours a week.

I had to go to university to get a degree, to get a job earning less than 30k a year. As others have mentioned it’s near on impossible to get any kind of “decent” job without it now. Oh and the student finance I have to pay back, what a privilege!

I did all this while juggling the kids on my own, ex has them two nights a month. I’d love to have a better job but not everyone has the intelligence to get a high paying job. I struggle mentally to do what I do already and juggle the family.

It's been hard to stay in the workplace as a woman with children. I find talk of equality in the workplace is just that- talk. Getting flexible working is difficult and you are penalised for it career wise without a doubt. Taking time off for ill children gets you further penalised and treated badly. It's not fun.

I am lucky compared to many of my counterparts in that I managed to buy a property, but it’s not in a nice area. The house is falling apart but I cannot afford repairs. It makes me sad that I am not bringing my kids up in a safe area.

Yes I get “help” towards my childcare. I would have much rather been able to spend time with them though for a few years at least and had a supportive family unit, and when I went to work just had my money for “fun”.

Don’t get me wrong I do feel sorry for WASPI women, just like I feel sorry for anyone that gets a bit “screwed” over by government changes… like those who were better off on tax credits being moved to universal credit and being worse off etc etc. but changes happen!

And I think there will be a few genuine women who were not aware, or didn’t understand. As others have said it was well publicised. I can think of circumstances such as women with very limited literacy, or living in a DV/controlling relationships that may not have had the opportunity to be ready for the change.

My ex-mil will tell people now that she wasn’t told, never had any letters etc. but I know this is a lie because she discussed it with me years ago and just says that now as it fits with the narrative.

And I know not all women will have been like my ex-mil and had that life and some did work and things like that but between herself and her friends I gathered the set up was very common in those days.

People of my age have no idea really what age we will be able to retire or take a state pension as the goalposts will more than likely change again and again, if we get one at all.

It's bonkers isn't it.

I was in my 20s too, and with zero interest in pensions. You couldn't move for bloody articles, programmes, info about it. It was massive news and there was huge uproar about the changes.

"Very odd. Only the possessors of vaginas have been subject to this treatment though so you do you if you like to celebrate unfairness. Very fashionable just now, well done."

Some would argue it was unfair to men to have to work longer for the same pension see espite having lower life expectancy which was the reason state pension ages were equalised in the first place..

It would certainly be unfair to younger generations to subside this further when they face lower pensions, even longer retirement ages, lower benefits and far higher housing costs.

It was on the news daily. It was in every major newspaper for weeks and weeks. It was on billboards at the time. Everyone was talking about it at the time. It would be almost possible to avoid knowing. If people choose to not listen to news or read newspapers that's on them.

It isn't about each woman's individual status, necessarily. It's about a generation and the averages. The WASPI generation faced many difficulties, including sexism, which are not the same as younger women, but also had (as a generation) advantages, including from the welfare state.

I think there are a lot of WASPI women doing the same.