Women are among the big losers from the latest pension reform. This observation appeared several times in criticism from opponents of the government’s bill. As part of its report on the application of social security financing laws published today, the Court of Auditors returned in detail to the differences regarding retirement between women and men. The elders of rue Cambon thus point out that the average amount of retirement pensions for women is 1,401 euros when it reaches 1,955 euros for men, a difference of 28%. This difference even rises to 40% without the survivor pensions that are paid to the surviving spouse after the death of the other.
The organization also highlights that the differences in direct-right pensions, that is, without taking into account survivors’ pensions, are reduced over time: it goes from 54% for the generation of retirees born in 1934 to 34% for those born in 1950. .
Women work more but resort more to part-time work
As expected, these gaps are closely related to the differences in the situation of women and men in the labor market. It is true that women are working more and more and have seen their activity rate increase from 55% in 1975 to 70% in 2021, but this progression is accompanied by an increase in the use of part-time work: this type of contract affects more than one in four women in 2021 compared to just 8.3% of men.
In addition, the activity rate of women falls between the ages of 25 and 49, when they are old enough to have children, while that of men remains above 90% regardless of the number of children. Between 1995 and 2019, the wage gap between women and men fell from 27.4 to 22.3% as a result of this global increase in the activity rate of women.
To explain these differences in pensions, the Court of Accounts points to the calculation rules because these rules penalize the insured with short careers and low salaries who are often women. Men more often fulfill the condition of a career of more than 25 years, which makes it possible to exclude the lowest salaries from the calculation of the reference salary for the general regime. For their part, women are more often forced to wait until the discount cancellation age to be able to retire at full rate because they do not have a sufficient period of insurance.
Solidarity schemes that mainly benefit women
Solidarity schemes make it possible to reduce the gaps in retirement pensions between women and men because it is mainly the former who benefit from them. “At the end of 2016, according to the DREES, all the solidarity schemes in the broad sense represented 29.1% of the direct pensions paid to women (difference of 10 points in family pension rights), including 50.2 % for those who had had three or more children and 19.1% for the others, compared to 18.3% of those paid to men”, specifies the Court of Auditors.
Among these solidarity schemes are the minimum pensions, of which 62% of the beneficiaries are women. However, the full rate condition to benefit from it forces a certain number to wait 67 years to retire. Women are also the majority among the recipients of the minimum old age (56% and even 88% for those over 90 years of age) but one in two eligible women did not use it in 2016. Finally, 90% of women have at least at least one of the main family rights (increases in the pension for 3 or more children, early departures for family reasons, etc.), but limits may also arise in this area, as the Court of Auditors reminds us: “Increases of pension for the parents of three or more children, contribute to increase the differences in euros in the amount of the pension between women and men, since the pensions of the parents who benefit from it are, on average, higher than those of the mothers.
Early retirement is one of the few solidarity schemes that benefits men the most: 18% benefit from it as part of a long career, compared to 5% of women. In the civil service, this is due in particular to the fact that the occupations where many women are concentrated are no longer classified as active category, such as teachers and nurses. Likewise, the adversity criteria used for the professional prevention account refer mainly to male occupations.
Pension increase instead of allocation of quarters
Due to a better life expectancy, women are also particularly the majority among the beneficiaries of survivor’s pensions (90%): they constitute 3.3 million of them who receive a direct pension and live in France. It is this category of income that allows reducing the pension gap between men and women from 40 to 28% during the year 2020. “However, the participation of the survivor pension in the total pension of women is increased from 23 to 18 % between 2004 and 2020 in relation, due in particular to the increase in pensions acquired thanks to their professional activity”, point out the Wise Men of rue Cambon.
The latter insist on the need to act on the labor market to continue reducing the pension gap between women and men, particularly in the fight against discrimination against women.
For pension rights linked to child and survivor plans to better compensate for career breaks and lower wages for women and men due to raising young children and sharing household chores, the institution calls for reforms that do not involve additional costs. to preserve the financial sustainability of the system. In particular, it proposes to compensate by means of a pension increase instead of the allocation of quarters “the impact on pension rights of the losses of quarters and wages linked to career breaks for the education of young children, in particular for the weakest, preserving specific rights of three children.
Source: BFM TV
