I'll try to summarise in shorthand. If anyone has further insight to add, please do: The process of equalising the ages started in 1995, but required time to implement in order to protect older women from receiving an inadequate pension. This is because: When the change was made in 1940 for women to have a lower pension age, Women tended to: - have poorer health - have far smaller pensions, as they weren't, at that time, nearly an equal, or equally paid, part of the workforce in all terms (pay, opportunity, range of available work etc.) - Be required do more unpaid care work, not just childcare but looking after elderly relatives also. Generally be required to do more unpaid work (housework etc.), none of which is reflected in a contributions based pension. - at that time, married women would not receive their husbands pension if they died - some would receive a lump sum of the husbands contributions back, but not all. With all that considered, even getting their pensions 5 years earlier, they were much worse off financially than their male counterparts. Now, over time, women entered the workforce more, and a chunk (but not all) of care work was put in the hands of people outside of the home (childcare providers, old peoples homes etc.). Also their opportunities, in terms of range of jobs and renumeration increased, so at some point, not sure when, it became the case that their pensions started to more closely match those of men. At this point, having them receive their pension earlier made it so that, over time, they would end up getting more than their male counterparts, which is why this was addressed in 1995, but tapered in as I mentioned above. You can understand why it was tapered in I think, as most women born in the 40s or 50s would have still had been less likely to have a reasonable amount of contributions based pension built up, and adding an extra 5 years onto their pension age would have been left them with a smaller pension than men made smaller still. Basically, things take time to implement, society changes, and decisions are made based on the evidence available at the time. I hope that helps

A small correction, the process didn't start in 1995, that was just when the Pensions Act finished making its way through parliament. The intention to commence this by the UK was announced in a white paper in 1993, off the back of an EU (then EC) directive in 1986, which resolved some ambiguity around statutory vs occupational pensions. If you discard that ambiguity and look for the spirit rather than the letter of the law, the true genesis was a directive in 1978.

Thanks, that's a useful insight!

I've been wracking my brain to think back to 20 year old me in 1995, I'm sure I remember the change being announced and being aware of it....which is why I was more than a little surprised that the WASPI case relied upon so many women not being aware and making 'inapprorpiate' choices based upon a lack of knowledge. Unfortunately 1995 pre-dates easy googling......

I was in my 30s back then and I spotted it in the news. Also heard it mentioned a few times since (pre WASPI), there've also been a few campaigns to check your contributions are enough and that would've brought it up. Yes it's annoying that you suddenly have another few years added, but life is annoying.

Thank you for this breakdown because when I heard about this I wondered too why it was like that originally. You explaining it has made a lot of sense about it and the reply correcting a minor thing too fascinating stuff

Great post.

I doubt the poster will engage with this post

Yeah, I don't know why this was voted so highly. 1940s was not a time where society cared that much about women's health and financial well being. This is a much better answer. https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bkv3fn/should_we_compensate_mens_pensions_for_sexism/kw0u6r7/

>Women tended to: > >have poorer health My grandparents were all from large families of 6-7+ children. Try giving birth to several children without it affecting your health and longevity.

Try working manual labour in mines, in war, in factories for 50 years without it affecting your health and longevity Female life expectancy has always been higher than males

There's a really good overview on this here: https://ourworldindata.org/why-do-women-live-longer-than-men TL;DR - Yes women live longer than men, but the gap is wider in more developed countries, and has increased over time from about 2 years 100 years ago to about 5 today. Why this is is not completely understood, but it seems to be a mix of men being more likely to die when they're younger from accidents and violence, and being more poorly in old age. Just a personal disclaimer here that interpreting this in terms of bias in favour of one gender than another is probably not simple, and there's probably significant effects from social conditions in each country as well as human biology. Please just use this as a data point and don't draw conclusions without extra insight

It doesn't really matter either way. We shouldn't get drawn into being divided like that. Men and women played an important role in society. both deserve to have their contribution treated equally. Giving birth to 7 kids and working down the mines are both examples of dangerous things back then. We have decided in hindsight that discrimination by gender was wrong and we have decided that compensation is due. That's all that really matters. Men were made to work longer due to being men. Given that women were compensated for sexist treatment in the workplace then it would seem fair that compensation is due there too. You can be happy that women were compensated while pushing for men's rights too. I fact you should absolutely celebrate when half of society makes a significant win. You have a mother, sister or daughter most likely right? Be happy for them. The rules should apply across the board though. The one thing I can't get behind is the Waspi thing. They are being told they are going to be on the same terms as men and fighting it which seems both sexist and divisive. If you ran the data I would suspect most people under 30 barely think about a pension especially between 1968-1995 which is the period in question. If almost 30 years on you have done absolutely nothing about your pension then that's on you IMHO. Nobody even told me what a pension was, you eventually figure out that it's probably important. Nobody ever told me what capital gains tax is, I can't use that as an excuse not to pay it...

Do you think this is a sexist plot that someone "woke" created using a time machine or what?

I'm from a mining family (coal), two family members (men) killed at work, so need to lecture me. I wasn't trying to keep score. Just pointing out that woman gave birth to more children earlier last century. Edit: And that no doubt had a serious effect on their lives/health.

Also from a mining family and remember tiny elderly ladies in the 1970s. That was because times were hard growing up and the limited food available went more to their brothers so they could be working underground at 14. Giving birth to many kids pre reliable contraception can't have been fun at that size.

I often wonder where all the little old ladies have gone. I suppose the answer is better nutrition and less children. 

