Women

1
Womens Pensions and Poverty - A European Issue
Jasna A. Petrovic President of the Womens
Committeeof FERPA/European Federation of Retired
and Elderly People

• NPC Conference, London, 27 September 2008

2
TRUTH

• Europe is one of the most wealthy regions
• in the world. Nevertheless, recent Eurostat
• data on income poverty highlight the fact
• that wealth continues to be unevenly
• distributed among the EU Member States
• and within those countries among its
• citizens.

3
The worning facts

• By 2050 the proportion of people aged over 75
  living at risk of poverty could be 30 or more in
  all but a handful of EU Member States, with older
  women worse off than men.

4
Why are women poorer?

• 1. This applies particularly to women due to
  their traditional lower representation within
  paid work and to the fact that their
  opportunities to accumulate full pension rights
  have often been much lower.
• In the EU15, 10 of those working less than 30
  hours a week are at risk
• of in-work poverty, whereas the number declines
  to 5 for those
• working longer than 30 hours a week. It is
  well-known that part-time work
• is predominantly a characteristic feature of
  female employment 36.2 of
• women in the EU15 worked part time in 2005,
  compared with 7.7 of
• men. It is later reflected in their pensions

5
Why are women poorer?
2. This reflects societal gender roles and is
compounded by a lack of opportunities in both
training and education, contributing to lower
incomes in work and higher levels of poverty in
retirement amongst women.

• Motherhood and other unpaid caring work
•         - breaks in employment
•         - gender pay gap
•         - part time hours
•         - occupational status

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Cruel facts differences

• Difference in work patterns
• 80 of part timers are female
• 60 of mothers work part time, vs. 4 of
  fathers.
• More than ¼ of women aged 45-64 provide unpaid
  care for elderly or
• disabled people.
• Almost 1/3 of women reduce their labour market
  activity as a direct result of caring.
• Women are likely to live alone during retirement
• Over 40 of women aged 65 are widows
• More than 2/3 of women aged 80 or older are
  widows.
• 60 of women over 75 live alone.
• High probability on reliance on survivor
  benefits.
• Increased risk of dependence on means tested
  benefits

7
At highest risk?

• At-risk-of-poverty rate after social transfers
• 65

Hungary 9 Malta 21 Netherlands 6
Austria 16 Poland 8 Portugal 26 Romania
19 Slovenia 20
Slovakia 8 Finland 22 Sweden 12 UK 28
Turkey 21 /2003/ Iceland 10 Norway 18
8
It is about social model

• 16 of EU citizens are at risk of poverty, say
  the latest Eurostat figures, but only after
  social transfers /15 men, 17 women /. Before
  social transfers there are  26 EU citizens at
  risk /25 men, 27 women/. 
• Half the countries that joined the EU in 2004 do
  a better job protecting their
• citizens from poverty than the average for the
  EU-15 /especially in Czech Republic, Hungary and
  Slovenia/.
• In the majority of countries, the poverty risk is
  clearly higher for
• elder women in EU15 - 21 and in NMS10 - 10! 
  
• Higher differentials Sweden, Austria, Germany,
  Finland, Ireland Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia,
  Slovenia and Cyprus. Low differentials
  Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Portugal and
  Slovakia.

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UK hidden poverty?

• One in five of the UK's population lives below
  the poverty line - generally defined as living on
  an income which is less than 60 of the national
  average.
• Of the 12.5 million people living in poverty,
  just under a third were single, working-age
  people without children, 29 were children, 22
  were adults with children - among them 900,000
  single parents - and 18 were pensioners.
• The report, Poverty in the 21st Century,
  concluded the nature of poverty was becoming more
  complex with extremely poor people now more
  likely to be female and either divorced, widowed
  or separated.

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But

• In UK
• The proportion of pensioners living in low
• income households has been falling
• throughout the last decade, from 29 of all
• pensioners in 1996/97 to 17 in 2005/06.
• Congratulations!
• Still Single female pensioners and older
  pensioner couples are the most likely to be in
  low income.

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Worning! Some figures for thought

• The UK has a higher proportion of its population
  in relative low income than most other EU
  countries of the 27 EU countries, only 5 have a
  higher rate than the UK (Latvia, Greece, Spain,
  Lithuania, Italy)
• The proportion of people living in relative low
  income in the UK is twice that of the
  Netherlands, and one-and-half times that of both
  France and Germany.
• Mothers employment rate is 29 less. Mothers
  full time employment rate is 60 less.

