Women's Views on News |
| Help close the gender pension gap Posted: 08 Mar 2016 02:23 PM PST
The European Women's Lobby (EWL) has launched a campaign 'Together we can make it happen, Equal Pension Rights for Women Now!' The campaign draws attention to the blatant discrimination that women face as they age. The accompanying video clip shows that the entrenched male bread-winner model requires robust measures to move towards an equal earner-equal carer model for the Europe of tomorrow while safeguarding women's pension rights today. "Awareness-raising and monitoring are only the first steps," Joanna Maycock, EWL's Secretary General said. "To bridge gender gaps in pay and pensions we need to put equal rights for women at the core of all pension reforms." The gender pension gap in Europe is an astounding 40 per cent which means that for every 100 Euro that men receive women only receive 60 Euro. An intolerable situation in 2016 almost 60 years after the principle of equal pay was enshrined in the EU treaties and 40 years since the first directive on equal pay was adopted in the 1970s. The gender gap in pay of 16 per cent produces an even greater gender gap in pensions of 40 per cent which means poverty for many women in the later stages of their lives. The EWL is calling on the European Commission for robust measures to develop an EU-indicator for measuring the gender pension gap and, through the European Semester process, to issue recommendations to all EU Member States to reduce the gender gap in pensions as part of ongoing pension reform policies. And here some frequently-asked questions are answered. Why this gap? Women earn less during their working lives. Despite anti-discrimination laws the majority of women still earn substantially less than men and, as a direct result of this, their pension contributions and benefits are also substantially lower. In some Member States those people earning below a certain level do not make contributions to the state pension scheme and therefore also do not earn the benefits. Women have a greater burden of work: as a rule women, in addition possibly to paid work, also do unpaid work in the family. In order to do this, many women work part-time – which decreases their pension levels. In many countries, the current generation of older women did not have the same access to education and professional training as the men of their generation, and for that reason they have had less access to qualified and well-paid positions Women have a greater risk of earlier exclusion from the labour market: in fact women in the course of their working lives still run an above-average risk of becoming unemployed, and in most European countries are under greater threat of being affected by early retirement. Women had to interrupt their working lives more often. A large number of women give up paid employment to care for older members of their families or children. Once again, their pension contributions and benefits are reduced as a result. This also affects male careers and may be one reason why men are less likely to take on this role. Divorces sometimes leaves women with an insufficient pension. The fact that women live longer than men on average is sometimes used as an actuarial argument for pension schemes to pay out lower benefits to women, discriminating against individual women. Why are equal pension rights important? Women are human beings too – not second class citizens! 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights : "discrimination against women violates the principles of equality of rights and respect for human dignity." The governments of the world reaffirmed their commitment in 1995 to "the equal rights and inherent human dignity of all women and men'' in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The male breadwinner model is still dominant Pension schemes are still constructed upon a traditional nuclear family with a male breadwinner and a non-employed wife, which leaves many women without individual pension rights. Women are workers too – the patterns of women's work impact on their rights throughout their lives Pension schemes are socially determined by men to suit male patterns of employment that have not been applicable to the majority of older women today. Changing family patterns, and the increase in divorce rates, must be taken into account in the reform of pension systems. The issues of sharing pension entitlement and derived rights become very important. Women continue to carry out the majority of care and unpaid work Women still have (and have had) different life patterns than those of men. In particular, women have been responsible – and still are in older age – for the provision of care to their families, partners, friends and neighbours, a task that does not give any pension rights. “Care doesn't count!” As Albert Einstein already remarked "Not everything that counts can be counted; Not everything that can be counted counts." Feminisation of poverty as women age Older women rely more on state pensions, and are consequently more vulnerable to governments' tendency to expenditure cut back in public pensions, replacing them with some kind of private provision. Only recently, austerity measures, which have been introduced throughout Europe as result of the financial crisis, disproportionally affect women, undermine years of progress towards women's integration in the labour market and stall gender equality. 1. Individualise pension rights, while phasing out old systems. The individualisation of pension rights is necessary from a gender equality perspective, but the security of many older women currently relying on widows' pensions and other derived rights must also be ensured. 2. Adapt pension schemes to accommodate society's need for the care of children and other dependant persons: Full pension entitlements to persons caring for a limited period. Public pensions must be designed to ensure that those who have made a career break or reduced their working time for a limited period in order to care for children and other dependant persons can acquire independent pension rights comparable to those she/he would have had without this career-break or reduction of working time. Part-time workers (the majority of whom are women) must be entitled to increased individual pension levels. 