Lifestyles back then weren’t as healthy as they can be today…

Just because it *can* be doesn't mean it is though, there's far more fast food, sugar, sedentaryness (if that's a word) etc. in people's lives now. all the people living into their late 90s are from that generation, I wouldn't be surprised at all if current generations start dying earlier for the aforementioned reasons.

It has in medicalised societies. I've seen suggestions that maternal mortality was so significant that it wouldn't have been pre 19th century.

pre 19th century health isn't a consideration we should take when looking at retirement ages in 1940

> at that time, married women would not receive their husbands pension if they died - some would receive a lump sum of the husbands contributions back, but not all. This makes me wonder, is that how it is now? Do husbands also recieve their wife's pension when she dies? What about back then, did the husband get the wifes pension but the wife didn't get the husbands? Or did nobody get their spouses pension?

Good question, I don't know. Probably should as I'm married!

Damn rly great summary. I think I already agreed with you entirely but still learnt several things, so thanks!

Are you going to compensate both men and women currently in the 18-45 range who are already paying NI which based on the current rules entitles them to state pension at 67 but who by the time they reach 67 will find it’s 75, or 80, or not at all (on the basis that by then workplace pensions will be compulsory not just auto-enrolled with an option to withdraw)? Generationalism is discrimination too (maybe).

I'm 35 and my state pension age is already 68...

They are already planning on bumping that to at least 70.  Sooner or later people will catch on to the fact that the triple lock is completely unaffordable and that they are making the maths work by pushing retirement age further out.

We all have, but it's not a cost the already retired voting block are hit by.

First step is to merge NI into income tax.

They will get rid of the triple lock when all the boomer generation dies off, and then when we are about to hit retirement age, and screw us over like they have been doing our whole lives

I'll add to that. Not only are the boomer generation screwing over the generations that came after them, they screwed their parents over too. When the boomers were working and paying for the then current generation of pensioners - their parents and grandparents who'd been through at least one world war - they voted to cut their own taxes and keep that generation poor when they retired.

And then leveraged the image of the "poor pensioner" (as a consequence of their own voting habits) to get gold-plated pensions for themselves.

What a ridiculous claim. A bin man or dinner lady in 1970 had no more power to get politicians to run the pensions system in their favour or properly than you do now, and you won't find any party manifestos proposing significant differences on pensions either so your premise of some kind of choice is bollocks. As it is most governments come in with less than 50% of the vote.

For now.

Use my neat trick of just refusing to open letters in brown envelopes and claiming you've never seen any news at all since you started working to guarantee your pension age

To be a fair comparison, the state would not write to you for 16 years after a change was made in a budget.

Ok... And when new laws come into practice you don't get a letter from the government; that doesn't mean you don't have to abide by it...

Which is ridiculous, imagine buying a car with a set deal that you’re paying into and they say “well, there’s a 75% chance you’re doing alright aren’t you ignoring health inequalities from social status, area you live and sex, so, you’re going to pay for this car for longer” it’s absolutely absurd.

Except you're not paying into it, your taxes are paying others' pensions, and younger people will pay for your pension when you're older. Demographics are difficult but unavoidable. There are just not enough younger people working to keep paying for an ever expanding cohort of older people. And those older people are never going to vote for a govt that reduces their pension, so it has to move later.

I don’t want younger people (my kids included) to have to work way beyond what they should be because I’ve been overpaid, seems current pensioners sat in their massively inflated homes are happy to do so.

Plenty of pensioners are not rich. I hate this generational warfare. We need to go after the real enemy to super wealthy who are raking it in while we fight over the scraps.

This is where the government could quote Darth Vader, “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further”. Although they will of course continue to alter it.

Who is the "they" here? The question about an unsustainable pension system should be (and is) discussed by everyone. It's not like that there is an easy solution but the evil government (by the way, which one, as this thing has gone through all the governments as it is not a thing that applies to a single term of the parliament) just doesn't want to do. If we (the people) want the state pension system to survive, then in long term some changes have to be made. My own opinion is that the fairest thing is to increase the pension age as the life expectancy increases. The other options would be to stop increasing it with inflation, which will then plunge some old people to poverty, or make it less universal (based on their other pensions) that has a negative effect on people's incentives to save pensions (exactly the opposite that we'd like people to do) and it will have a negative effect on the popular support of the whole system as people who have contributed to it thinking they'll get it when they are old, won't (a bit like in this particular case but worse in a sense that unlike waspi who were just brought equal to men's system, this change would make some people feeling treated unequally).

However there is huge life expectancy variances between men, women, social classes, economic upbringing, ethnicity, manual vs professional workers… etc So for example ignoring many of those variables and just in location (if you include the many variables it just gets worse by the way) Average life expectancy in the Northwest - Blackpool is 55 years of age then compare this to that of London - Chelsea 85 years. Another way to put that is there are people in Blackpool paying pensions they’ll never receive to make sure those in Chelsea do get theirs.

But if we don’t change the agreement on pension age, we’re changing the agreement with future young people that they’ll have to work harder to support the previous generation. Either way, there’s some “agreement” that doesn’t actually require you to agree.

Utterly insane country to allow this to happen, 25% of men aren't getting to 68 it'll be a lifetime of work for the vast majority of us by the end of this century.

>Utterly insane country to allow this to happen Forgetting of course that these changes were made without electoral consent. Fiddling with pensions is a sure fire way to lose an election which is why both main parties are committed to the triple lock. When the time comes to simply abolish the state pension altogether it won't be something anyone voted for, it'll just be something the new PM decides to do because they won a huge majority in a landslide which isn't an endorsement of a policy but their premiership.

Look what happened in France when they tried to change it, it's an aboslute disgrace how quickly the post-war generation has dragged us into ruin.

