Why women’s pensions need more attention to reach equality
By Helen Morrissey
International Women’s Day asks us to imagine a world free of bias and look towards a more equitable future. Equal pay and financial prospects are integral to this but remain an area where women continue to struggle as they remain significantly lower paid than men.
This issue affects women throughout their working lives and leaves them retiring with a total pension income that is on average a whopping 37.9 per cent less than men. This is more than double the gender pay gap, which currently stands at around 15.5 per cent.
There are many reasons for this, and they run deep. Even the state pension, which forms the very backbone of people’s retirement, is not immune. Women on the basic state pension on average receive £145.87 per week compared to men receiving £172.64. It is also worth saying there are around 1.5mn women receiving less than £100 per week – more than three times the number of men in the same situation.
The enormous disparity comes from women being less likely to be in paid work and so they do not accumulate the national insurance credits needed to pay a full state pension. Many women under the basic state pension system will also have derived their state pension entitlement through their husband’s national insurance record rather than their own.
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