Today In Parliament: I'm sure they mentioned WASPI but.....

There was a thread recently about the government wasting money sending letters to people affected by the withdrawal of the WFP. I expect that was because there are possibly a few people who still don't know and the government is covering its back . Seems it can't win.

Yes can't do right for doing wrong.

I don't understand how people didn't know, it was in the papers, on TV, on the internet. All my friends round my age discussed it and made plans. My union put out information about and it wouldn't affect our work pension. As it got closer it was even more widely known. I don't remember if I got a letter but it wasn't a secret.

So 7 in 10 women would be receiving something to which they're not entitled because they did know.
No. They would be receiving compensation for the fact that the system they had worked within had changed. It may be true that some had the chance to make up their pensions, but many on low wages could not. Also, the difference between the male and female retirement ages was to compensate for the various sex-based discriminations that surrounded pension payments when many 50s born women started work.

Even now, the gender pay gap means that female pensioners get an average of £7000 a year less than men.

theworriedwell

Yes can't do right for doing wrong.

I don't understand how people didn't know, it was in the papers, on TV, on the internet. All my friends round my age discussed it and made plans. My union put out information about and it wouldn't affect our work pension. As it got closer it was even more widely known. I don't remember if I got a letter but it wasn't a secret.

No, it wasn't a secret, but a lot of women didn't know. I have always wondered why other women refused to believe that, but it's becoming clear.

I am not a lawyer, but can't imagine that there could be payments based on who knew and who didn't. How would anyone prove one way or the other, and in any case it wouldn't matter. Ignorance is not a defence in law, and the compensation would be for the general maladministration of the government at the time.

It isn't about refusing to believe it, it is about not understanding how they missed it. If someone mentioned Boris Johnson being PM would you think it odd that they'd missed Truss Sunak and Starmer? Somethings are so well publicised and discussed that it is hard to understand. Yes there are always people who don't read papers, don't discuss current affairs, don't watch anything about news or politics on TV but surely they are a small minority?

surely they are a small minority?

They are on here, where everyone is IT literate, can afford devices from which to access the Internet and is confident enough in their education and literacy to post. But that’s not true for a lot of people. It’s easy to assume that everyone is ‘like us’, but there are huge differences in outlook and lifestyles.

Yes, most people on here will find that most of their friends and family will have known about the changes before they happened (but not all, as we’ve seen on previous threads). In other demographics that is simply not the case though, and in the 90s, when the changes were happening by no means everyone had access to social media - smartphones didn’t exist, home computers were expensive and by no means everyone could use them.

Many women did not know - even the government enquiry accepted that. I find it harder to understand why others can’t accept the findings than to I do to believe what those women say. Some of the stories are heartbreaking, and the women have nothing to gain by lying.

I’m 71 and got my state Pension at 63.
I am not expecting to get anything. Do you really think Rachel Reeves is going to pursue this when she’s already taken away the winter fuel payment from a lot of vulnerable pensioners?

theworriedwell

So the oldest are 74 and youngest are 64. The way people talk it's like we are more like late 70s and 80s. Also the older ones only had to wait a fairly short time as it didn't just change overnight but was staggered. The second change was the bigger issue in my view.

I’m 69, 70 next month (born in 1954) and I am in the ‘hardest hit’ bracket. 18 months before my planned retirement at 60 I got a letter saying my retirement was going up to 62, that was a complete shock, then another about a year later saying 64, then another letter before I was 64 saying it would be 66. So I am £48,000 out of pocket by having to wait the full six years for it. George Brown did this callously with no regard to how it would affect people. It should have been phased in much more slowly.

Sasta

theworriedwell

So the oldest are 74 and youngest are 64. The way people talk it's like we are more like late 70s and 80s. Also the older ones only had to wait a fairly short time as it didn't just change overnight but was staggered. The second change was the bigger issue in my view.

I’m 69, 70 next month (born in 1954) and I am in the ‘hardest hit’ bracket. 18 months before my planned retirement at 60 I got a letter saying my retirement was going up to 62, that was a complete shock, then another about a year later saying 64, then another letter before I was 64 saying it would be 66. So I am £48,000 out of pocket by having to wait the full six years for it. George Brown did this callously with no regard to how it would affect people. It should have been phased in much more slowly.

