Feminism claims to be about equality and not pro-female, but why no outcry about current Tax law?

[KarenC1983]

The biggest lie I think I've ever heard from a feminist tell me is that feminism nowadays is about equality and not pro female, whether this is a lie they knowingly tell themselves or are just ignorant of their own views remains to be seen.

If feminism is about equality then why has there been no outcry about the fact us women don't pay tax between the ages of 60 and 65, yet men do? If this case was the other way around, feminists would be protesting in the streets and there would be a major outcry for this law to be changed immediately.

This isn't a some petty or minor inequality, this is probably one of the biggest inequalities in modern society, where men lose thousands upon thousands of pounds in tax because of something they can't change, meaning their retirement age is also a lot higher than us females.

Why not outcry? Because when inequality benefits females, the silence from feminist groups is deafening.

By Tax I mean National Insurance

I am not an annountant nor 55, so didn't know.

Sorry 60.

If you're upset I taje it you are lobbying your MP?

Why aren't men protesting in the streets. ....

Looks like no one can actually give a valid answer because they know this is a complete disgrace and is bigger than any inequality facing us females in this country.

Why should men have to pay National Insurance for a full 5 years.

Now the government hinted at making it equal and some females are moaning about this. Us females are getting something more than men based on how we were born, yet feminist fought for years to eradicate this?

Like I said, feminists who spout about equality seem to fall very silent when the inequality benefits women. Hypocrites the lot of them

Have you got a government link source for this? Everything I read says you stop paying once you read state pension age which is in the process of being equalised.

State pension age for men is 65, for females it is 60, so men pay national insurance for a full 5 years longer than us females and quite right It should be equalised! why should they pay more

Us females

I'm skeptical about that.
Anyway, aren't retirement ages being equalised?

I think you are a little out of date then. Maybe it is because you are searching using 'females' instead of 'women'.

Therefore women born before 5th April 1950 are not required to pay National Insurance Contributions (NICs) once they are 60 or over. Women born between 6th April 1950 and 6th December 1953 will have a State Pension age between 60 and 65 and will cease to pay contributions when they reach State Pension Age.

What you're saying is untrue OP.

And it wasn't women that brought that law in originally, and women campaigned even to be first allowed to work (and thus pay tax) and then to be allowed to work even once they were married (and thus pay tax).

The laws originally were worked around the idea that women wouldn't be allowed to work, and would be kept at home by their husbands doing housework and raising children. Many women don't even qualify for a decent pension because of this, and certainly didn't have a chance of getting a private pension for themselves.

It's now being equalised (albeit with insufficient notice that's going to put lots of women in a very poor situation)

Sorry is females a banned word now even though the word is feminism? Have to use the word women?

Using out of date facts and past laws to justify women paying less tax, typical feminists.

Put a lot of women in a very poor situation, paying the same tax men have been for decades?

Oh do give over OP.

The gvt are in the process of sorting this out, when they do, fine, no one is arguing.

It's not the raison d'etre of feminists to fight for men's rights in one of the few circumstances when things may appear to benefit women over men.

A complete disgrace?

It's a complete disgrace that women still aren't paid as much as men for doing the same jobs. I don't see many men volunteering to take a pay cut to even things out.

Your aggressive tone baffles me.

Are you a woman? Do you vote? Do you enjoy any of the many benefits that the campaign for equal rights has brought women?

The pay gap for the new generation is a complete myth, jobs are advertised with a pay grade, not an amount for different genders, no one is stopping women earn as much as men.

Every feminist I have talked to spouts equality and not pro female but they are silent when inequality benefits them.

Not banned, no. But it does tend to be used by boys and men who feel inadequate, obviously that can't be you though as you are one of 'us females'

gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-job-rather-jennifer

Pay gap is not a myth, and can be proven in studies, not just as anecdotes from real life.

As we have said, this disparity in national insurance is a hang-over from when women were excluded from work, and expected to go into a life of domestic servitude to their husbands. It is now being rectified.

"Spouts"
"Us females"
"one of the biggest inequalities in modern society"

Alrighty then...

they are silent when inequality benefits them Who is them?

This anomoly won't benefit me. The state pension age for me is 67. I expect to be working and paying tax and NI until then.

Maybe the poor men can pick up a few hours in home care. It will likely involve caring for other old men who need toilet help and the like. They could make up for the few thousand they lost out, in wages.

Your information about tax law and pension age is wrong. Pension ages are already being equalised.

