Women and Pensions

Pensions were not always designed with women's working lives in mind, and the effects are still visible today. Women retire, on average, with meaningfully smaller pensions than men, a gap that is wider, in percentage terms, than the more widely discussed gender pay gap. That gap is driven by a combination of factors: career breaks for childcare and caring responsibilities that are still disproportionately taken by women, more common part-time work that reduces pension contributions in absolute terms, the gender pay gap itself feeding through into smaller contributions even for full-time workers, and the fact that women live longer on average, meaning retirement savings need to stretch further for the same standard of living.

On top of these broad structural patterns, many women also face specific, and sometimes genuinely distressing, pension situations of their own. Women born in the 1950s were affected by state pension age changes that, for some, arrived with little personal notice, upending retirement plans made years in advance. Maternity leave brings its own, often misunderstood, pension rules, including a valuable legal protection that keeps employer contributions anchored to your full salary even while you're being paid statutory maternity pay. And couples who live together without marrying face a significant, frequently overlooked gap in legal protection compared with married or civil-partnered couples, particularly when it comes to what happens to a pension on separation or death. This section brings together clear, empathetic, factual guidance on each of these topics, written to help you understand where you stand and what practical steps are available, without judgement and without assuming any one path through work, family, or relationships.