I certainly agree that it was beyond ridiculous to come back and "have another bite of the cherry" at the exact same women. Bad enough being hit once by that raising of the State Pension Age - but to have them come back for another "bite" and then another "bite". I'd be scared stiff just how many "bites" they planned to have at me. It was defo not remotely fair, by any reckoning, to come back even for a 2nd "bite" - but 3 "bites" in a row = I wouldnt trust them if they said the sun was going to rise again tomorrow.

How on earth could someone have the remotest trust in Society/the Government/etc if you never knew if you could believe a thing they said - as it would seem a lot more likely they'd attack you again?

After one "bite" at me - but I still retired at my retirement age (ie 60th birthday) I didn't dare count just how much of my savings it took to subsidise my low job pension through for about 3 years as it was and it all got rather mixed-up with all the house renovation costs on the house I moved to then - but I feel pretty sure they took quite a bit of my savings subsidising myself until I reached that age (certainly up into 5 figures worth being made to subsidise myself like that).

So I certainly sympathise with those who had little, if any, notice and got to just before their expected retirement or even into their expected retirement before they realised "Where's my expected income?".

The Government also seemed to have taken no account whatsoever that "being a carer" tends to be very sexist still. I have known men put into the position of being a carer - but it does still seem to be usually women (even though it's the 21st century now - and should be 50/50). It must be a heck of a struggle to try and combine a full-time job one has been forced to keep (despite reaching 60) and being a carer and "having a life".

I still do not understand why some women think they were entitled to retire at 60 and receive a full pension, while men were expected to work until 65.
What price equality?

eazybee

I still do not understand why some women think they were entitled to retire at 60 and receive a full pension, while men were expected to work until 65.
What price equality?

Yes and Men live shorter than women so if anything should retire earlier than women so they can enjoy the same number of years retired.

Not sure that comment is going to go down well with some people.

I know many men who retired at 60 and some much earlier. Of course they had well paid jobs with good pensions. They had those at least partly because they were male. They had no time off raising their families and a woman at home to sort all the domestic stuff out.

It wasn't a level playing field for most Waspi women when they started work. Men were always paid more and promoted quickly.

Few went to university back then and very few women. From memory a handful of girls in my year went into nursing and teacher training. Two jobs that did pay men and women the same. The vast majority went straight from school at 15/16 into shops, factories, and clerical work. All poorly paid and in those days with no company pension.

Lilyslass

As many Waspi women are among the so-called "next poorest" - those just above the qualifying point for additional pension help - the present government seem determined to keep paying lip service, while the death rate reduces their eventual payout.

Just like the last lot.

Withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance has brought foward the Waspi issue, so some ministers and MPs are having to justify staying silent where, previously, they were sympathetic.

The Waspi campaign is doing a good job of keeping awareness going, but it became sadly obvious on Budget Day that the noisy, peaceful protest outside Parliament was low-or-no priority among press and politicians.

Over several years, the Tories saved £48,000 a head from half the retiring population, some of whom received no, or very little, warning.

George Osborne said it was the easiest savings he'd ever made.

I know this has been covered extensively here, and that there are always responses from people who felt the warning was adequate (and those who did not need the WFA).

A court has already judged that WASPI women should be compensated and, in future, I expect there will be severe consequences of a failure to do a proper impact assessment on WFA withdrawal.

The heartlessness of waiting for more of us to die off has been difficult to absorb and understand, especially since the election.

I 100% agree with everything that you said here.

Jackiest

eazybee

I still do not understand why some women think they were entitled to retire at 60 and receive a full pension, while men were expected to work until 65.
What price equality?

Yes and Men live shorter than women so if anything should retire earlier than women so they can enjoy the same number of years retired.

Not sure that comment is going to go down well with some people.

I'm one of the 'some people' you refer to, but can only speak for myself.

Women retired earlier as (a) they were paid less, (b) many were not allowed to pay into pension schemes for various reasons (c) many have much lower pensions because of career breaks and lower wages (d) many were automatically enrolled into 'married women's schemes' with lower payments and lower pensions, (e) women were far less likely to work in senior positions than men, so less likely to be in higher paying pension schemes. (f) women are typically younger than their husbands, and who would look after the men if the women retired at the same time?

