Back to 60's Judicial Review Outcome

bigadaj

Silvertabby wrote: »

Just until 2025, when the women born on 31 December 1959 get their State pensions.

Remember that WASPE and Back260 don't give a stuff about women born on or after 1 January 1960.

I like that level of optimism. Just because they have hit sixty five doesn't mean they aren't entitled to thousands in compensation because they weren't paid their full entitlement from sixty.

I'd also expect such strong willed people to encourage their heirs and descendants to carry on the fight for generations to come, you can't give up at the first, or even sixth hurdle, looking for a payout some time on the next century.

DairyQueen

Happier_Me wrote: »

I think his reluctance has been partly influenced by the thinking that running a house and family is primarily still a woman's job!

My point exactly. It isn't just men that hold this ingrained social view. It never occurred to me that my brother should sacrifice his job/career to care for our elderly parents. Nor did it occur to Mr DQ that he or his brother, and not his sisters, should provide the lion's share of support for their frail and elderly mother.

My aunt by marriage cared for my paternal grandmother for the last 7 years of her life and this despite my grandmother having four sons. My anecdotal experience is borne out by the stats. It isn't just childcare that is still considered the responsibility of females, it's also elder care.

I have now foregone eight years of earnings and pension contributions. If I had been a mother then the financial impact of that would have been compounded at the beginning of my working life as well as at the end. I am blessed that my 30s and 40s were high-earning, well-pensioned decades. Even so, my pension doesn't compare to that of my spouse who has had the 'luxury' of females caring for his children and mother for an additional two decades.

It's interesting that men argue that their pension is an asset shared with their spouse. However. it only takes divorce or widowhood to demonstrate the consequences of that dependency. The whole point of equality is that every individual, regardless of gender, should have equal life opportunities. No such equality will exist until we let go of the idea that women do the caring.

zagfles

DairyQueen wrote: »

My point exactly. It isn't just men that hold this ingrained social view. It never occurred to me that my brother should sacrifice his job/career to care for our elderly parents. Nor did it occur to Mr DQ that he or his brother, and not his sisters, should provide the lion's share of support for their frail and elderly mother.

My aunt by marriage cared for my paternal grandmother for the last 7 years of her life and this despite my grandmother having four sons. My anecdotal experience is borne out by the stats. It isn't just childcare that is still considered the responsibility of females, it's also elder care.

I have now foregone eight years of earnings and pension contributions. If I had been a mother then the financial impact of that would have been compounded at the beginning of my working life as well as at the end. I am blessed that my 30s and 40s were high-earning, well-pensioned decades. Even so, my pension doesn't compare to that of my spouse who has had the 'luxury' of females caring for his children and mother for an additional two decades.

It's interesting that men argue that their pension is an asset shared with their spouse. However. it only takes divorce or widowhood to demonstrate the consequences of that dependency. The whole point of equality is that every individual, regardless of gender, should have equal life opportunities. No such equality will exist until we let go of the idea that women do the caring.

But there is no law that states that, is there? That's the point. It's one thing having a general societal attitude that certain stuff is down to men and other stuff is down to women, but to actually have a law that discriminates is completely another!
If you go down that path, you may as well argue that unequal pay is perfectly fine and OK because men are expected to pay for dates, men are expected to support a wife who want to give up work to have a child, men are generally more likely to financially support women than vv etc.

And of course there do exist men who give up work to look after children, elderly parents etc. Are you suggesting they be treated differently to women who do so?

zagfles

Triumph13 wrote: »

These statistics about gender differences in pay and pension provision are often pretty meaningless as you are looking at people as individuals, but much of the difference arises from couples with children. In order to provide care for the children, it has been fairly standard for one half of the couple to prioritise income earning and for the other to accept a reduction in earnings to allow them to prioritise childcare for a key period of their career. I'm happy to deplore the sexism which still means that it is predominantly men who take the former role and women the latter, but when the couple is basically functioning as a single economic unit you can't just draw sweeping conclusions from whose name the pension funds are in.
My wife has significantly less pension provision in her name than I do, but she is in no way 'poorer' than me. The combined funds are there to support us as a couple. If, heaven forbid, she divorced me she would get awarded equal shares (a very important change in the law relatively recently). Unless you can disentangle the impacts of this 'couple effect' any raw data on gender differentials is massively unreliable.

