Pension age in women

[Nellodee]

I’ve been thinking about some of the problems we have in the U.K. currently - the social care crisis, childcare costs. I had a thought that these things are greater problems due to the change in retirement age from 60. Clearly, expecting women to take on childcare and social care duties is regressive, and not all women would spend their sixties caring for their neighbouring generations, but a lot would have. We got rid of that, and we didn’t seem to effectively replace it with anything else.
Does anyone else think there is a connection between current issues and the change of retirement age? And the question that is puzzling me - is it economically more cost effective as a country to pay pensions earlier than later if a large enough proportion of those retiring spend much of their free time caring? And I’d this is the case, how could you re-implement it, but in a less sexist format?

That's a really interesting observation. A 60 year old is likely to have parents between 80 and 90 and pre-school grandkids. Age 60-70 probably are the biggest family-care years, apart from when your own kids are young!

But it might be even more fundamental than that. Watch this brilliant Ted talk by Elizabeth Warren

It talks about how the shift from single-income families to dual-income families over the last 50 years has hugely reduced family resilience. Rather than make families wealthy, costs (especially housing) just increased to reflect the higher average family income! And families which used to have a whole extra adult for childcare/elderly care/care for sick family members/extra income when the main earner lost their job etc now need both adults working to cover their basic costs and so have no contingency.

Arguably the root of the care crisis is women entering the workplace! But it's much better in so many ways for women to be financially independent. I certainly don't think we should roll that back!

Perhaps the proposed move to a 4 day working week is the solution? It gives all adults more spare capacity for caring - or whatever their personal /family needs are.

I think you have a good point. Thanks for the Elizabeth Warren talk. I will watch it next week.

My thinking is that a lot of things that require time have gone by the wayside. Kids are not school ready as much, the number of dc’s friends who have no idea how to use a knife and fork (don’t get me started on that one), volunteering at school, elderly family and neighbours left to their own devices for too long, and, simply women running themselves ragged.

I sound very simplistic, I know, and taking women out of the workforce is not my answer. I don’t think that there is an answer. But thank you for raising the subject. It has played on my mind. I will read other replies with interest.

Maybe people are finally waking up to the unpaid labour women have been doing for decades. We have healthcare workers on the NHS threads saying families should be forced to do it. One even said that maternity leave could be shortened by 6 months and the other 6 months could be used to care for an elderly parent if needed. As usual women are the default setting.

Women have been in the workplace as a majority percentage for the last 50 odd years though. From about 50% of women working in 1970 to nearer to 75% now. Does the increase by 25 percentage points really account for the care crisis? Is it not as much to do with families not living in inter generational households any more and with more dispersed families? Rather than families all living in the same few streets as each other?

I think we need to be careful not to see women's role as being the unpaid carer.

In the early days of women's liberation the idea that women should be part of the work force and equal at home was based on a more hippie / alternative way of live.

But simply everyone would work part time, those adults with child care responsibilities would share equalling in earning money and beinga carer.

However, niavely, despite the presence of socialist who could endlessly speak about the perils of capitalism, women didn't reckon with the oportunity for economic exploitatin this created. ie once it became more common for families to have 2 earing adults, guess what house prices rose, so that unless both adults were working full time you couldn't afford a home.

Rather than homes or the family unit benefiting from the flexibility of 2 adults equally sharing, it became a rat race of less time to be a family just to keep a roof over their heads.

The other early, again niave demand, was for locally based, free 24 hour child care. This was not just to allow the adults better oportunities to work, but to allow local children to grow up together. But as we know this never happened and the childcare needed to allow both parents to be working now costs more than many can earn.

And we are now trapped in this exploitative situation where basics costs are so high most people have to work long anti social hours.

And no I dont think the solution is for older people to be unpaid carers either of children or those who need personal care.

Women have always been part of the workforce, often working from home in addition to their domestic work. Joint families have not been the norm in Europe for centuries, if ever. The crisis is, I think, caused by the lack of realisation of how much work women did socially, bringing up children, caring for the old, in addition to the work they were paid for and general domestic work, because that work was never valued. Women do need to be financially independent but that does not necessarily mean having a job outside the home. Support for women/men staying at home would protect the unpaid work women used to do and that we need someone to do. We need a more co-operative society that supports people rather than one that assumes that only economic relationships matter.

Really interesting observation. You can see why the government raised the retirement age - it is increasingly expensive to fund state pensions when people are living well into their 80s and 90s. And of course they had to equalise the retirement age for men and women out of fairness. But you're right, it has had the unintended consequence of making lots of women in their early 60s unavailable to help out either with the care of their grandchildren or their own elderly parents. And so now we have a social care crisis that the government has to sort out instead. Oh well, if it makes society appreciate women's unpaid labour more, then that's all good.

Only kidding, it will never happen.

The poster who said about a four day working week had a good idea, that could make a lot of difference.

There is definitely something to be said for the OP’s observation that having older women in the workforce has left fewer available to do unpaid labour in the home. But it seems that many of these women (and some men too) ARE returning to unpaid labour in the form of what the government describes as the ‘economically inactive’ (i.e. mainly those in their 50s and 60s who left the workforce during the pandemic and never returned). I believe many of these people are doing so to fill gaps in care and to enable younger relatives to continue working.