There was no equality until recently, and blatant discrimination was perfectly legal when 50s-born women started work, and more subtle discrimination persisted throughout their working lives. If 'equality' is being used as a yardstick for justifying 'equalising' the pension age there should be compensation for decades of inequality in the workplace and in society in general.

Doodledog

....and I think a thing that can be readily overlooked by younger women is that many of us Waspi agegroup women were brought up as "women" - rather than as "people". I've frequently come across intelligent women in my agegroup that have complained that their brothers got brought up as "men" and got their "rightful place they were fit for" in Society - but the exact same parents brought them up as "women" and they didn't.

In my agegroup it was very much the case that women were brought up to expect to do clerical, secretarial, shop assistant or nursing jobs or maybe teachers (bearing in mind a much lower level of qualification was being expected for nursing or teaching jobs than is expected these days).

The thought probably took a long time to cross our minds to even think what we personally wanted/what we personally are capable of. I know mine is probably fairly typical a case for a woman of that generation - my mother was a "1950s woman" in every respect and my father was "liberated and modern" - but he was in the Armed Forces and so would have been absent for a lot of my upbringing and therefore not countermanding my mother very much.

Cue for it took until every single one of my friends was doing A levels (whilst I did a secretarial course) and I got assessed as "Why on earth wasn't I following the university route?" basically and wondering what had gone wrong - but in that era basically most of us were set on the route we were going to follow at that age.

If we didn't go to University ourselves and emerge as the typical woman of that era in that respect - ie they emerged with their degree certificate in one hand and a wedding ring on the other hand (as a lot also picked up their husband too whilst they were at university).

No point in expecting an intelligent, encouraging husband from those emerging from university - because so many of them had been "bagged" already whilst they were there. Cue for Lesson No. 2 and I waited it out whilst "my men" were at University and expected to "make my choice of husband" when they emerged again. But they didn't - because of the University women having done that too whilst they were and these men were not therefore available for us to choose as husbands. So it went on and the only person that would have encouraged many of us was ourselves personally......and I guess younger women are also not going to realise the mindset of everyone in the 1960s-1970s was an optimist "Society is gonna just keep getting better". Yep....many of us were taught that at school - ie the workweek would get shorter, jobs be less demanding generally of us, etc, etc - I remember the teacher that told us all that...

So yep...lots of us who were capable of "better" never did get "better" (ie swopping from poorly-paid jobs to decently-paid careers).

You have to have really been there/lived it/etc to know just how many women and why did not fulfil our potential and therefore were poorly paid.

Can't speak for women older than myself - but I know I almost feel like I need someone to "translate" for me - when I use so many words that someone since has redefined in some way that I sometimes feel I might as well be speaking a different language. The language....the concepts...so much has changed since around the 1990s.

I left school at 15 with no qualifications, I did day release and got professional qualifications and was earning a six figure salary when I retired. Even us women born in the 50s could choose our own path in life. We are responsible for our own choices.

theworriedwell

I left school at 15 with no qualifications, I did day release and got professional qualifications and was earning a six figure salary when I retired. Even us women born in the 50s could choose our own path in life. We are responsible for our own choices.

Congratulations on having had an encouraging/maybe intelligent mother and not having your father in the Armed Forces and therefore probably away a lot (some of us - eg me - probably coped with that by blocking most of our childhood memories). One did not step out of line of a mother who had deliberately chosen an Armed Forces husband (that's all she ever went out with....) and who one knew might be the only parent to continue with one's upbringing to adulthood (ie I do remember being very aware his job meant he could get land up getting killed in the course of it - and mentally retreated into a shell surrounded by books). It's not so easy to do something if you have to "battle" one of your own parents to do it and she's a pretty determined little person. My father (her husband) told me years ago that she'd got me lined-up to place in position to be a carer for her if she ever needed it in later life - and I was not to do it (he said she'd "drive me nuts" if I tried). Cue for I left her favourite child to be the carer and his wife when it came to it that she did need one.

I did get my act together with deciding what I liked/what I wanted/what I believed etc myself in latter years - and can see I've made a good job of making up my own mind for myself and "fighting" for what I think is fair in those latter years. But it was a bit late for a career by that point (ie in my 40's and going to retire at 60).

