No, you didn't if you signed on as unemployed. Did you try it? The difference would have been that you would have had to look for work, in which case you could have complained that it was unfair.
No, I don't register as unemployed, as I wasn't. I was retired, and doing spasmodic consultancy, which I still do. The NI I pay from that costs more per month than voluntary contributions for a quarter, but doesn't cover a full year (I only do it for four months of the year), so I also have to pay six full year's contributions that the men got paid for them if I want to get a full state pension, and that will be after 50 years of working when I eventually get it.
There are times when I feel like a mug. Women who didn't work while their children were at school got contributions paid, men who retired at 60 got contributions paid (I have no issue whatsoever with the unemployed or ill getting them), but women who worked throughout and paid tax, childcare and other associated work costs out of what was left end up with shortfalls, and are told that if we aren't on the breadline we are being unreasonable to complain.
A relative of mine is 55. She left work when she married, and got her NI paid when her children were younger - for decades as they are spaced out. Her husband's accountant advised him to keep up her NI at the voluntary rate when the state stopped paying, so she will get a full pension without contributing at all.
People on this thread who have worked and paid in all along are finding (or have found) that they will have shortfalls. A lot of this was apparently done in the name of equality for men, but they have (a) statistically earned more than women for centuries, and (b) were not only more likely to be offered occupational pensions but had their state ones topped up 'to save paperwork'.
None of this is fair at any level, and the implication that women who feel let down are greedy, or want what is theirs at the expense of the poor, or should have to pass some sort of 'neediness' test, or whatever other nonsense is thrown at is is insulting.
It may be that some of the WASPI women (and I stress that I do not identify as such, although I am of the 50s-born age group) may be comfortably off. So what? And anyway, who is to define what that means for others? If you were expecting a pension of £Xk but found yourself £8k short because of the year you were born, don't you have a right to feel annoyed, even if the X represents a figure beyond the dreams of others? The £8k could make the difference between having the retirement you planned for and not, and that is the injustice.
I am far from starving, and have a decent standard of living, but my idea of what is financially 'comfortable' is probably lower than a lot of people on GN, if their posts are to anything to go by. Does that mean that I have a right to suggest that they shouldn't get to keep what is theirs? I don't think so.
Despite how it may appear on here, I am not eaten up by this, incidentally . It's just when I see some of the patronising posts on threads about pensions that I see red.
(PS - only the first paragraph of this post is addressed directly to you, growstuff!)