12
UK /and many other countries Sad Side Story

• The poor remain unseen because many come from
  backgrounds where we don't often expect poverty
  to exist and don't come forward to ask for help.
• The complexity of the means-tested pensions
  support is
• such that people are not claiming what they are
  owed.
• It has been estimated that only around 2.7
• million of the 4 million pensioner households who
  are
• eligible for these easy-to-understand benefits
  actually
• bother to claim them.

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Older - poorer!

• In all countries women aged 75
• had a notably higher poverty risk.
• One out of every three women aged 75 had
  experienced a poverty risk in Austria, Finland,
  Belgium, UK, Greece, Portugal and Ireland.
• Germany and Italy had little or no poverty
  differential for women in two age groups.

14
Legal minimum pension
source SPC Special Pension Study, minimum income
provision for older people and their contribution
to adequacy in retirement, December 2006, EC
Social protection website
15
Average wages
Source EUROSTAT, gross data Gross data
16
Average pensions
Gross Net
17
65living below the poverty line

• BELGIUM 24 of retired 65 women live in poverty
• AUSTRIA 230 000 65 people
• SPAIN149 000 men, 1 697 000 women
• CROATIA 40 of the population living in poverty
  risk zone (10 bellow poverty line), as earning
  less than 260 Euro
• HUNGARY 50 of the retired people, as receiving
  less than 244
  Euro per month
• IRELAND 27.1 of the retired people, 3.3 in
  constant state of poverty
• UK forecast by 2050 50 of future pensioners
  may receive incomes below the official poverty
  level
• ITALY 5 million at risk of poverty, of which 3
  million women

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Retired 65 people at risk of poverty
Percentage of 65 retired persons at risk of
poverty. Data Integration 2007 EC, EUROSTAT
19
Key findings
1.Labour market conditions and the final outcomes
of pensions systems are clearly
related. 2.Especially in the case of womens
poverty, the issue of care credits (recognition
of periods of time out of paid work for caring
responsibilities such as looking after children
or elderly relatives) is becoming increasingly
important. 3.The wage gap between genders is
something that should be looked at, as is gender
segregation of the labour market. 4.There
appears to be a trend towards providing less
generous basic pensions, but covering a higher
percentage of the population.
20
What is guilty

• WAGE GAP leads to PENSION GAP
• The main factor behind the current pension gender
  gap is the lower remuneration of female workers,
  due to widespread sectoral and occupational
  segregation. Womens average insurable income is
  85 of mens and about 89 of the national
  average.

21
Food for thought

• Retirement age and length of pension
  contributions - gradual increase in retirement
  age reached 63 years for men in 2006 and will
  reach 60 years for women in 2009 to be
  challenged!
• Pension formula pension reforms widen gender
  pension gap to be challenged!
• Gender wage gap part-time working, career
  patterns and discriminating types of occupation
  and employment to be challenged!
• Women represent in the EU 59 of all tertiary
  graduates but they still do not reach the best
  positions in the economy for several reasons!
• Work/life issues women still take the burden on
  private and family responsibilities. to be
  challenged!

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Remember. Act.

• 1 October - International Day of Older
• Persons
• What you are going to do?
• 17 October International Day for the
• Eradication of Poverty
• What you are going to do?

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• THANK YOU!

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REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN FERPA AFFILIATES

• PYRAMID OF DISCRIMINATION
• Out of 10 surveyed organisations from 8
  countries, 8 of them have a women's structure
  and responsible person. As majority of the
  organosations did not reply, it is possible that
  majority of these organisations have no women's
  structure and lack of gender sensitivity.
• On average women make 46 of the FERPA membership.

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REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN FERPA AFFILIATES

• Pyramidal phenomenon is visible women make
  almost half in the membership, but only 28 in
  the parliament-like highest body and only 22
  in the government-like decision making body.
• Average representation level indeks for the
  surveyed organistions - which could be considered
  gender-sensitive /as they have replied to the
  questionnaire/ - is only 54, which means that out
  of each ten seats for women, male colleagues take
  almost five, plus their ten seats.

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REPRESENTATION RANKING

• 1 FNVNetherlands 107
• 2 SPI/CGILItaly 88
• 3 SUH/UATUCCroatia 88
• 4 FGTBBelgium 63
• 5 UILP/UILItaly 36
• 6 NPCUK 36
• 7 CFDTFrance 35
• 8 FNP/CISLItaly 25

27
Resolution Pension gap and poverty

• The FERPA Womens Committee meeting on
• 11 July 2008 in Brussels adopted the following
• resolution
• Older people are often at higher risk of poverty
  than their younger counterparts. applies
  particularly to women their opportunities to
  accrue full pension rights have often been much
  lower because of their traditional lower
  representation within paid work.