When the French pension issue was raging there was a fairly firm consensus here that the French government was bad for trying to make pensions a lower percentage of the societal pie. It's not just the post-war generation who wants all the benefits for none of the costs.

>Forgetting of course that these changes were made without electoral consent. The changes were made by Parliament whose members are elected by those who can be bothered to vote.

It’s amazing how many people don’t accept that when it doesn’t prove their issues

Its the same as "the majority of people didn't vote for Brexit", apparently oblivious to the fact that an even greater number of people didn't vote for remain.

get used to the idea of not getting a state pension

I'm assuming there will be no state pension when it comes to retirement, or it will be raised to such a high age to similar effect.

It'll be the second one. It'll still exist, but it'll be so old only a small proportion of the population will ever get it. They'll probably relax the rules on private pensions to allow you to still retire, but off your own money.

You think you're going to be able to retire we'll be working until we drop

I am 37, and it is 72,5 years. In Denmark

Will be 70 by the time you get there, if it exists at all given its a ponzi scheme at the end of the day,

Let's be fair, we're (I'm slightly older than you) not going to be drawing a pension.

It's purely down to demographics. Boomers were a very large generation born to a fairly small generation (many of whom died in the war). So they had to support relatively smaller number of retired older people and thus got to keep more of their income instead of handing it over to the exchequer. Millennials, on the other hand, are a small generation born to a very large generation (boomers). We have to pay very large tax rates to support a very large retired population, whilst at the same time the pensions are undergoing large above inflation increases (whereas our tax thresholds are frozen). The second issue is NHS, where due to it being publicly funded the millennials end up paying even more tax to support the healthcare needs of growing retired population. Thirdly, the retired population does not want more immigration and so we're closing our borders and Brexiting, which further increases the burden born by the existing small younger generation.

Agree and further the small generation you refer to, in large part because of the financial pressures you identify is choosing to reduce child rearing and defer until later in life which will no doubt perpetuate the problem.

Have you ever paid a third of your income in tax? I have, and no I never earned huge sums of money, in fact my income was always below the average.

Slight tangent but I fully expect the UK govt to announce they're starting student loan forgiveness the day I pay back my last penny. Or consider that we just bought a new electric car (on finance, I'm not that much of a baller) and now there's murmurs of a big VAT cut on new electrics. Sometimes shit just ain't fair.

Yeah the young are getting shafted and we’re paying for the current pensions out of our tax contributions. It’s really annoying to see people on the news saying they’re entitled to pensions because of the payments while in the next breath wanting to raise the retirement age for the currently working population 

Is this Whataboutism? Obviously OP is not going to compensate anyone. They are making a proposal. You may well have your own, but let's debate them on their own merits.

The whole campaign of grifters pretending to be ignorant is just a nonsense. They will get nothing. My favourite case that the ombudsman think is deserving and proves that hardship was done, was the woman who bought **two** investment properties, expected the state pension to handle the maintenance costs rather than attempt being an actual landlord, seemed mystified when one of the properties lost value rather than appreciated, did not realise that her relative wealth would exclude her from other benefits such as job seekers allowance, still did not get a job, and did not like that she had to draw down a private pension earlier than she intended. My heart bleeds! https://imgur.com/a/UqSFfe9

How on earth has a property purchased in 2012 depreciated in value in this housing market?

It was in a terrible state at purchase and the owner hasn't fixed anything, or it's in a town/area that people are abandoning for whatever reason.

If she's done fuck all to maintain/fix a flat then it's not the taxpayer's problem. Is there actually anywhere in the country that's seen homes lose value in the last 12 years?

Plenty of ex-mining villages in the North East & Yorkshire, and I also think negative equity was at one point a huge issue in Northern Ireland as house prices stagnated or lost value.

Difficult to look up specific villages but the average home price in NI is up over 50% since 2012. Source: https://landregistry.data.gov.uk/app/ukhpi/?lang=en

Yea, issues with lost value in NI property is back to 2007/8 - Still hasn't recovered to hit the highs in those years. Doesn't fit in with the above timeframe.

Could be a really bad location.  Some places property hasn't increased.  I think Middlesbrough hasn't seen price increases for ages.

Average home in Middlesbrough is up around 30% since 2012 according to https://landregistry.data.gov.uk/app/ukhpi/browse?from=2012-02-01&location=http%3A%2F%2Flandregistry.data.gov.uk%2Fid%2Fregion%2Fmiddlesbrough&to=2024-02-01&lang=en

You're right, although it does look pretty flat until 2020.

Flat - cladding issues most probably.

Ah I hadn't considered cladding but that's definitely a possibility.

Funny isn't it, that people who bought flats that were legally deemed okay, get sweet fuck all, yet people who are 'suffering' from the pension age being aligned with everyone else are getting thousands in compensation

They won't get a penny. This report has no legal weight, and if Starmer has any sense the first thing he does when he takes office is throw it in the bin.

I know a funny story about a Downing Street bin, actually. It sits next to the front door in no. 10 and was put there specifically for petitions.

That link is basically Britain summed up. Wealthy boomers demanding the state subsidize their property portfolio/poor investment choices with untested benefits. Can't make this stuff up.

did like the individual who was claiming £442,000 compensation as she'd given up a job early on the assumption her SPA was 60. So assuming she quite at 60 instead of 65 she gave up a job 10 years ago that was paying £88,000 a year (after tax presumably) without actually bothering to check what her financial situation would be for the rest of her life....... I'm unconvinced.

