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?

I repeat.....you get NI contributions for maternity leave and looking after young children. My guess is that when you had yours this was up to 18 years....but i could be wrong. Please read my post.

@Grammarnut I want it to be possible to take out the years of childbearing and that those years be counted for seniority, pension etc for women (ditto men if they do this to rear children - they cannot have the bearing part, of course) and that it be possible to train for a career (or job, most people have jobs) at various stages of our lives
All these things have been possible for decades. In fact for waspi women it was even easier as child benefit was universal and counted until the children were 16 whereas it’s not 12.
All of this is very easy to find out before you go on an uninformed rant.

the Ombudsman agreed that they have been disadvantaged
Quote? As far as I’ve read all the ombudsman has said if the government didn’t have an obligation for to write to individuals but since they did some individuals fell through the net and now so many women are claiming to have never heard a peep it was impossible to tell which ones were true hence a low amount of compensation for all effected based on age, the lowest being 1,000.

And any 'constraints in the 60's' you refer to - surely this group of people still retired at 60 so arent actually affected?

They lasted a lot longer than the sixties. I went to a girls' school (started 1978) so some subjects were just not taught at all.

In my first job we were not allowed to discuss salary but we had a good idea the men earned more than the women. At the time it was well known that a local employer did not employ women with children. This was illegal but they would 'make an offer you couldn't refuse' to not return after maternity leave.

Before 1975 a woman could not get a mortgage on her own, that changed with the sex discrimination act.

Men have not suffered the loss that Waspi women have.

Is this the very rare occasion where we need to reverse the sexes in the phrase 'When you're used to privilege, you will see equality as oppression'?

Men have not suffered the loss that Waspi women have. The retirement age for women was sixty and for men sixty-five.

Sorry, what?! You've just shown men had that loss for far longer.

This!! The whole campaign is an absolute embarrassment.

Women who had expected to retire at sixty had this changed without anyone asking us how we felt about it

I'm sorry, do you think that the government asked me how I felt about the two increases I've seen in my relatively short working life? Do you think it'll ask me how I feel about the increases yet to come? This isn't unique to WASPIs, and this is why people get annoyed. You say it's a feminist cause which all women should support, but then ignore any women who aren't within this group and whose retirement will be even more delayed than yours was.

That sums it up. I hate the fact that because if my age I get lumped into this. I'm a WASPI who thinks this is ridiculous, I'm a privileged boomer who struggled for years. I wasn't meant to be in these groups,

In the 90s I earned around 75% of what my male colleagues were earning, and I had more qualifications and experience than them. I had to work longer hours to justify them allowing me to continue working there as if it was a favour to me.

This 'women should have checked the money pages', as if! We had no money, the mortgage rates were through the bloody roof and I was cooking on a one burner hob I borrowed from work.

The 'equal pay thing took decades to embed and even now, women with children are less likely to get an equal wage to men.

There is a fair amount of rose tinted spectacles going about on this issue.

While £2-3,000 isn't a life changing sum it's also not an insignificant amount of money to many people (not WASPI, not planning on retiring as long as I'm still capable of work, could think of things to do with £2-3,000 that would make our lives more pleasant long term.)

Oh ffs. Were you an indentured servant, or someone who could have sought alternative employment with a better employer?

Women who had expected to retire at sixty had this changed without anyone asking us how we felt about it

WTF? I can't remember the government consulting me personally when income tax, VAT, fuel duty, alcohol duty, etc has been increased.

I don't remember them consulting me when Rishi created a load of exclusions re the Covid support schemes which meant I and 3 million others were excluded from the grants.

I don't remember them consulting my OH when they raised the retirement age from 65 to 67.

Nor when the put VAT on private schools, or reduced IHT relief on businesses.

It's not how government works, not today, nor ever really.