It would also help if we got rid of this ridiculous hyprocrisy of the govt treating people as individuals in some contexts, eg taxation, pensions etc, and as couples in others, eg tax credits, benefits etc. My and my wife's income all goes into the same joint account, we have joint credit cards, so it makes no difference whatsoever who earns what as far as day to day living goes.

But with pensions, we are unequal because the rules restrict pension contributions based on income, and tax rules can make it more benefical to build up pension in the higher earners name (or occasionally, the other way round!). For savings, the opposite can apply.

There's also maternity/paternity pay & leave. It's unbelievable that in this day and age the rules are different for men and women. There is some ability to share, eg a woman can "donate" some of her maternity leave/pay to her partner, but maternity pay/leave can only be earned by the mother, on the mother's NI record. The father, paying the same NI to the same rules, can only earn a comparitively pathetic amount of paternity pay.

hugheskevi

Just until 2025, when the women born on 31 December 1959 get their State pensions.

Remember that WASPE and Back260 don't give a stuff about women born on or after 1 January 1960.

The increase in State Pension age to 67 starts in 2026.

Surely there is a case to be made that people were not informed of this, as all the media attention was on the increase to age 65/66?

ArcticRoll

bigadaj wrote: »

I like that level of optimism. Just because they have hit sixty five doesn't mean they aren't entitled to thousands in compensation because they weren't paid their full entitlement from sixty.

I'd also expect such strong willed people to encourage their heirs and descendants to carry on the fight for generations to come, you can't give up at the first, or even sixth hurdle, looking for a payout some time on the next century.

I'm afraid it does. The anger seems to stem from this misconception that a pension is like a private insurance scheme where you pay into and take out of your own pot. You don't. National Insurance contributions pay are for all welfare benefits. There's nothing 'lost' as the only entitlement that exists is that someone will receive a pension once they reach pensionable age. The government is entitled to legislate to change when that age is, which is what happened.

Whether or not people like the outcome is irrelevant, that's how it works. They haven't taken a pot of gold labelled 'contributions by women born in the 1950s' as it doesn't and hasn't ever existed. All this talk therefore of 'we've paid in' as if it's a private pension scheme is nonsense.

You have no agreement with the government that you will retire at a certain age, nor does the government save up your NI contributions for you. The government tells you when you're entitled to take your pension and it's paid out of the the current revenue.

ArcticRoll

DairyQueen wrote: »

I look forward to the day when the treatment of men on the issue of child and elder care is considered equally 'preferential'.


For me, this issue can't be viewed in isolation of the bigger picture. If gender equality applied across the retirement income spectrum then it's a no-brainer that pension age should be equalised. However. no such gender equality exists. The most recent figures report that, by age 60, females have only 50% of the male age-equivalent, non-SP pension pot.

The SP therefore forms a much greater %age of female retirement income and I believe that it's this large gender difference in total retirement income that is the crux of the problem.


I anticipate that some men will feel sore when/if they lose their non-SP pension privilege and their total retirement income falls. That privilege has been gained at the expense of women who sacrificed full-time work and career opportunities to care for their own and spouse's children and/or disabled/elderly relatives. That privilege has also been gained at the expense of a male pay advantage.

Gender equality in this respect means men taking equal responsibility for caring roles. It means men earning less and women more over their lifetimes. It means men accruing less pension benefits and women more. And so on.

The argument that women should be society's carers also looks 'utterly absurd' in 2019. Unfortunately, in 1995 nobody considered this absurd. Indeed, in 2019 the expectation that women should be the gender that sacrifices their earning/pension potential is still alive-and-well.

So, we appear to have addressed the only pension issue on which women were gender privileged without addressing the much greater gender privileges enjoyed by men.

And let's not forget that the situation was even worse at the time SP gender equalisation was legislated. No pensions for part-time workers back then (and the vast majority of part-timers were and are female). The first equal pay act was introduced in 1970 but, here we are 50 years later, and the evidence suggests that it (and its successors) have yet to be fully implemented. If they had, then the gender pay gap would be an historic curiosity.

I agree that the removal of preferential treatment isn't discrimination so I am sure that you support the end of the preferential treatment afforded men courtesy of 'social norms' that detriment female income throughout their lives?

Yes I do. I also support that when it comes to single parents, non-white people, same sex couples, transpeople, disabled people and any other kind of group that has been historically socially and economically disadvantaged.

What I don't get is the argument that a white, university educated, heterosexual able-bodied woman should receive her pension 5 years earlier than a black, high school drop-out, homosexual disabled man, especially if the argument is that the pensionable age should factor in historical social and economic disadvantages.