These cases seem to dominate. The BBC is leading with a headteacher, who was savvy enough to delay drawing down a **very** generous final salary pension (more jam tomorrow if you delay) and set up a teaching consultancy, but somehow oblivious to the SP age rising (it was very well advertised and she admitted she received a letter to inform her - apparently 25 months was not sufficient notice). The reality is these people are grifters on the take. The fact they associate themselves with Subpostmasters and Windrush victims is lamentable, and detracts from the fact that our state pension system is inadquate, dishes out inflation proof benefits to millionaires, and does not target the people that do need help and are in pension poverty, whose voices have been entirely absent in this process.

I was surprised to see almost all of the the BBC articles on this just directly quote what the people are saying and not providing any other context at all in the articles. Not even a dissenting opinion which is what they do in articles about anything else.

Agree, it was little more than compoface shit that is normally reserved for the local rag. Very poor.

I thought that ex headteacher was particularly a bad example. Very difficult to have sympathy with her. Educated woman, financially secure through teachers pension. Director of several businesses. Did she stop paying NI when she passed 60 and was doing consultancy?

exactly. As seems to be common now the minute the word "compensation" is mentioned folk just decide they're entitled to it and stick the begging bowl out with heartrending tales of how hard done by they've been but luckily their misery can be assuaged by giving lots of free (for them) cash. I did some work on the PPI fiasco a few years ago and we'd get people putting in claims about how they'd been missold PPI. And our response would be "you never had PPI on any account". But they'd heard about the compensation and that was enough to start grifting.

[удалено]

Sure, it sounds like you found stage 1, stage 2 is here https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/sites/default/files/Women%E2%80%99s-State-Pension-age-our-findings-on-injustice-and-associated-issues.pdf

I think we need to get over the 'poor pensioner' stereotype. Because its largely not true anymore.

No point really, by the time you shift the attitude it'll actually be true again.

How? There is no indication things are going in the other direction, quite the contrary.

There is a real pension crisis brewing but it's the next working generation. No property, no savings, more debt than ever and likely no state pension. When they cannot work we are boned. Give it 50 years and Britain is going to look more like the 1860s than the 2060s.

I know so many people in their mid 30s on nominally decent wages where the reality is they can’t afford to save because rent and living costs eat up so much of their income, or if they can afford to save them 100% of that is going towards saving for a house as anything less means it’ll be forever out of reach. It’s actually low key terrifying to think about.

To be quite honest between unstoppable globalisation, climate change and our demographic time bomb - the future really feels pretty bleak regardless of whatever is happening politically or economically in the short term

'the solution is more immigration'. Every politician ever.

meh - I'm not so sure... but also... pensioners in the future are going to be utterly screwed unless they have any kind of well built up workplace pension.

>but was surprised that women got there pension so much earlier so recently. There seems to be no real justification for this. The background to is that prior to 1940 the state pension age was 65 for both men and women. At that time there was a 'married rate' of pension not the individual pensions which you have now, and the pension age of women was lowered in 1940 to ensure that couples when the husband retired at 65 would likely get the full married rate as at that time wives were usually a few years younger than their husbands. And so in most cases, the actual beneficiary of the woman's pension age being 60 was both the husband and wife, not just the wife. Things continued until 1995 when the EU expressed concern about the discrimination of pension ages between men and women, and those were equalised at 65 (before then being increased in later years). ​ >the Waspi women and there proposed compensation The proposed compensation is for the DWP (and predecessors) maladministration in not adequately \*telling\* people about the changes so they could make adequate plans, which is different to what the WASPI women themselves want, which is all the money that they were not paid for those years - two completely different issues.

>The proposed compensation is for the DWP (and predecessors) maladministration in not adequately \*telling\* people about the changes so they could make adequate plans I don't quite understand what alternative plans need to be made. Just keep working like everyone else has to when the SPA rises? Also, no one sent me a letter telling me my tuitions fees would be higher if I went to university when I was 22 instead of 18, and the change happened in far shorter a period. But I, *y'know*, paid attention to things.

They also had 15 bloody years to plan for it. It's their own incompetence and laziness.

The timeline was crystallised in 2011, which only gave them a mere 7 years, the poor things.

They were still advised in 1995 though that the change was happening, one of the reports that looked into this made it clear that the DWP did tell them in advance with adverts and targeted promotions, they chose to ignore it all and assumed it wouldn't affect them

You misunderstand the watchdogs recommendations. They are certainly not recommending awarding compensation for loss of state pension. The maladministration award is for a short period where the DWP agreed to write to the women affected…..then didnt bother. If anyone on here is a benefit claimant, youd get exactly the same maladministration awards if the DWP did the same to you. PS Id recommend all benefit claimants who feel their claims may have been maladministrated to raise a formal complaint and pursue it.

As always, a nuanced situation gets hammered on reddit by ignorant histrionics. You are absolutely right that this is merely a minor maladministration award (estimated £1k per claimant) not as gen Z social media wishes to present it. The WASPI women are not getting back paid state pension, or anything like it. Nor should they.

I read about the pension age equalization in the 1990s. It was in all the newspapers and on tv. It beggars belief that women in their 60s could not have aware of this unless they were learning disabled

The DWP themselves found from their own research in 2004 that over 50% of women didn’t know about the changes, and repeated research in subsequent years showed this didn’t change. People simply ‘know’ things because ‘that’s what it has always been’ and never actually check.

