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

sassenach512

Is that really how some people are viewing blood donations from vaccinated people cariad? they think it's 'dirty' blood and would prefer not to be given it? I find that insulting and outrageous

Not to mention completely ridiculous!

Doodledog

I know. I have read it.

My recent posts were responding to the suggestion that women want equality on our own terms, and only when it suits us.

I do agree that if we, women, desire complete equality then men and women pension age should be the same. As should pay and promotional opportunities.

What I objected to was the enormous 6 year leap in one go without enough notice, or in some cases no official notification.

Mamardoit

Yes those that missed out on six years pension should really get more. I'm one of those and so is my sister but we both know it is very unlikely. I will be fine but she is single and in a rental property. There is a real chance her rent could rise to a level she can't afford. Not a nice thought that an older woman who has worked since she was 16 could end up on the street. Lots like her have very small private pensions.

She won't of course because family will make sure that doesn't happen.

It’s not just the missed pension, but 6 more years of NI paid.

I was born in 1958 and I calculated that if you add in “overpaid” NI (if one carried on working after 60, having reached the old pension age, no further NI would be paid), I missed out on approx £50,000

Doodledog

growstuff

I Googled it years ago because I was puzzled about women's earlier retirement age. The idea was that men wouldn't be able to look after themselves, so they'd need a woman to look after the house and it wouldn't be right for a woman to have a job outside the home and look after her husband and home. ( I had the impression the policymakers at the time didn't care much about women being burnt out, but did care that there might not be a little woman at home to run after her retired husband.)

Which is what I'd already said, but theworriedwell chose to ignore .

It doesn't matter really - the financial differentials between men and women meant that even with five years extra pension (often at a much lower rate than a man's pension) wouldn't come close to making up the difference.

You were offering other ideas why it happened like childbirth or women earning less than men. You were wrong, it has been checked and it was due to age difference between husbands and wives so made up ideas to justify it were not relevant.

I know. I have read it.

My recent posts were responding to the suggestion that women want equality on our own terms, and only when it suits us.

Doodledog

growstuff

I Googled it years ago because I was puzzled about women's earlier retirement age. The idea was that men wouldn't be able to look after themselves, so they'd need a woman to look after the house and it wouldn't be right for a woman to have a job outside the home and look after her husband and home. ( I had the impression the policymakers at the time didn't care much about women being burnt out, but did care that there might not be a little woman at home to run after her retired husband.)

Which is what I'd already said, but theworriedwell chose to ignore .

It doesn't matter really - the financial differentials between men and women meant that even with five years extra pension (often at a much lower rate than a man's pension) wouldn't come close to making up the difference.

It certainly doesn't matter with the current case. The only compensation anybody is ever likely to receive is for maladministration, not whether the system was/is unfair or because women are discriminated against. If you read what the ombudsman said, the compensation is because the DWP didn't take prompt action when it was discovered that a minority of women weren't aware of the changes.

growstuff

I Googled it years ago because I was puzzled about women's earlier retirement age. The idea was that men wouldn't be able to look after themselves, so they'd need a woman to look after the house and it wouldn't be right for a woman to have a job outside the home and look after her husband and home. ( I had the impression the policymakers at the time didn't care much about women being burnt out, but did care that there might not be a little woman at home to run after her retired husband.)

Which is what I'd already said, but theworriedwell chose to ignore .

It doesn't matter really - the financial differentials between men and women meant that even with five years extra pension (often at a much lower rate than a man's pension) wouldn't come close to making up the difference.

I Googled it years ago because I was puzzled about women's earlier retirement age. The idea was that men wouldn't be able to look after themselves, so they'd need a woman to look after the house and it wouldn't be right for a woman to have a job outside the home and look after her husband and home. ( I had the impression the policymakers at the time didn't care much about women being burnt out, but did care that there might not be a little woman at home to run after her retired husband.)

growstuff

Doodledog

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 .

It wasn't ever the reason why women retired at a younger age, although it might have been true. I once looked up the parliamentary discussions about pension ages when they were set during the beginning of the last century. theworriedwell is correct. The main reason given for women's earlier retirement age was that they were usually younger than their husbands and both could then retire at about the same age.

Thank you for that, I now feel ashamed I didn't google it myself.

Doodledog

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 .

It wasn't ever the reason why women retired at a younger age, although it might have been true. I once looked up the parliamentary discussions about pension ages when they were set during the beginning of the last century. theworriedwell is correct. The main reason given for women's earlier retirement age was that they were usually younger than their husbands and both could then retire at about the same age.

theworriedwell

Pregnancy and childbirth has nothing to do with retirement age. Just a ridiculous point whoever made it.

Maybe explain why the sex that has the longer life expectancy should be able to retire earlier? That's hard to justify isn't it.

The thing is women do want it both ways, pensions aren't the only thing. Have a look at advice to young women with high paying jobs, they are regularly told on forums not to marry as their assets are at risk. Lower paid women are told to marry their high paid partner so they get half his assets if they split up. It is pure hypocrisy.

You forgot a point. That being that women are less able than equivalent men to do equity release on our houses.

Years back I wondered whether I might think of doing equity release on my house when I got to that agegroup. I was astonished to find that I'd be given noticeably less than an absolutely equivalent man (same house, same age, etc as me) and thought "But what about the Sex Discrimination Act? Surely that can't be legal to do that to women!".

Somehow these firms can get away with doing that - and they're still doing it to this day......

Hence I long ago made my decision never to even investigate equity release unless/until that is put right and both sexes are treated equally. So there are going to be women who've got such low income they've been forced to get some more by doing equity release - but they will be being underpaid - just because their bodies are women/rather than men.

There's another scheme out there now - don't know the name of it - and it's one where the sale price of some houses is quoted at two prices. The first price is one noticeably lower than the house is worth and the second price is the normal price/as expected. I strongly suspect sex discrimination is applying to that scheme as well and that men get a better deal than women on it if they buy it under the scheme, rather than the normal way. When I tried sending a query to one of these schemes about a house being sold that way and without quoting what sex my body is - they basically refused to answer (which I take as meaning = "We know you're trying to set us up to expose us on this - yep...we do do that...but you aren't going to get any evidence from us for a newspaper article").

Pregnancy and childbirth has nothing to do with retirement age. Just a ridiculous point whoever made it.

Maybe explain why the sex that has the longer life expectancy should be able to retire earlier? That's hard to justify isn't it.

The thing is women do want it both ways, pensions aren't the only thing. Have a look at advice to young women with high paying jobs, they are regularly told on forums not to marry as their assets are at risk. Lower paid women are told to marry their high paid partner so they get half his assets if they split up. It is pure hypocrisy.

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.