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From Security to Risk: Pension privatisation and gender inequality
By Jay Ginn.
Published: December 2001
In 1998 Tony Blair promised to ensure that "everyone can look forward
to a secure retirement" by establishing "dramatically better
pension provision ... for those unable to work because they are caring
for children or a relative who is ill or disabled". This important
new paper by Dr Jay Ginn of the Centre
for Research on Ageing and Gender uses data from the Office for National
Statistics General Household Survey to assess the position of women under
the government's current policies.
As the World Bank has recognised, "old age means something quite
different - and more troubling - for women than for men". Because
of their family caring roles women rely more heavily than men on state
pensions being adequate. Today older women have a median personal income
which is only 56 per cent of older mens', due mainly to the impact of
private pensions: two thirds of older men, but only a third of older women,
recieve a private pension, and women's amounts are lower. Gender inequality
in private pension coverage is equally wide among those of working age,
with 64 per cent of men but only 38 per cent of women contributing.
The Labour goverment is continuing a policy of running down public provision
for old age and encouraging its dispacement by private sector schemes.
Ginn argues that alternatives exist which are fairer to women, simpler
to administer, and affordable. As first steps towards this goal a number
of feasible short term modifications to the present system are recommended
in the final section of the paper.
Jay Ginn is Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Ageing and Gender
at Surrey University, and the author of Women, Work and Pensions: International
issues and prospects, Open University Press, 2001 (with Debra Street and
Sara Arber).
Download
PDF
"Women
hit by pensions timebomb" - The Observer, 9 December 2001
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