International Woman’s day is over and I bet a lot of men like me are thinking it’s time to get back to BAU.
BAU is sadly summed up by this report from Prospect that shows that
What I learned yesterday can be summed up by Toby Nangle.
Reading the IFS report on the gender gap in pension saving, it is clear that something will have to happen to reduce the pension gender gap outside the powers of pension providers.
My instinct tells me that this is a problem to do with the division of household wealth which is still instinctively the property of men rather than women.
When a woman gets pregnant, she normally faces a period of savagely reduced earnings while she brings up the child, where there are several children , this can mean losing many of her prime earning years.
How often are there discussions between the prospective father and mother about the long-term consequences of this loss of earnings and consequent loss of pension rights?
I certainly never had one. It was assumed that my partner would become dependent on me in later life and would have a claim on my retirement income whether we stayed together or not. Although my child-generating days are over, my instinctive reaction remains the same for my child and I suspect that younger generations are not engaging with the financial consequences of bringing up a family to a much greater degree.
Maybe we should be thinking about the obligation of the wage-earner to share with the child-carer in a more formal way. Maybe there is a case for a pre-maternity contract that outlines what a woman is entering into , what she is giving up and what she can reasonably expect from her partner, by way of pension equalisation.
I’d be very interested to know from experts whether pension sharing orders are compulsory in other countries – where a pension is forsaken for child-caring and whether such an order is enforceable on the father.
Every day is a woman’s day.
I’m determined not to let men get 364 days and women 1 day a year! It’s a 50/50 thing for me and even if I’ve been taking a lot of things for granted over the past 40 years, it is not too late to start now.
Thanks to all who shared yesterday, us men must now recognise that women’s days are not one and done!