Caroline Criado Perez makes some very interesting observations in her book Invisible Women. I hope I’m not doing her a disservice when I give my interpretation of what she describes. Basically, she says that many countries had an economic boom when women entered the workplace in the 60s. 70s and later. Apart from what these women themselves contributed to the economy, there was also on increase in GDP arising from the fact that much unpaid work became paid work (e.g. childcare, social care, cleaning and so on).

Now it seems that the economy is contracting and the government is citing the increase in the number of ‘economically inactive’ people as one of the reasons. My view is that this ‘economic inactivity’ is largely due to the fact that many women are being forced back into unpaid work for many reasons such as the unavailability of social care for older people and childcare being too expensive for many families.

Lots of interesting thoughts here. I'll put that Ted talk on my list, and I got Invisible Women for Christmas so I'm already looking forward to that one.

It's a fantastic book but I warn you, it will make you very, very angry.

Snap! I read other people's comments and put it on my Christmas list.

Comments saying they could only read out in bits. And had to keep having breaks.

Going to admit that intrigued me, being a pick it up don't put it down to the end sort of person.

I'm currently a break whilst I digest the last chapter I read.

It is honestly mind blowing.

And depressing!

But really well written.

We truly are invisible women.

Bollocks I've not changed name.

Bollocks Arsehole wank badger..

Goes off to immediately rectify. Before I forget.

Certainly for me my DM was able to return to work full time when I was a baby because my gran retired at 60 that year and looked after me whilst DM worked.

In comparison my DC's grandmother's have had to work til mid 60s so not been available for more than as hoc childcare.

My mother is retired (she could retire at 60 and has been retired for about 12 years) but she doesn’t fancy helping me with childcare even though I’m a single mum and live nearby. So a lower retirement age isn’t the answer imo. The universal state pension is so expensive to the taxpayer and I’m concerned about inter generational inequality.

also it’s absolutely sexist for women to get a pension at a different age.

@SueVineer you are talking about your own individual experience. Of course some women won't want to look after grandchildren, just as others will love it. But we need to look at the population as a whole.

I have no doubt that a lot of voluntary roles are unfilled and that this will get worse as the pension age rises. It tends to be retired people at the younger end of the age range who do most of the work. Yes, lots of us can point to octogenarians and even nonogenarians who work in the local charity shop. But they are the exception.

Women and men receive the state pension now at the same age. No one, apart from Back to 60, is pushing for a reduction for women AFAIK. And our state pension is woeful compared with the rest of Europe.

I have no idea what to do about any of it.

What definitely didn't help re: childcare, was policy by and i could be wrong, labour, maybe under yvette coopers? watch, that dictated that if someone was looking after more than 2 kids, they had to be registered childminders and jump through all the official hoops in order to satisfy the policy.
Gone was the ability to send your kid/s and 3 or 4 neighbours kids, to the woman at the bottom of the street to be minded, for a couple of quid and a box of chocolates, instead parents had to pay going rates and the minders had to pay for stair gates, fire guards and all the rest of it.

The trouble is they want it both ways. They put the pension age up and up and then moan and whine when there is no one available to care for elderly relatives so they can be discharged from hospital.

The penny is starting to drop with certain organisations (and i include the NHS in this) that they have been relying on womens good will and women not working for far too long.

The original idea was that husband and wife would retire roughly together, since 5 years was the average age gap. Why is it sexist to have women retire earlier? Women do most of the caring, the social planning, the home running and could do with a break from the double shift.

It’s sexist to have a lower retirement age for women because it’s blatant discrimination on grounds of sex. Lots of women don’t work and “run a home” lots of men are active in childcare and lots of women don’t work etc. you can’t just assume everyone has the same life as you.

about 20% of people remain single and child free. It’s not the 50s any more

Im married and child free by choice In the 90s i could see the way this was going. And i wasnt going to be made a mug of by being expected by society to run myself ragged.

A read of the step parenting boards is a damn good example of women being expected to do the bulk of childcare even when the kid isnt fucking theirs.

@SueVineer Women still statistically do the bulk of the shit work

I explained why the retirement age for women was lower. Despite some men doing child care and housework it's not the norm, and women often carry out the care of elderly relatives. I retired at 60 because that was the rule for my profession. I think the age of retirement for men and women a) should be the same, b) be lower. Raising the retirement age to c. 67 means there are far fewer active years left to enjoy retirement, which is unfair all round (not all of us define ourselves by working, either).

One option would be to raise the state retirement age, to say 75, but pay generous support to those who are unable to work for health reasons, or who are caring within the family, either for the young or the old.

State pensions could be reserved for those actually too old to work. Not for healthy people in their 60s and early 70s to take an extended holiday.

Most women are still running ragged to not only meet the demands of men/children/ grandchildren/elderly relatives, but work in stressful or backbreaking jobs too. Without a social commitment to provide alternatives,the whole system will collapse. Oh , wait…

such an interesting thread, thanks for starting OP