3. Establish a universal adequate basic old age pension, which is not means tested. 4. Develop a European employment strategy that encourages more women to participate in the labour market and that combats inequality in employment that has a gendered impact on the level of pension contributions and entitlements. 5. Raise salaries in sectors of the labour market that are dominated by women. 6. Ensure that partners have the possibility to share their pension entitlements. 7. Construct pension systems according to the principle that contributions should be less for low paid workers. 8. Prohibit direct discrimination in private and public pension schemes, including the practice of basing the level of payments and contributions on life-expectancy, i.e private, public and occupational pension schemes, which are based on defined contributions, should apply unisex actuarial criteria. 9. Increase research into gender and ageing to inform policy development. The majority of women experience a range of disadvantages in old age, such as low income, inadequate housing, poor health and care, lack of access to educational opportunities, information and communication technology. These disadvantages are the consequence of lifelong inequality and have a major impact on the quality of life of older women and contribute to the social exclusion of older women. 10. Research the degree of women's access to occupational pension (second pillar) and private pension (third pillar) schemes, and ensure that the increasing emphasis on the third and second pillar pension schemes in Europe does not undermine women's economic security in old age. What can you do? Join the EWL’s campaign Equal Pension Rights Now! #equalpensions; Watch and share the video; Discuss the issue with your friends and family; Meet with your trade union; and Ask your government to close the pension gap. When do we want this? Now.  |
| Posted: 08 Mar 2016 01:52 PM PST
By Fran O'Leary. International Women's Day shouldn't be the only day when women's voices are amplified in the media and politics. What women want should be right at the heart of policy making. That's why I welcome the campaign that Gloria de Piero and Kate Green are driving to encourage more women to register to vote. It's also why RegistHERtoVote is supporting What Women Want 2.0 – a new project using tech innovation to capture women's views. RegistHERtoVote, a non-party political grass-roots action campaign, was set up by Martha Dalton, David Wild, me and a broad range of campaigners, last year to encourage women to register and to vote. During the 2015 General Election RegistHERtoVote, alongside a number of other campaigns and initiatives, helped to increase voter turnout among young women by 5 per cent. This represented a significant shift and means that young women are now no longer the group least likely to vote in the UK. But with 34 per cent of women not turning out to vote at last year's election, there is still a lot more to do. RegistHERtoVote has been exploring what women want from politics and what would motivate them to get more involved. One women told us "I've never felt like politicians want to know what I think", while a 34 year-old woman from Cheshire said that politicians "need to be stronger and listen to the people". A 19 year-old student from London said she thought politicians "are meant to be for the people but their views aren't listened to." Clearly there is a lot more that politicians, parties and other groups need to do to listen, and show that they are listening. It's for this reason that on International Women's Day, we're supporting What Women Want 2.0. Back in 1996, a group of campaigners came up with a simple idea to capture a women's vision for society. It was to ask the question "What do you want?" on a postcard. Sue Tibballs OBE led the What Women Want campaign in the 1990s, which attracted the support of Anita Roddick, with The Body Shop distributing cards along with the Co-op Bank, Cosmopolitan magazine and many others. More than 10,000 women took part, from across the UK, and it became the biggest ever survey of British women. In giving a voice to women, it offered an unprecedented insight into women's thoughts and opinions and had a significant impact on the gender debate at the time. The survey was not aligned with any particular political party and had wide-ranging influence. Within the Labour Party, What Women Want was one of the things that helped to prompt renewed discussions on childcare, the environment and other issues. This, in turn, had an influence on the direction of travel for Labour Party policy at that time. Twenty years later, What Women Want 2.0 aims to reach over one million British women to gain powerful new insights into their views and listen to what they have to say. Launching on International Women's Day, the new survey uses a ground-breaking digital platform that will provide new insights and data. Appgree is a web and mobile application that allows groups of people to share their ideas and opinions and reach a consensus, using a statistics-based algorithm. Appgree is one of the digital tools that has been used by Podemos, the tech-savvy, left wing political party in Spain. On a personal level, as a Labour Party member, I believe the labour movement could benefit from listening to the results of What Women Want 2.0. After the 2015 General Election, one thing was clear. As the pollster, Peter Kellner put it "Nowadays, women are more likely than men to vote Labour." His analysis showed that Labour's advantage was specifically among women under 50. Meanwhile research from Ipsos MORI estimated that 44 per cent of 18-24 year old women would have voted Labour at the last General Election, while turnout amongst this group was very low at just 44 per cent. This means Labour could have a lot to gain if we managed to attract the support of more women – particularly younger women – and encouraged them to get on the register and vote. For Labour to continue to be relevant to the lives of women, the Party needs to listen. That is why I hope Labour listens to the results of What Women Want 2.0. Fran O'Leary is co-founder of @RegistHERtoVote. A version of this article appeared on the LabourList website on 8 March 2016.  |
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