MSE News: Pensions Minister: 'no straws to clutch to' for WASPI campaigners

miller

Paul_Herring wrote: »

And you missed the H off CPIH.

I quoted the widely reported CPI which was 2.3%. Incidentally, the CPIH was also 2.3%.

JezR

As per usual with these stories, the comment in this forum is very different in content from those attached to the main article.

Direct links to this though don't seem to work.

mumps

Silvertabby wrote: »

- because (war work apart) married women didn't work outside the home and so didn't accrue pension benefits in their own right.

Really? Shame my mother and grandmother aren't still around to give you a bit of a history lesson, actually my great grandmother could add her bit as well. Plenty of women worked.

Malthusian

JezR wrote: »

As per usual with these stories, the comment in this forum is very different in content from those attached to the main article.

The Disqus threads under MSE articles are one step below the Daily Mail. Most of them are fire-and-forget whinges rather than attempts at actual discussion as you get on these forums. There is no point responding to them as the original poster has long scrolled on to the next article in their Facebook feed.

Silvertabby

“ - because (war work apart) married women didn't work outside the home and so didn't accrue pension benefits in their own right.


Originally posted by Silvertabby ”
Really? Shame my mother and grandmother aren't still around to give you a bit of a history lesson, actually my great grandmother could add her bit as well. Plenty of women worked.

Mumps - I apologise. I should have added 'generally'. However, the 1940s changes were made on the (mostly male) MP's assumptions that women gave up work when they married in order to take care of husband, home and children. My own mother (born in 1930) always worked, in order to pay the mortage - but she was only able to do this because my dad's widowed mother (who had never worked since her marriage and early widowhood) lived with us and so took on full time child care duties.

mumps

My great grandfather was killed and my greatgrandmother worked and brought up 4 children single handed as she didn't have any choice, well I suppose she could have put them in an orphanage but I guess she didn't fancy that.

My grandparents split up when grandfather returned from WWII a very damaged man, my grandmother worked to bring up her younger children.

My mother always worked.

I honestly think the "women didn't work" is a middleclass myth.

Pollycat

mumps wrote: »

My great grandfather was killed and my greatgrandmother worked and brought up 4 children single handed as she didn't have any choice, well I suppose she could have put them in an orphanage but I guess she didn't fancy that.

My grandparents split up when grandfather returned from WWII a very damaged man, my grandmother worked to bring up her younger children.

My mother always worked.

I honestly think the "women didn't work" is a middleclass myth.

Silvertabby has already said she should have used the term 'generally'.

I think it depended on circumstances.
I can understand from your family dynamics that it was necessary for the women in your family to work.

My own mother worked full-time - because she had no choice.
No husband and 2 children under 5 - this was late 1950s.

Her sister, slightly younger, never worked after getting married.
Her sister, 11 years younger, never worked after getting married.

Indeed my Mother stopped working after having my youngest sibling.

No 'middle-class' in our house.

And when I first started work in the very early 1970s, a lot of women I worked with didn't come back to work after giving birth.

Silvertabby

I honestly think the "women didn't work" is a middleclass myth.

You're probably right - but it was that 'middle class myth' that led to the reduction of women's State pension age from 65 to 60, so even more ammunition for the argument that it should have been reversed long ago.

I've been dredging my memory re my own family - my maternal grandmother went into 'service' as a young girl, but gave up work when she married. She certainly wasn't middle class - grandad was a docker on Birkenhead docks - but that was when many working class people believed that any man who had to send out his wife to work was less of a man. My paternal grandfather survived the Somme, only to fall into an unguarded factory machine in 1929, when dad was still just a baby. I believe my gran may have worked in a shop when dad started school, but may be wrong She certainly wasn't working when I was born in 1956.

Certain professions - such as teaching and civil servants - operated a marriage ban, so women had no choice but to give up work on marriage - perhaps this helped to purpetuate the 'middle class myth'.

coyrls

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/womeninthelabourmarket/2013-09-25

JezR

The middle class wife wouldn't have really benefitted from a reduction in the woman's pension age to 60 in1940 simply because middle class men (or indeed professional women) didn't in those days get a state pension at all. They were excluded from the insurance scheme of the day which was restricted largely to fairly low earning working class people in manual or semi-skilled industry. Not even all working class occupations were covered; railways weren't for example. These all had other pension arrangements through their employer or own investments.

The primary group that benefitted were unemployed men, which previously would have seen a reduction in their benefits when they reached 65 from 27/- to 10/-. The next were single working class women - there were rather more in the cohort then as the prevailing marrying rate was considerably less than after the second world war. Their employment rate fell significantly after reaching the menopause, affected also by caring for older relatives. Then being outside of the insurance system they ended up on public assistance, the PC term of the day for the workhouse, until reaching 70 and getting a means-tested non-contributory pension.