In the late 80s, I was earning more than equally qualified/experienced men where I worked. So it really wasn't universal/automatic that women earned less. I only knew that because I hacked into the payroll software that the firm used! (What kind of plonker would use "sesame" as the password!!). I expected to discover I was paid less than the 3 older blokes who worked at a similar managerial level, and very shocked to find them earning less - all different amounts. Same with the administration and other staff - all different, even for doing the same job, but certainly no blanket patterns of women staff earning less than the men doing the same kind of job. I certainly wasn't on tens of thousands more, but there were certainly differences of a few thousand between the four of us at management level and several hundred difference between the more junior and admin staff. It's what happens in smaller firms without rigid pay structures - everyone "negotiated" their own pay at annual reviews - some were better at negotiating than others!

The 'double shift' certainly exists and has long existed for some women, but you can't blame successive governments for that; it's the fault of men who don't pull their weight and of women who put up with men who don't pull their weight.

I ran payroll and had a better password but I obviously knew what everyone earned. A tally it's amazing how disinterested you get if you are looking at the figures every day but I would have noticed if men were getting more than me for equivalent jobs.

I worked in construction.

Surely, it's a bit ick to expect them to bail out women who retired at 60?

You are confused - we didn't retire at 60, that's the point of the complaint! I received my government pension at 66.

I don't expect compensation - there was plenty of notice and talk about it for years beforehand. But I was particularly annoyed at the Coalition adding an extra year taking it from 65 to 66 - thanks Cameron & Clegg!

To answer your question, some are wanting compensation because there was a second increase in the age threshold for them for which they had very little notice. It's the amount of notice they were given that made it impossible for them to make any sensible plans. This is not a perfect analogy, but imagine your rent is fixed for 10 years. That's plan A. Then you're told that actually, it's only going to be fixed for 8 years. So you make plan B to cope with the expected increase. You're not overly happy with it, but it's OK. Then five years later, ie three years before you're now expecting the increase, they decide that actually it's going up in six months' time. At this point you have a real problem because you have so little time left to sort something out, and also because you've already made financial decisions based on plan B. These may not be reversible so your options for a plan C are very seriously limited in a way that they wouldn't have been if you'd had more notice.

To those who think 'well nothing's certain and these things change all the time', the Ombudsman found that it wasn't the change itself but the delay in communicating it to people that was badly handled. This is why they deserve compensation.

I am a Waspi myself and I started out thinking that if I knew about it, why didn't everyone else? But reading the Ombudsman's report and their recommendations for remedy made me realise that actually, it's a lot more complicated and there are indeed some people who have been very poorly treated and should be compensated.

If anyone is interested in finding out what actually happened and what the Ombudsman said, you can find the report here https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/publications/womens-state-pension-age-our-findings-department-work-and-pensions-communication/summary and their reasoning about their recommendations for remedy here https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/sites/default/files/Women%E2%80%99s-State-Pension-age-our-findings-on-injustice-and-associated-issues.pdf

Surely paid maternity leave, shared parental leave and free childcare help accommodate women's biology and their role in bearing and rearing each generation?

As a Waspi woman myself, of course I would have liked to get my state pension at 60 rather than 66, but I don't see the equalisation of the state pension age for men and women as a huge injustice for women. I don't think the 'double shift' argument would apply to all women. What about single women or women without children? How would they differ from single men without children?

The Ombudsman recognised that most women were made aware of the changes but some women were not but made a decision to recommend a small amount of compensation for all Waspi women. For lots of women, this would be a 'nice to have' but unnecessary payment that they did not need, a bit like the Winter Fuel Allowance going to well-off pensioners.

It is indeed complicated. However there’s little doubt that women born in that era have suffered from discrimination, for most of their lives. The final insult is the Government’s refusal to acknowledge the findings of the Ombudsman and to compensate these women.

Unlike now when life is perfect for women.

It’s not the job of the Government to compensate women for discrimination. Otherwise they’d constantly be on the hook for it. as we haven’t magically solved discrimination against women (or indeed other minority groups).

The finding that compensation was due was because of improper notification, not because WASPI women were a unique group to suffer discrimination.

I didn’t say it was. I said the final insult is to ignore the Ombudsman’s report.

I think there are some really mad comments on here supporting compensation, but montydonsbluescarf has made a good point. a friend affected also explained this to me - its the second age increase made at relatively short notice that messed up her plans (that she had put in place because she had known years ago about shift to 65 retirement). still dont agree with compensation though - unless i can have some too!