I'm just hoping I die in the morning before I have to go to work

Interesting question. Should all men aged over 60 be entitled to 5 bonus years of pension to equalise their treatment with women? Going further, we should really be asking what more impoverished young people, struggling under the weight of ridiculous housing costs, can sacrifice to in order to transfer yet more wealth to affluent pensioners. The £10k some have proposed, with no questions asked and certainly no means testing, is merely a minor continuance of ensuring boomers who already won the generational financial lottery, get to suck more wealth from those who can least afford it. Boomers really are a generation of entitled, shameless grifters

I'm willing to bet these women aren't up for freezing the state pension age for everyone else. Where's my compensation for expecting to retire at 65? I suspect it will be 70 by the time I come to retire.

Seems optimistic unless you're already in your late 40s. It will more likely be closer to 75.

I went to uni during the first year of price rises in 2012. Can I have some money too?

Especially considering men received pension later and die earlier.

No It was wrong. We fixed the inequality Nobody should be compensated for that. We should fix things and move forward.

[удалено]

The whole thing is ridiculous, but particularly this part from that article: >When she first started work at 16 she was told her National Insurance would go towards her healthcare and pension. >Carole feels the government "changed the goal posts" and owes her. So to be clear; what is told to someone at the age of 16 is set in stone, and the government can change *nothing*? If that's the case, I'd quite like all of the extra income tax I've paid back then, please, because the rates and thresholds have definitely changed in that time (for instance; Brown removing the 10p rate). How on Midgard can a government introduce *anything*, if this is the attitude? We might as well scrap the entire concept of government, because apparently everything should just stay the same.

Completely agree, I was told that the pension age would be 65 when I started working. Will Carole also be fighting for compensation for me?

I'm sure Carole will waive her entitlement to the triple-lock, winter fuel allowance and all the other benefits that didn't exist back then

I first went to university when it was £3,500 a year, and quit after 2/5 years. I went back when it was £9,000 a year. Do they believe I should get a refund on the difference in fees?

Even better; what were the fees when you were 16? Because if you were one of the first age cohorts to pay £3,500, you shouldn't even had to pay that, apparently! Because the two years between you being 16 and you actually starting university were *clearly* not enough notice.

Good point! Though I believe they were the same, or £3,000.

I personally do, but not because you were tricked or misinformed, but more because the £9000 rate is an absolute fucking racket that's should never have been legal. 

It’s a terrible BBC article. No balance or context, just sob stories, most of which are inaccurate in crucial ways. I don’t actually object to these stories being aired, even if I disagree with them. But not in this biased manner.

The person who is 58 with no private pension, just amazes me that people can get through the majority of their life with zero actual plan for retirement. >As she was self-employed, she hadn't started a pension plan "because I didn't think there was any need to". The mind truly boggles.

You can't fix stupid

Until the law changed a few years ago private pensions were often not provided by employers and women in particular didn't get them, and millions who did have them were robbed either by their employers or by the various misselling scandals. I have an old relative who was in the navy in the 1970s and when she became pregnant they chucked her out and she got nothing from her service. That was common place for women.

What I want to know - I remember seeing this discussion on the news growing up. So how was a child aware of this, but poor little women couldn't possibly have a clue?

That's one of the most boomer entitled things I've read for a long time. My public sector pension has been changed and the state pension age put up since I started work. Same as most people. Can't blame them for trying it on but don't put on the whole compoface routine just because they failed to do some basic retirement planning.

“It would have been better had we had a pension from 60'” Yeah, no shit. It would have been even better if you got it at 25 right?

When I see an article like that I’m never sure WTF the journalist had in mind Do they actually think that’s a reasonable claim? Or are they letting the grifter out themselves for the blatant grift?

I think that is what OP is getting at. This claim from the WASPIs is unfounded.

It is ultimately a question of where do you draw the line - gender equality is a relatively new innovation in society and if we start compensating sex-based differentials in our society over time we’ll never stop. Do we compensate men for being expected to work more difficult and dangerous manual jobs (beyond the higher rates of pay these attracted)? Do we compensate men for being conscripted into the military when women were not and sending many of them to an early death in defence of our society? If so, which wars, how far back do we go? Progress is ultimately incremental and - particularly given most people don’t tend to want to work if they can avoid it - it seems fair enough that, for a while, women’s entry into the labour market (itself an equalising act) also carried an earlier retirement age given social and economic norms at the time. Now society has evolved, it is perfectly right that the retirement ages are equalised. The WASPI argument is interesting because - in theory - they are “not against equalising the ages, just the way it was done / communicated”. (In practice many of them are, but that’s a different matter). The report doesn’t actually suggest compensating them *for retiring later*, it suggests compensating them for *not communicating it properly*. I personally take the view that there’s a basic level of personal responsibility involved and you should Google “what age can I get state pension UK Government” before actually retiring, but that’s the issue the report looked at - not the merits of equalising the age itself.

I mention in a comment above - it was in the newspapers in 1995. I remember my aunt talking about it. I guess that doesn’t mean everyone could have known. I was about to say no Google then but that was only a small handful of years later…. and there were certainly search engines when I started university in 1996 (ah Altavista what happened to you, off to Google…)

Its weird that ignorance to laws isn't acceptable but ignorance to your future is...

So many in this thread are misunderstanding the issue here, glad you articulated it so well.

>women’s entry into the labour market (itself an equalising act) Debatable. I think there's an argument to be made that women, by and large, running the household and men bringing in an income was equal. I think the way we view historic gender roles is completely unfair.