But yep...congratulations that you had that determination at an early enough point in life to make a difference. That didn't happen for all of us or indeed for many of us.

I'm not sure that people can expect financial compensation for that sort of thing. I know a lot of people of both sexes weren't encouraged to fulfil their potential, but that is different from legalised discrimination on pay, promotion etc.

People who say that 50s born women should be treated the same as men because of 'equality' are misremembering or misrepresenting the situation at the time most of them started work. Yes, there was an earlier retirement age, but that wouldn't make up for all the ways in which women were discriminated against all their working lives. There was no equality for most women.

It is hard I’ll be 65 in January and still working in childcare. My hips are aching my back hurts and I work with two others in my room 20 and 24 years. They talk about leaving the profession as it’s too hard work. I count my months to retirement in 14 months time. Hope I make it.

Cariadagain you make many assumptions. Id swap your armed forces forces for my father dying leaving my mother with three kids to bring up. Id swap your armed forces father for my step father but we neednt go into that.

My mother was great in many ways but she had no interest in education and certainly gave me no support or encouragement to get qualifications. I was a young mother, early 20s, with two children under school age when I started to study. When I asked my boss if he would support my application for day release he said he would if I could do 5 days work in 4 days so that was early starts and no lunch hours.

Harris27

It is hard I’ll be 65 in January and still working in childcare. My hips are aching my back hurts and I work with two others in my room 20 and 24 years. They talk about leaving the profession as it’s too hard work. I count my months to retirement in 14 months time. Hope I make it.

That's another way in which women can't be compared to men in regard to retirement age. Women are (obviously) the ones to bear children and go through pregnancy and menopause, and whereas not everyone suffers physically as a result, enough do to make working into older age very difficult, particularly in a physical job.

I hope the 14 months fly by for you, Harris.

So do we have a different retirement age for women who have or haven't had children? How about how many you've had? I've had 4 so should I have got to retire earlier than some one who only had one? How about men who seem to have a higher rate of doing the hardest physical jobs? Woman in clerical job compared to a man who'd been a builder all his life, out in all weathers carrying heavy weights. I think it could get very complicated and despite our child bearing on average women live longer than men so maybe we should aim for similar time in retirement which would mean men retiring earlier than women.

Difficult to balance fairness.

Was that addressed to me?

What has the number of children I have had got to do with anything? My point was that many people point to the differential that used to exist between male and female retirement ages and claim that women 'want to have it both ways', but forget that there was institutionalised sexism for the 50s born women affected by the pension age changes (some of which I outlined in a previous post), and that another of the reasons for the differential was that in the days when many women had lots of pregnancies their health suffered as a result.

You brought child bearing into it not me. Why should women who have had no children get to retire early because women who had multiple pregnancies might have damaged their health.

The reality is for men and women if they are too ill to work and they aren't at retirement age there are illhealth benefits. My husband retired in his 40s, he had no choice due to disability

The reason I have always heard for the age difference was that when they set the state retirement age wives on average were five years younger than their husbands so it meant they could both retire at the same time. No idea if it is true.

The reality was that women on average got a far longer retirement than men due to retiring earlier and living longer. I can't see how that can be claimed to be fair. I was affected by the change, well both of them but I think equalising the ages was fair.

theworriedwell

You brought child bearing into it not me. Why should women who have had no children get to retire early because women who had multiple pregnancies might have damaged their health.

The reality is for men and women if they are too ill to work and they aren't at retirement age there are illhealth benefits. My husband retired in his 40s, he had no choice due to disability

The reason I have always heard for the age difference was that when they set the state retirement age wives on average were five years younger than their husbands so it meant they could both retire at the same time. No idea if it is true.

The reality was that women on average got a far longer retirement than men due to retiring earlier and living longer. I can't see how that can be claimed to be fair. I was affected by the change, well both of them but I think equalising the ages was fair.

I didn't say that women should be treated differently if they had children - simply that at the time when women retired earlier than men the norm was to have multiple pregnancies and associated gynaecological issues, which meant that heavy work could be difficult for them in older age. I also said that this was just one of many reasons why women used to retire earlier than men, and that women are typically younger than their husbands, and who would look after the men if the women retired at the same time? but you seem determined to argue with anything I say, whether you agree with it or not .