Essentially that's the outcome #Backto60 are campaigning for. And I'm sorry I don't get the argument. I don't get it from logical perspective, I don't get it from a moral perspective. I don't get why women as a whole should receive their pension at 60 because many had childcare responsibilities and even those who didn't should still benefit from the lower pension age, but a man who had childcare responsibilities should wait until his 65.

I don't get the argument that a white woman should get her pension sooner than a black man.

I don't get the argument that a heterosexual household should benefit from having a pension income when one of the partners turns 60, but a same-sex male household should not have that until 5 years later.

I don't see how you justify that. But clearly you think you can.

jem16

JoeCrystal wrote: »

In Barber v Guardian Royal Exchange Insurance Group (C-262/88) [1991] 1 QB 344, the European Court of Justice ruled that it was contrary to the equal pay provisions in Article 157 TFEU for an occupational pension scheme to provide for unequal benefits for men and women.

Here is the link to the ruling itself:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A61988CJ0262

Yes that's the ruling for occupational pensions. However colsten was asking about the ruling for state pensions.

jamesd

SonOf wrote: »

The european court ruled that the British state pension system was discriminatory and ordered it to be the same for men and women.

To the best of my knowledge there has been no such ruling.

There was one for workplace pensions - Barber - because they are deferred remuneration covered by equal pay law but state pensions are expressly excluded from some protection:

"10. ... Following that decision, the government of the day indicated a commitment to "achieving equal treatment for men and women in the State scheme as well as in occupational schemes, and in particular to tackling the issue of unequal pension ages” (HC Deb 26 June 1991Vol 193)."

'37. ... Thus, the receipt of state pension is not "pay" as defined by the TFEU, because it is not a wage or salary, and is not paid in respect of employment. The "equal pay" obligation contained in Article 157(1) has no application.'

'38. We then turn to the Equality Directive which prohibits discrimination based on age (see Article 1) and which is the "concrete expression" of the general EU law principle of non-discrimination (see Dansk Industri at [23]). Recital 13 is relevant to the ambit of the Directive. It excludes social security and social protection schemes:

"(13) This Directive does not apply to social security and social protection schemes whose benefits are not treated as income within the meaning given to that term for the purpose of applying Article 141 of the EC Treaty, nor to any kind of payment by the State aimed at providing access to employment or maintaining employment".

39. Article 3(1) includes within the scope of the Directive a variety of work-related matters, but Article 3(3) expressly excludes state schemes or similar:

"This Directive does not apply to payments of any kind made by state schemes or similar, including state social security or social protection schemes".

40. The limitation in the scope of the Directive was confirmed by the CJEU in Case C476/11 HK Danmark v Experian A/S [2014] 1 CMLR 42, at [25].
41. A regime for the payment of state pensions to those above a certain age is a paradigm example of a social protection scheme. The Equality Directive does not apply. The Claimants’ EU law arguments must fail, because this legislation is not within the scope of EU law.'



You may like this observation, though.

'6. As a consequence of the Old Age and Widows’ Pensions Act 1940, the pension age for women was lowered from 65 to 60. In the Green Paper preceding passage of the Pensions Act 1995, it was stated that this –

"new inequality was a response to a campaign by unmarried women in the 1930s, many of whom cared for dependent relatives for much of their lives. It also recognised the fact that, on average, married women were several years younger than their husbands."

7. It is therefore clear that the reduction of the pension age for women was an act of direct discrimination in their favour (although unlikely to be described in that language at the time) which reflected the circumstances of the day, and created a relative disadvantage for men, thought to be justified by the social conditions then applying.'

A. we now have benefits specifically for those needing care to help pay for it and specifically for carers. That reason for the choice to discriminate against men in the 1930s no longer exists because we now do it with better targeted benefits.
B. WASPI and back to seem to be continuing the practice of their 1930s predecessors in seeking to discriminate against men.

fred246

I find it hard to work out the demographics of a WASPI woman in hardship. Surely if you have a job then you have to carry on working until 66 the same as a man would. If you have no job then you are dependent on somebody else or the state. So lots of women will be dependent on their husbands who HAVE to work until they are 66. So they have nobody to give them cash ie divorced,never married, widowed etc. AND they have no job. So a man in that position would have to get a job or live off job seekers allowance but they want more money than that because they are female?