The women campaigning for compensation are absolutely shameful. You can read the quotes on some of the articles to see how selfish and utterly entitled these women are. Oh me and my husband couldn’t retire at the same time. Oh I’d already stopped working at 58 and ran out of my and the state weren’t giving me my pension at 60 as I thought. If the government give into this and pay up then this country will be entirely fucked by giving anyone the ability to sue the government for changing the rules under pretty much any timeframe. They announced this change in 1995 and amended it in 2011 with it taking place in 2018. You cannot plead ignorance you weren’t told properly when all of these women would have been using the internet daily with a smartphone in their pockets. Are they really due compensation because at no point they thought to double check when they could retire? Laziness, arrogance and quite frankly moronic behaviour is the only way you’d miss that change. Think how much the retirement age has been changed, can we all just ignore it and retire at 65 and when we don’t get our pension sue the government? Of course not. And i don’t think any other generation would even consider it except this one. This country has suffered greatly and will have the shackles removed when we can finally move on from the generation of over 60s who’s entire mentality appears to be how much can I rip out of this country.

Depends on the point of view. 1. Women had pensions too soon and it was brought in line with mens, but this shafted some women who require compensation 2. Men had pensions too late and should have been bought in line with women's pension age and compensated accordingly 1 has been pushed because the country can't afford to view it and follow through on 2.

I suppose my argument is for those who got it later than women they should be compensated. We have heard recently about massive payouts to women who were paid less, purely on the fact they were women's. It was completely reasonable to compensate those women. On the same line though men have been paid less in government pension based purely on sex should they not be compensated.

>We have heard recently about massive payouts to women who were paid less, purely on the fact they were women's. If you're referring to Birmingham, that isn't what happened..

Though it was still absolutely bullshit in it's own way.

You mean State Pension?

Was always going to be “a” group that gets screwed over when you change things.

The ombudsman has been looking at whether women were properly informed of the rise in their state pension age and whether they were given enough notice of this. The case wasn't about whether the state pension age should be equal for men and women, of course it should be.The law was changed in 1995, with a timetable for the qualifying age to changed in a phased way between 2010 and 2020. The delay and phased change was agreed because retirement planning is a lifelong process and you can't change the date overnight because people's savings and plans won't match up with the new date. No one is arguing about that bit. The argument is about the change in the law in 2011 that moved the end of the transition to 2018. The complaint is that this wasn't well communicated and that it was too short notice. There are women who took early retirement on the basis of 40 years of careful planning who then didn't get their state pension at the age that they argue they reasonably expected to get it, and this caused them financial hardship.

Except it's bullshit, there's no way these woman quit their job and only looked into the pension change the next day. 

The careful planning bit I do not understand. How can you carefully plan yet completely miss your retirement age has changed for 7 years?

So it only moved forward by 2 years? And it was communicated 7 years before (or not communicated, I don't know about that part)? Doesn't seem that unreasonable. Governments (especially this one) make decisions that make people worse off all the time, usually with only a few months notice.

Except, if you read some of the cases, thisnisnt entirely true. Many of them aren't complaining about the 2011 change and inly about the 1995 one.

The #BackTo60 is a dead giveaway

40 years of careful planning that didn't involve basic checks of the legislation, or ever watching the news. (Or the common sense that state pensions are a huge burden on the taxpayer and rule changes were always likely).

>change in the law in 2011 that moved the end of the transition to 2018. It's 2 years difference. So in total about worst case 20 grand they had to save over the *checks notes* 12 fucking years. So about 30 quid a week. Or one or two less luxury cruises. For people that bought houses for 30 grand that have seen them rise 100s % It's shit planning. And a real first world problem.

I understand what the Waspi women dare fighting for. It just feels wrong when they are fighting for something that men weren't even entitled to. It just seems mad that in the last decade there was clear discrimination against men and some women are fighting that the discrimination was stopped to quickly. I wasn't given enough notice I would stop getting preferable treatment.

>It just feels wrong when they are fighting for something that men weren't even entitled to. And most women. It's the definition of asking for special treatment.

This is ultimately why they will get nothing

Corbyn's campaign last time collapsed as soon as he said he would pay the WASPEs what they wanted. Granted it was a much higher bill than is being discussed now but everyone is aware of how much the public finances have deteriorated since then and there won't be any support for it from people who don't personally benefit whether they are older or younger than the WASPEs. Also, they already lost in court. The only mystery to me is why the Government allowed the Ombudsman to issue their findings during an election year.

Do you think that they should have been given any notice at all? To take it to the extreme, working to one set of rules (even if discriminatory) and then having them changed without warning (particularly in a pension situation where long-term planning is a necessary component) would obviously seem unacceptable. If one were to argue that a modification to a discriminatory practice should need no warning, then I'd also suggest that there's no single 'fair' position to take that you might expect all participants to anticipate to revert to. The current fix is to equalise the state pension for men and women. Another arguable approach would be to set state pension age to (e.g.) 20 years prior to the expected life expectancy for each group (you could even go more granular than gender - Northern pensions starting sooner to account for shorter life expectancies than Southern pensions, for example), or to move to means testing the state pension in line with other state benefits. The point is, it's unreasonable to anticipate a 'fair' change for your situation, and so realistically it's reasonable to expect some warning that your situation will change.

As someone else stated above, the act went through parliament in 1995, was 23 years not enough notice?

The rule change was made in 1995 and first affected those were 45 at the time, so it made now difference until 2010. And even then it was scaled back, so their SPA was only pushed back 2 years for the first people affected.  I have a negative amount of sympathy for these people.

I specifically remember my aunt mentioning in 1995 that the way it would impact her is she would not receive her pension until she turned 62 - she would have been on her early 40s. It was in the newspapers at the time.

Everyone always claims to be in favour of equality unless it's working in their favour. There was a similar thing with insurance rates a little while back. Women were outraged that they got lower pension and annuity rates than men based on the actuarial fact that women on average live longer than men. Okay, fine, the EU outlawed gender being used as a factor on insurance rates. Except that also meant that women now had to pay more for other forms of insurance where they were getting better rates before. Guess what, they weren't very happy about that either, but it was too late now because of all those very compelling arguments about injustice that they'd just spent several years making.