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• Pension systems alone cannot be expected to solve
  the problems of elderly poverty if the origins of
  the problems are within the labour market itself.
  Given the issues of gender segregation and
  part-time working in the labour markets of
  various countries, a high employment rate will
  not per se resolve the problems related to
  pensions and poverty in old age.
• There is large difference between men and womens
  working patterns While the number of women
  completing higher education now exceeds men in EU
  Member States, their employment rate remains 15
  percentage points lower than mens and they
  continue to face an average pay gap of 15. At
  the same time, the unemployment rate for women is
  still higher than the male rate, and long-term
  unemployment is still much more common among
  women than men.

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• Women are also more likely to work part-time 32
  of the female labour force is part-time, compared
  with only 7 of men, and governments have not yet
  come to terms with validating this and other
  atypical forms of working through pension
  entitlements. 60 of mothers work part-time
  versus 4 of fathers more than one-quarter of
  women aged 45-64 provide unpaid care for elderly
  or disabled people.
• Almost one third of women reduce their labour
  market activity as a direct result of caring.
  Women are likely to live alone during retirement
  over 40 of women aged 65 are widows more than
  two-thirds of women aged 80 or older are widows
  60 of women over 75 live alone.
• All these parameters reflect on the poverty risk
  of women.

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• The FERPA Womens Committee therefore calls on
  the ETUC (European Trade Union Confederation) to
  make serious efforts to demand that the EU
  institutions strengthen the role of the EU in
  reducing poverty, especially of older women,
  across the continent.
• Preventing older people from slipping into
  poverty and social exclusion and providing
  adequate welfare for them is becoming a growing
  concern for the European Union. Some Member
  States have recognised this and have introduced a
  number of reforms to strengthen their minimum
  pension systems by increasing their financing or
  by introducing or improving benefits. The ETUC
  should strengthen its policy on older and retired
  workers.
• Womens poverty and social exclusion in Europe
  requires specific, multiple and gendered policy
  responses.

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• The FERPA Womens Committee calls on the ETUC to
  make a stronger effort to develop a new trade
  union response to tackling poverty among older
  women, based on the following objectives
• 1. Greater employment during working lives2.
  Better indexation of pensions in payment and
  also adequate survivors benefits 3.
  Strengthening of social safety nets4. Better
  pension crediting for genuine absences from the
  labour market5. Altering of social insurance
  rules and qualifying conditions to benefit
  women6. Fixing a minimum living pension for all
  older women.

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• The FERPA Womens Committee calls on all its and
  the ETUC affiliates to alert their governments to
  the risk of poverty among older women and to
  undertake a study on the impact of pension
  reforms on womens lives in their countries,
  bearing in mind that the individualisation of
  pension rights (and social security and taxation
  systems overall) should encourage women and men
  to engage in paid work, and thus earn individual
  economic security and that mechanisms should be
  developed which accommodate the employment
  patterns linked to society's need for the care of
  children and other dependant persons so that
  career-breaks or part-time work are considered as
  full-time work in the calculation of pension
  benefits.

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CONCLUSIONS

• The best policy instruments for tackling older
  womens vulnerability to poverty are active
  labour market policies for women, aimed at
  improving their employment, reducing gender pay
  gaps through the introduction of equal pay and
  also supporting their working careers.
• 2. For those women in employment, access to a
  decent occupational pension scheme must also be
  on an equal basis. However, those in part-time,
  low-paid employment or working at home often have
  no access to any occupational pension. Private
  savings schemes offer no guarantee or financial
  security. This can best be provided by the state.
  

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CONCLUSIONS

• 3. Active labour market policies for women should
  be accompanied by an improvement in the
  universality of pension rights (e.g., by offering
  flat-rate residence-based minimum pensions for
  all women, which are set above the official
  poverty level).
• 4. Poverty risks for older women should be
  specifically targeted, by providing more adequate
  survivors benefits for all widows, and by
  improving indexation of state pensions and
  minimum pensions.
• 5. More research shouldd be undertaken to study
  the impact of generous childcare credits and of
  minimum income guarantees on womens labour
  market participation.