Women’s pension gap :commission findings and why, and what needs to be done

[Limehawkmoth]

an interim report has just been published by Pension Commission. It states 15 million people are not saving enough

and further in details it states
“On Monday, details of its interim report, signalled that a shake-up of pensions in Britain must involve measures to close a chasm in retirement savings between men and women.
According to the government-backed body, women approaching retirement have on average half the private pension savings of men, with a median pension wealth of £81,000 versus £156,000.”

this isn’t a surprise. We know that even now 75% of tax breaks for pension payments go to men - so they’re saving more and therefore getting more out of tax system for those payments.

the question I have and want to know, is why? Why aren’t women saving at same rate as men? Men and women are both experiencing cost of living crisis, but this isn’t new anyway even before we had cost of living crisis.

so, What are the choices or issues you made/had as a women that meant you haven’t saved at level you “should”

And if the “shake up” is needed to close the gender pension gap what exactly would you say to governemnt was needed to do that? What is it that women need to be even able to save as much as men?

Women walk away from jobs with decent pension schemes to have dc. Then they work part time and many casually. My cleaner for example. Employers are required to enrol employees in pension schemes but many women don’t have this model of employment. Although more will going forward. Plus women rely on their husbands! I do have a local government pension but my DH earned 10 times what I did! So who had the bigger pension? Him - obviously.

What is it that women need to be even able to save as much as men?

Equal pay, for a start. You can't save what you've never received.

Equal expenditure - from the 'pink tax' to women being more often made responsible for the costs of children, there's less left to save.

@ProfessorBinturong Equal pay for equal work has been law since the 70s. If it was a given that all women wanted exactly the same as men, they could forgo looking after dc, going part time, running small businesses and crack on with their employment. Many simply don’t want this and like part time work with flexible hours. To have this, pensions suffer. This may or may not matter depending on family circumstances. It’s not necessarily awful if women are happy caring for dc and the second income is high. It also reflects the cost of childcare where the second income is sacrificed. It’s just family economics.

Does that reliance on man’s salary and pension then not create part of that problem when divorce happens.

divorce is common
even if 50s and 60s

yep pension sharing agreements are part of divorce, but a single person living on own needs more money than 50% of two people living togther, and splitting a pension means both parties getting less than half due to admin costs etc

im not saying that it’s worng for women to prioritise kids- I’m saying isn’t this the root of it? How can the pensions commission close the gap as priority when women are ones that take financial hit for children - how do we solve that? As women, what would we suggest if we think outside the box

Whilst equal work for equal pay has been on statute since 70s, it does not mean this has been achieved. The uk pay gap still stands at 12.8% when you include jobs done part time ( this is calculated at full time equivalent so is rate paid not salary paid)

and pay gap has been mandated reporting for two decades and made very little difference

the reasons are complex, but it doesn’t simply come down to less hours worked. It’s the value assigned to predominantly women’s roles in organsations (as per Asda cases) and simple “unconscious bias” (or less generously good old fashioned discrimination). We know pay gap massively opens once women become mothers, even in full time professional roles. A lot of folks don’t realise that the gap actually increases with age, long after kids are at school, mums returned to work and even when kids fly the nest.

so, if pension commissions wants to improve permissions, is the biggest part of solution to give the gender pay gap reporting some teeth? Something tangible that will actually close the pay gap?

countries that have closed the pay gap, and still have plenty of mothers working and not working, are using pay transparency. Indeed if we’d still been in EU, we’d have the law coming into place that any organisation with a gap greater than 5% must do complete pay transparency with all employees. There will be fines and penalties for gender pay gaps. The change also mandates the gender diversity (% male vs female) at higher levels of leadership.

nordic countries have long since made public all individuals tax records. This means there is no pint hiding salary. Makes gender pay gap reporting gap pretty obvious at individual level and therefore pay gap is less . Iceland is pioneer with versus laws including daily fines for organisations.

so a lot could be done so women’s work is at least valued at same level as men’s, prorata…

Women are more likely ime, either not to return or give up work to care for disabled DC. Some disabled children just have too many appointments, too much admin to coordinate all the professionals and/or poor/non existent school attendance for women to be able to work full time and get the pension contributions. Some women end up home educating their DC. Carers allowance is a pittance, compared to the NMW - how are women supposed to live on it, in lieu of working and save for a pension?

Until the education system for disabled children is sorted out, so that disabled children’s needs can be met in schools; and the NHS services and social care services for children are better funded; then women will end up spending their time fighting for every little bit of support for their disabled children, rather than working and saving for a pension.