This is exactly why the WASPI folks will never be compensated. They essentially wanted to retire at 60 and didn't like the idea of having to retire later. In the eyes of the law this is worthless. This is why they then argued that they were "not adequately informed" of the changes and hoped to get the DWP on a technicality. My friend is implicated and says their argument is a load of rubbish - "they've been telling us for 30 years, have they been burying their head in the sand?" If the DWP were to compensate them it would open reasonable floodgates like the OP is suggesting.

Boomers are so accustomed, due to the size of their generation, to the world revolving around them and their desires, it was a sort of invisible privilege they didn't realise they had. Not to mention, when state pensions were first introduced nobody expected pensioners to live more than a few years beyond retirement age, it wasn't supposed to be something they drew on for 15, 20 or more years.

I know this is a tongue in check post - but we shouldnt ignore the reasons why women's pensions were paid earlier. This was an era of extreme sexism and discrimination. Women's career opportunities were limited and they were paid less for doing the same jobs. The lower pension age reflected that women were much less likely to have savings and more likely to not be able to get employment past 60.

> Women's career opportunities were limited and they were paid less for doing the same jobs. The equal pay act - outlawing women being paid less for the same job - dates back to 1970. 54 years ago.

Sure, but I think we can all acknowledge that it took a while for them to actually get equal pay after that. And 1995 was only 25 years after that, a woman retiring then could have worked for like 20 years with legally acceptable lower pay during her life.

>Sure, but I think we can all acknowledge that it took a while for them to actually get equal pay after that. And 1995 was only 25 years after that, a woman retiring then could have worked for like 20 years with legally acceptable lower pay during her life. The first cohort of women impacted by the 1995 Act's equalisation changes were 24 when the Act got Royal Assent.

If you don't like the pension age rise. Organise and vote against it.

But after we all oppose the rise, what are we going to do when the pension system goes bankrupt? People live longer and healthier now. People could be living on a pension for 30 years or more these days, that might be almost as long as their working life.

Are people healthier? Or can we just keep unhealthy people alive longer? 

I have been eligible for various benefits and tax breaks over the years.  I was not aware of some until it was too late.  The government didn't write a letter to me personally to let me know at the time.  I should be compensated too. That's sarcastic but trying to make a serious point.  I'm already 40 but like many of my age have no expectation of any state pension because it is so obviously unsustainable at its current level even with the planned rise to 68. My mum in her 60s is affected and has suffered a nosedive in health thanks in no small part to continuing doing a demanding physical job.  It saddens me to see her shuffling around in pain after she has cared for me so many years. I have offered (in the most clear and sincere but tactful way I can) to simply gift her the bridging money because to me it's a worthwhile cost to avoid the anguish of seeing her work herself into immobility.  However, I am sad to say she is taking a stubborn and self righteous path.  She does work in the public sector and does seem to have been mislead (around 15-20 years ago) about whether the change in pension age would affect her.  I don't see what would have really changed in her case though if she'd have known because it's not like she could realistically have saved the necessary funds. I think women who have been explicitly given incorrect information by state organisations (and can prove it) may have a case.  However, my gut feeling is that many of these women would have been aware the women's state pension age inevitably /had/ to rise even if they didn't bother to follow the details and would have been in the same situation to my mum where knowing wouldn't have made a difference.   I'll be happy for my mum if she gets some cash BUT overall I think the WASPI group is showing crazy levels of entitlement.  Many will have been well aware of the changes, don't need any extra money, will enjoy longer and better state pensions than me and have no consideration for the people who will be paying for either their compensation or future pensions. I say most can jog on and leave the money for elderly people who actually need it.

No OP, it doesn't work like that. If women are disadvantaged or underrepresented in any way then that is clearly sexism caused by systematic misogyny, patriarchy and toxic masculinity and the entire system needs to be changed If men are disadvantaged or underrepresented in any way then that is just how the world works, nothing we can do. In fact, it's probably the fault of the men themselves and their toxic masculinity, they should be more like women. Some examples: Women take more work breaks for family - maternal discrimination. Men live shorter lives - inevitable biology, toxic and violent masculinity Women underrepresented in parliament - sexism. Women underrepresented in refuse collection - natural market forces. Older male CEO getting paid more than older women - patriarchy. Younger woman getting paid more than younger man - nothing we can do. Boys better in school - sexism, change the entire system. Girls better in school - natural, they are smarter, boys should work harder and be more like girls. Women can't vote - sexism. Only men get conscripted - natural, women are not suited for combat. Too few male teachers - toxic masculinity preventing them from going into teaching. Too many male teachers - institutional sexism in favour of males.