And I'm a feminist, and I am quite happy for my feminism to be female-centred.

I am 57, I will have to work, pay tax and national insurance until I am 67. As a young married woman in 1979 I was advised not to take out a private pension, it would not be worth it as I would be giving up work when I had children, and would be retiring at 60 anyway.
Get your facts right op, "us females" pay the same as men.

Since 6 April 2010, the age when women can claim their State Pension is gradually increasing to bring it in line with the State Pension age for men. Between April 2016 and November 2018, State Pension age for women will increase gradually to 65. That's from the National Insurance pages on Directgov. I'm sure it was announced some years earlier as 2010 seems very recent to me - have memory like sieve though.

I have a public sector pension due to kick in at 60 (not enough to retire on, sadly) but it also kicks in for men at the same age. It's been equal since I started work there nearly 40 years ago. A lot of occupational pensions do the same, I believe (including the other little bits and pieces of pensions I've picked up along the years). Finally the state pension too is catching up with the 21st century. Do you see women campaigning against it? Not many, I don't suppose. Are we trying to avoid paying that extra 5 years' contribution? No-one that I know. Who built the discrepancy into the respective retirement ages in the first place? A government full of feminists? Don't think we've had one of those yet

KarenC1983 wrote - "us women don't pay tax between the ages of 60 and 65, yet men do?"

Would you rather live on a small pension that is too small to be taxed, or live on a job income that is larger than the pension, even after tax has been deducted?

Since 2010, the UK Government has been raising the state pension age for women. Today, the state pension age for women is actually 63 not 60. For men, it's 65. The age for women will continue to increase until November 2018 when the age will be set to 65 for men and women. That's a phased-in equalisation of the age because, although the government would probably have loved to have reset the ages overnight back in the mid-1990s when they changed the state pension laws, it was rightly considered too unfair to suddenly change the rules for women (when no sudden change for men was involved). Even with the phased-in approach, some women are now experiencing unfairness in some aspects of the age equalisation process.

The difference in the state pension age has, for decades, led to poverty for many older women, because women were deprived of the opportunity to continue earning a much larger income from a job during their early 60s. Men were not deprived of this opportunity. (That's before we even think about the negative effects of the marriage bar that forced women in some jobs to stop work when they married).

Pensions are not tax-free because they are pensions. The state pension is only tax-free because it is much less than the tax-free allowance. If a woman also has a private pension, which takes her income above the personal allowance, she will have to pay tax on that pension.

There is nothing stopping a 64-year-old man voluntarily reducing his income to the same as a female state pensioner, if he wants to legally avoid paying tax. Men won't do that because they are financially better off earning a much larger income from their jobs because they will have more money left to spend after tax has been deducted.

I'm 60 this year and won't get my state pension until 2022 when I'm 66. I don't understand the bit about November 2018 and equalising men and women's pension ages at 65. Please explain only I'm getting excited!

Hmmm. It is worth asking who actually made the retirement age of women 60?
When the State Pension was brought in in 1908 it was for individuals (men and women) over 70 with a higher rate paid to married men - women being seen of course as a dependent.

In 1925 the age was reduced to 65, meaning many men had to wait to until over 65 to get the higher married rate (because men like to marry younger women dontcha know).

In 1940 the pension age for women was cut to 60 to ensure that for most couples the married rate would be paid as soon as the husband reached 65, thus the anomaly in NI payments.

So, historically, it was the overwhelmingly male Government who decreed that
women were not individuals to be taxed or paid a state pension as individuals but a dependent half of a couple.

It was also an overwhelmingly male Government that decreed married working women could pay a reduced NI stamp. The catch, of course, was that this reduced stamp meant you got a reduced pension as a married woman.

I married in 1966 when this married woman's stamp still applied. I opted to pay the full NI whack to get my pension as an individual (and because I never saw DH as an automatic bread ticket).

I worked until I was 70 and paid class 4 NI until then, so paid NI for 50 years by the way.

But many women were forced to retire at 60 whether they wanted to or not.
So in terms of overall fairness OP it was a case of swings and roundabouts - in some instances men gained by working longer, in some instances women by paying NI for fewer years (but how much gain was that considering they got a smaller pension?)

In any case pension and NI equalisation is now well under way.

So the unfairness was really triggered way back in 1908 when married women were considered dependents of men and exacerbated by laws passed in 1925 and 1940 plus the reduced married women's stamp (abolished in 1977).