This is more of marketing’s capture of women’s issues; men driving the debate to link products to sexual politics. It’s patriarchal, patronising and contemptible. The debate on equality is not going to be solved by the financial services industry and pension auto-enrolment doesn’t even touch the sides.
My inbox is full of articles like this one. I’m not even going to link it as I know what the article will say. Some tom-fool organisation have spoken to a few people who have time to discuss the gender pay gap, auto-enrolment and the impact of one on another. I wouldn’t be surprised that most of them work for the digital news service that brings me such crap.
There is no way that even the most clued up actuary can predict the outcome of a new pensions policy as it falls on a population the size of Ireland’s . To suppose that a random sample of people will have the faintest idea about this question assumes
- That people know what a pensions gender gap is
- How auto-enrolment will affect it
- That funded workplace pensions drive change.
The pension gender gap is not controlled by funded workplace pensions which play a tiny part in people’s retirement income living standards.
The key determinants in Ireland as in the UK are the state pension and occupational pensions. The impact of personal pensions is vanishingly small and dwarfed even by private savings. The orange box represents defined benefits which are crucial to a large part of the workforce, including those who work in the NHS, civil service, teach, work for local government and are in the fire and police service.
The things that matter outside of the state pension (which is more important for women than men) are salary related and relate to the share of household wealth (including security in divorce).
Several times over the days leading up to international woman’s day (Friday), I have heard women say that men should be more involved in debating the pension gender gap, but how can we have a reasonable debate when so much of it has been captured by the pension savings industry claiming nonsense.
What is needed both in the UK and elsewhere is an end to the patriarchal attitudes that have prevailed in public and have meant that we find it unusual to have women treated on an equal footing to me. This can’t be done by tweaking savings policies, it needs a fundamental reassessment of behavior. Add to “patriarchal” – “patronising” which is the belittling of women by men through the assertion of millennial long assertion of male hegemony. These things don’t change overnight.
How men create a false narrative about men
I write as a man. I know that I have physical and mental differences from women. We’re equal , we’re different – it’s obvious.
I live with a woman who commands my absolute respect and who I regard as my equal though she is different.
I work with women on the same basis.
The reason men like me don’t talk about the pension gender gap all the time is because we’ve controlled it for as long as there have been pensions and a lot longer too.
Listen to Charlotte O’ Leary on Darren and Nico’s podcast this week to understand how women are recorrecting the narrative for themselves. We should butt out of this debate and let powerful women get on with matters. It will take generations to unravel, it will not happen through private savings, but women will assert their natural equality and their difference, because men give up on dominating the debate.
If you have time after that, listen to Helen Dean’s podcast as well.