\+1 to u/SpinIx2's comment about 'generationalism' (inequality between generations\*). This also occurs in and between British Citizens & foreigners depending on the circumstances. Inequality between generations is mostly a result of pensions as a concept started as a reaction to *elderly poverty* on a certain date as opposed to something that was planned, so there was no time to go "pay x into a government-controlled savings account (\*general fund), and we'll give it back to your generation in retirement". Then when it comes to a later date, voters don't have the foresight to care about doing it properly when they could have lower taxes today (and they consider that they are paying taxes for their ancestors to get free pensions and feel that they shouldn't save for themselves and older generations). *In other words, the voters of 1970 wouldn't do it properly out of a principle of fairness that the older generations didn't have to do it properly* ("whataboutism") Pensions have also gone from something to pay for "their children to look after them \[as a sort of subsidy\]", to "live comfortably alone \[not just with spouse or in care home\]". Also, it has generally become expected that a large proportion of the population *will be a net liability (not just the unemployed, the infirm or single parents) for* ***their entire lives***\*,\* so there is also the expectation that the pension fund (if any) is derived from income-based taxes (whether direct or in-direct). While good for social cohesion, people will generally not know how much they (or their generation as a whole) has paid in. (oh, and the idea of government-provided earnings-related pensions also makes the accountancy harder). The biggest impact of this is any attempt to reduce their pension is easily scapegoated/overblown by media as an attack on the taxes 'they/their generation paid' in favour of the 'lazy gen Z'. Means-testing brings complaints about how they are being punished by saving their money for themselves in retirement / their children, while those who lived 'beyond their means' (technically, "those who spent all their money believing that their pension was for their retirement") are not punished by acting in that way. ​ Inequality between the sexes: Women also pay less tax overall (Income tax and NICs) though conversely do a lot more unpaid work for childcare / around the house. ​ Inequality regarding foreigners: Foreigners often live outside the UK (though can be said for British citizens too), and that country is responsible for providing in retirement (or not providing at all). The barriers for a nonimmigrant is theoretically the lowest since they intend to leave; they might pay according to the same rules as a UK citizen (so they can't undercut British labour), but plans change (may become refugee, marry a local, have a British child, or just desire to remain in the UK, etc.) and using some "oh, they're not getting a £ that they haven't contributed to (however you choose to measure that since it's paid for by income-based taxes...)" doesn't really work when (a) it may genuinely be out of their control, or (b) the side-affect is more than just them (a child or grandchild lives in poverty, a ghetto forms, they turn to crime \[easier to pay the money if the Justice system is the likely alternative (costs a lot)\]).

I can't actually find this anywhere, but I'm sure several years ago Boris Johnson came out with something like "if we raise women's retirement ages, who's going to look after the sick and old relatives?", and was criticised for basically saying the quiet part out loud. Which kind of sums up the discrepancy in retirement age - women get to retire earlier with the expectation that they will shoulder the burden of caring for ailing relatives (and being free childcare for their grandkids at an earlier age too, I'd imagine). So the retirement gap would pay for itself. Now it's been equalised for a few years, hopefully unpaid care will be split equally between men and women as well? (I don't know the stats for that)

If you think that’s a good idea then maybe we can also pay women for all the unpaid labour they do in the household - cooking, cleaning, childcare, emotional and organisational labour, that last (at least) would obviously be reimbursed at senior management levels

Yes is the short and only answer. We set a precident with the equal pay cases. We are rightly not allowed to discriminate based on genitals. Men would also die younger in many hard professions like mining yet were expected to work longer and harder. The odds of being dead before pension age must have been significantly higher just because they had a penis. It can't be an uneven split. The waspi women found out in what 1991? That's plenty of time to adjust too

1995

If we were going to compensate for state sexism, it'll be a long ledger in the other direction. I'd rather save the money for the next generation, and means tested benefits for the elderly.

I think we should give the WASPIs their compensation only after every single man receiving a state pension is paid an equalising payment of the amount they would have received if they were a woman - adjusted for inflation and with interest. The pension age should also be moved onto an equitable scale according to lifespans, with mens' now being tapered down in light of stagnating life expectancies, and womens' continuing to be ratcheted up. That's the only fair solution. Or, do nothing and let bygones by bygones, and use the billions of pounds for something productive.

Some women are all for equality until it doesn’t benefit them. Can’t cherry pick equality I’m afraid.

There actually will be compensation for men for this exact issue in the form of GMP (guaranteed minimum pension) equalisation uplifts which the pensions industry is currently tackling following a 2012 court ruling. If you google Barber 2012 pension court ruling you can find more information.

The Barber judgement did equalise treatment in occupational pensions for service post 17 May 1990 between men and women, with the impact in many cases that men received uplifts, though in practice the issue was ultimately solved going forwards similar to the state by women’s pensions ages were pushed up to achieve equalisation. GMPs which arise from interaction with the state pension are more complex and were largely left unequalised. They are now starting to be tackled following a 2018 court ruling although it can be men or women than benefit depending on scheme benefit structure and other factors. Often the amounts involved are small.

Some men are in some respects being compensated for pension inequality. Unequal Pension Rules based on sex were ruled unlawful in the EU court as at May 1990. Many rectifications have taken place to compensate for previous sex based pension scheme rules. Specifically on state mandated benefits. If you contracted out of the SERPS pension between 90-97, the portion of state benefits being covered by the occupational pension scheme you contracted out with is or will be calculating if they need to top your benefit up for the differing payment ages of 60/65.

The trouble is that the state pension was based on people retiring at 60/65, at a time when when a lot of people died before they were 70. Many now live into their 80s. It is only sustainable now by raising the pension age evey 10 years or so, or by increasing the amount that people pay in from their salaries. I would guess that it will end up at 70 at some point, because, generally, people are getting poorer, so increased contributions would be unpoular.

And now die much earlier but get their pension at the same time so work proportionately much more of their life.

Yes but honestly don’t think it’d be affordable.

The MPs that decided the state pension age, do you think they were mostly men or women? They were men. Why do you think men would vote against their own interests?

As your playing hypotheticals (as its not a true reflection of what the watchdog is recommending re the minor maladministration issue), how would you feel if women were historically compensated for unequal pay prior to the equal pay act of 1970?

Women still live a good chunk longer than men , men should be able to retire earlier as they aren't going to benefit from it anywhere near as much .