Government must use International Women’s Day to demonstrate it is serious about the gender pension gap

One of the biggest challenges facing women in this country is their lack of earnings in retirement. Average earnings in retirement are 37.9% less for women than for men: more than twice the gender pay gap (15.4% in 2021).

Prospect has led the way on this issue by publishing an annual analysis of the gender pension gap – the government itself does not publish an analysis of the issue.

Prospect has written to Pensions Minister Guy Opperman calling for him to look at the problem and for government to start taking a lead. As well as calling for government to start reporting on the gender pension gap, Prospect has outlined actions the government could take immediately to start addressing the issue.

These include:

• Abolishing the £10,000 earnings trigger for auto-enrolment.
• Reducing the postponement period for auto-enrolment from 3 months to 1 month.
• Phasing in increases to total and employer contributions on a matching basis between employees and employers.

Sue Ferns, Prospect Senior Deputy General Secretary, said:

“This International Women’s Day is time for the government to acknowledge the huge problem of the gender pension gap and start doing something about it. If we continue to close the gap at the current rate, it will be generations before women earn the same as men in retirement. This cannot be right: gone are the days when a woman was simply expected to rely on her husband’s pension to support her.

“There are a number of things the government could be doing today to make a real difference. The first of these is acknowledging the problem and asking ONS to start benchmarking the gender pension gap so we can properly measure progress year-on-year. Simple changes to the auto-enrolment rules would also be easy to implement and signal that the government is serious about equality for women of all ages.”