What special issues are there for women?

The information in workSMART's questions and answers applies to both men and women. But there are a number of issues that particularly affect women. Women get a rough deal from the present pensions system. You can lose out in a number of ways.

These include:

• spending time out of work looking after children or other dependents will mean that you do get the opportunity to save in an occupational scheme, although this will normally count towards building up a state pension.
• low paid jobs may pay less than the lower earnings limit for national insurance. This means that you are not building up entitlement to your state retirement pension. Each job counts separately so those combining part time jobs can earn over the limit altogether, but still miss out if each pays below the limit.
• many women in the past paid a reduced national insurance contribution known as the married women's stamp, this does not build up a right to an individual state pension.
• women earn less than men on average so any earnings related pension will also tend to be less.

This all adds up to a raw deal for women. On top of this the age at which women can claim a state retirement pension is shortly to go up from 60 to 65.

There's an overview of women's pension issues on the government's Pension Service website here and a detailed document you can download as a pdf from here.

There are questions and answers on workSMART that deal with these issues.