Impact of caring responsibilities on women’s pensions

Prospect has been campaigning on the Gender Pension Gap for the last four years with our annual reporting on the level of the Gender Pension Gap in the UK. Our last report published in September 2021 showed it remains over twice as large as the gender pay gap. We are preparing to highlight this issue and our demands for reforms to tackle the gender pension gap on International Women’s Day next year.

We know that caring responsibilities and direct and indirect consequences are a key contributor to the gender pension gap, along with many other factors. We’re looking for volunteers to share their experience to show the impact caring responsibilities have on women’s pensions.

We’re looking for women to come forward who’ve taken a career break, reduced their hours, or retired early, because of caring responsibilities, either to look after children or elderly relatives.

We’d like to produce some case studies based upon the effect this would have had on your pension entitlement and to produce estimates of the reduction in pension entitlement these breaks had. It’s the amount you’d lost out on in pension as a result of those responsibilities that we’d like to use in the case studies. No personal financial information will be included within the case study, just the amount your pension is lower by as a result of those responsibilities.

If you are interested in taking part please contact our Pensions Officer, Stewart Mott at [email protected]