Women lose pension plea - for now.

[Workingman]

Women have challenged the government's increase in the pensions age as unfair and discriminatory. The court argued that it removed the discrimination from men and brought both sexes in line - age wise.

Well, OK, that's an argument, but how it was done was not in the least bit fair.

My sister and all my female cousins are caught up in this. So is my ex wife, all her sisters and all their cousins. Apply the 'six degrees of separation rule' and that's a lot of women up and down the country who are impacted.

It is not intrinsically wrong for men and women to retire at the same age so long as the rules, regs (and benefits) they have operated under have been the same for the whole of their working lives. This is patently not the case for the generation of women involved so I expect this to rumble on.

However, I do think that the sexist / discrimination tactic is the wrong one to be using.

[TheOstrich]

My S was also caught up in this. She was just 2 months outside the cut-off dates, and has lost out on 6 years worth of state pension - a hefty sum.

The trouble was that original 60-65 disparity between women and men - such rules were always going to be susceptible to an equality challenge in the current litigatious climate, and the State could hardly reduce the pension age for men to 60.

Perhaps it would have been more equitable not to implement the increase in pension age to 66 and onwards so quickly after stabilising it at 65 for both sexes.

[cromwell]

I know lots of women caught out by this. It is so wrong. Some have lost six years worth of pension and have had to dip into savings. They are having to work, some in demanding jobs, when their body is telling them it wants a rest.
Same with changes in pension schemes. Half way through their service people have had their pensions changed in a way that means they will get much less out of the scheme than they were expecting.
It's like playing a game of football and having the rules changed half way through, to your great disadvantage.
Not fair, and there's nothing you can do about it.

[Workingman]

Some have lost six years worth of pension and have had to dip into savings......... Not fair, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Many of the women caught up in this had children before the time of maternity leave and free / /subsidised child care. They gave up work some time during pregnancy and became 'unemployed' mums. Without help they could have been out of work or only in part-time work for getting on for ten years, longer than that if they had more than one child.

They lost a shed load of full-time NI contributions and when the new rules were brought in they did not have enough time rebuild any sort of pension pot. Almost all of them went back to work at a lower grade and on lower pay than if they had remained childless.

[Suff]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but the whole mess came up because a pressure group of women demanded the right to be able to continue to work after they received their pension. After all, if men could work till they were 65 why could not women?

So there is the problem, right there. Those who petitioned for this demanded the "right" to continue working over 60. The only reason that employers had the "right" to retire them was because they had become pensioners.

This was a "right" that these campaigners demanded for themselves. Not for future generations but "right now".

So what choice did the Government have. The campaigners thought that the Government would reduce the pension age for men then allow both men and women the legal right to work till they were 65.

To quote Mrs S' statement about it at the time: "What planet are these idiots on? They are going to screw it up for everyone and force women to work till they are 65"

The government had no choice in the matter. If they changed the law to allow the women to work until they were 65, then they had to get their pension when there were 65. There was never a cat in hells chance that men were going to retire at 60, more like 70, not 60.

I'm with Mrs S. Want to blame someone? Blame those who screwed the whole thing up int he first place. Because, in order to get what they wanted, they sold the entirety of the women in the UK down the river.

Mrs S is not affected by my SIL is. Mrs S is entirely unamused by the whole situation and she's not annoyed with the Government.

[Workingman]

Prior to 2011 both men and women had to retire at pension age, by law. So that was age 65 for men and 60 for women. The campaign to continue working after pension age, headed by Age UK, was for men and women, it was not the reason for the pension age increase for women. Ten pages in and I can find no popular campaign for women to be able to retire at 60 and then work till 65, and I can't find any of them campaigning for their pension age to be raised to that of men.

TBH complaints against the ages being made equal are as rare as hen's teeth, just about everyone agrees that it was the right thing to do. The anger is about the "How" it was done. The WASPI case failed in court because they were going on about it being 'unfair and discriminatory'. Had they challenged the method and timing of its doing with facts they might have had more success. WASPI are now campaigning for a ‘bridging’ pension for women affected and that could work if they stick to facts and leave emotions out of it.

[Suff]

WM, I remember that campaign, I remember the press at the time. Men were not pushing to have the "right" to work when they were pensioners. Not as I recall it. It was all about how unfair it was for Women. No matter how it was documented.

Even if they had phrased the case around the unfairness they would have lost. Because, as I said before, they were not campaigning for women to be allowed to work after retirement in 40 years or 50 years. They were campaigning for women to be allowed to work after retirement _now_.

Because of the now status of it, it impacted women _now_ and meant that the government had to implement it in this way and impact women right now.

That's what happens when you create pressure groups who try to messs with the current situation without thinking it all the way through. Just like the very people who were pro Section 28 repeal are now so anti what it caused in the sexualisation of the teaching of the 5-14 age group. If they didn't understand the impact they shouldn't have forced the issue.

However what is past is past. It is not going to change now. They can bring as many court cases as they like, in a decade it will all have ironed itself out and the losers will be flushed out of the system.

It seems that, today, everyone wants a level playing field. But nobody wants to lose anything in the levelling. Rarely, in history, has that been the case. It is always the case that someone, somewhere, has to pay for these changes. Sometimes the payee's are unexpected.

[medsec222]

I'm not sure how it works that women wanting to work beyond retirement age screwed it up for other women.

Looking back over my own retirement, which could have been at the age of 60, I chose to work on in a part time capacity and was also able to draw my state pension. In effect this was almost as much as my full time job as you also stop paying national insurance at the age of 60. I could have deferred my state pension if I had wished, I had the choice apparently.

I wanted to work on, there was no way I would have retired by choice. I loved my job as a medical secretary, still do, as I work from home transcribing medical reports and letters.

But I don't see how my choice has affected others. I abided by the rules at the time like everyone else and Government should have ensured when pension ages were altered that no-one lost out.

I think I have mentioned before, that married woman at one stage were encouraged to pay the married women's stamp with the promise that they would get their pension on their husband's contribution. Nothing was ever said at the time that they would get only a reduced pension and it was quite rightly phased out. So this is another group of woman who have lost out because they were never informed properly of how the scheme would work forty years down the line.

[Kaz]

I've lost six years worth too, just under £40k in my case. I am fortunate in that Mick earns well enough for us not to need it, although it has made a slight difference to his early retirement plans..

However, on the WASPI page I have been following on FB, there are some heartbreaking tales of real hardship because of this. Six years is too much, it should have been brought in more gradually, and women definitely should have been better informed with more notice. The government claim that all women had a letter, years ago, informing them of the changes. Some did, but many did not. I certainly didn't, and it's not something that I would have forgotten

[Kaz]

Medsec, you are absolutely correct in what you say about NI contributions, I actually worked on the pension section of a DHSS office in the '70s and that was official advice