Women SPA this week

lisyloo

You didn’t HAVE to retire at 52.
You chose to.
If you’d had kids of your own, grandkids you looked after or maybe even an ill spouse you would have prioritised and your parents would have received help from the state either at home or in a residential place.
As the ONLY sibling your situation is not only about your gender either.
You’d be in the same situation if you were an only son wouldn’t you??

The state will support people so what you did was out of choice.

You can certainly choose not to give up work to look after parents these days.
Our parents had help at home and then went into residential care.
Neither son not daughter could have afforded to give up work without making themselves homeless and also couldn’t just give up childcare either.
(As it happens their needs could not have been managed by one person anyway).

Not being discriminated against starts With the individuals not “playing the victim”. YOU HAD A CHOICE, so don’t hold other tax payers responsible for your personal choices.

My vagina hasn’t stopped me doing anything including becoming a pilot etc. And neither has yours !!

Gers

lisyloo wrote: »

My vagina hasn’t stopped me doing anything including becoming a pilot etc. And neither has yours !!

In a post full of statements which make no sense this is the worst! Of course being a woman has stopped most from doing many things, including being a pilot although there were significant exceptions.

Have you not heard about the glass ceiling.

It is good that you are so empowered and can stand out from the crowd of women who have been marginalised and excluded for so long (and I'm not even touching on pensions). A huge swathe of the woman population have not been so lucky.

Many women did NOT have a choice about caring for aging relatives and to suggest otherwise is outrageous in the extreme. Consider others before making such vast generalistions, it does you or your 'cause' no favours.

lisyloo

Gers wrote: »

In a post full of statements which make no sense

My experiences of caring for elderly relatives over the last few years are absolutely real.
The choices family members have made are real.
Sorry if it doesn’t suit your narrative.

My SIL chose to look after her grandhchildren rather than make herself homeless to look after her parents.

What part of that doesn’t make sense to you?

lisyloo

Gers wrote: »

Many women did NOT have a choice about caring for aging relatives and to suggest otherwise is outrageous in the extreme. Consider others before making such vast generalistions, it does you or your 'cause' no favours.

At the present time this is NOT true.
The state provides carers in the home which is means tested
The state also provides residential and nursing care which is means tested and free if people can not afford it.

My ‘cause’ is equality and I’m not cherry picking.

Consider others?
I do NOT accept anyone had a gun held to their head to look after their parents.
Sure they might have wanted to and good for them for loving their parents by i totally dispute anyone had a gun held to their head.
It does your pity party no good to suggest anyone did.

Gers

lisyloo wrote: »

It does your pity party no good to suggest anyone did.

I am not part of any party and have made no posts either way!

Your posts show lack of consideration or empathy.

LHW99

In a post full of statements which make no sense this is the worst! Of course being a woman has stopped most from doing many things, including being a pilot although there were significant exceptions.

I am in the age group affected twice. I found wearing glasses was more of a handicap to my career (couldn't join the police and many other services) than whether I was female or not. Yes, there were some very mysoginistic persons in the higher echelons when I started. You found ways of dealing with them or kept under the radar and looked for somewhere better.
If anyone aged 60+ cannot work, and there are some whose health prevents it, there are benefits out there, just as for under 60's

DairyQueen

lisyloo wrote: »

You didn’t HAVE to retire at 52.
You chose to.
If you’d had kids of your own, grandkids you looked after or maybe even an ill spouse you would have prioritised and your parents would have received help from the state either at home or in a residential place.
As the ONLY sibling your situation is not only about your gender either.
You’d be in the same situation if you were an only son wouldn’t you??

The state will support people so what you did was out of choice.

You can certainly choose not to give up work to look after parents these days.
Our parents had help at home and then went into residential care.
Neither son not daughter could have afforded to give up work without making themselves homeless and also couldn’t just give up childcare either.
(As it happens their needs could not have been managed by one person anyway).

Not being discriminated against starts With the individuals not “playing the victim”. YOU HAD A CHOICE, so don’t hold other tax payers responsible for your personal choices.

My vagina hasn’t stopped me doing anything including becoming a pilot etc. And neither has yours !!

You seem to have entirely missed my point. Apparently, if I had other caring responsibilities then I would not have been in a position to 'choose' to care for my parents. Do you see the irony of that view?

Btw.. I am not an only child; I am an only daughter. It never occurred to anyone (including me) that my brother should be making any 'choices'. He was then supporting a wife who, in turn, cared for their two minor children.

Do you see the pattern? or are you being deliberately obtuse in your self-conscious and erratic attempt at denying the results of all research on gender inequality whilst concurrently providing examples that illustrate its validity?

Nor did it occur to me that my parents' care was primarily the responsibility of 'the state'. Another irony of your rather confused post. I have not cost 'other taxpayers'. Quite the contrary, every person (the majority of whom are female) who provides this type of care saves taxpayers many thousands.

Not all families are able to offer support but the alternative can be dire for the elderly, and especially so given the impact of austerity on cash-strapped local authorities and younger tax-payers (aka 'the state'). You seem to be of the opinion that taxpayers are more responsible for your parents' care than are you or your brother. In that respect you are correct... you have indeed achieved gender equality.

Yes I am a victim of gender inequality. So are you, and so is every woman. It's just a question of degree and I am lucky that, unlike so many, my retirement income will not be reduced dramatically as a result.

This status quo will remain until caring (whether for children, the disabled, or the elderly) is not the default expectation of females by virtue of the gender pay gap and of social norms.

xylophone

As the ONLY sibling

Do you mean only child? An only sibling of a parent would be his /her brother or sister.

And DQ did not suggest that she was an only child but an only daughter - she might have a brother or brothers?

And yes, of course there must be many sons who have cared for their parents - but I, too, am of the opinion that where there was a daughter, she would have been looked to as first in line to take on the responsibility.

Certainly until comparatively recently, there was many a parent born in the twenties or thirties who would have cited

"A son's a son 'til he gets him a wife but a daughter's a daughter all her life". Emotional blackmail? Perhaps, but not the less compelling for all that.

And certainly, even up until the late seventies and beyond, many women would have expected to put a career on hold, at least until the youngest child was old and responsible enough to be left alone in the house for a few hours.

With regard to the pension age business, it does surprise me that there seem to be so many women who claim to have been unaware of the 1995 changes - and the schedule and time scale was quite reasonable.

What was not reasonable were the later changes and I can quite understand those affected feeling aggrieved.

My vagina hasn’t stopped me doing anything including becoming a pilot etc. And neither has yours !!

An extraordinarily tasteless comment.

My SIL chose to look after her grandhchildren rather than make herself homeless to look after her parents.

But your BIL wasn't doing the job? Or even (heaven forbid), the children's own parents?

There seems to be a certain lack of logic here!

bugslett

GibbsRule_No3. wrote: »

PPOV
I received notifications with my works pensions for a few years saying my SP would start in September 2018. Then 2011 change was introduced and for at least two years maybe more more the note that came with the works Pension info said they could not tell me anything about the SP date. Most of us knew it was being extended by the 18 months. Nothing I could do to add to my pension so I just decided to

Personally speaking, I think the 2011 changes were the ones that could legitimately be contested, it was rather short notice.

Silvertabby

bugslett wrote: »

Personally speaking, I think the 2011 changes were the ones that could legitimately be contested, it was rather short notice.

I agree, even though I am too young to benefit. I'm sure I read somewhere that WASPI was initially set up with the intention of just overturning the 2011 increases - but there was no interest. It wasn't until they flaunted the 'promise' of loads of dosh/back dated pension age to 60 for all 1950s women that they took off.