What is it about?
Pensions reflect what you did throughout your life - they are dependent on the work you used to do, whether you have children, whether you are married divorced or widowed. As a result, decisions you made 20 years ago can impact the amount of pension you receive. The Belgian pension system is built up with a traditional family in mind, with a life-long marriage between a husband in paid employment and a wife taking care of the household. Women deviating from this traditional ideal, for instance through divorce, face a high risk of poverty in old age. Despite being twice as involved in the labour market as married women, they are much more likely to become poor after retirement: about one quarter of divorced women is poor after retirement, compared to only two percent of married women.
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Why is it important?
The paper explains how pension regulations reward certain life courses and penalise others - with a delay of up to 45 years. This delay is important, because norms change over time. Women are essentially penalised today for following the standard norms in society of the 1950s and 1960s, which is fundamentally unjust.
Perspectives
The article shows what happens if women become the subject of a policy made for traditional men (i.e. a full career of uninterrupted full-time participation in the labour market). Pension systems have difficulties coping with women's live courses, marked by more interrupted participation in the labour market and part-time work. Belgium is an extreme example, though the same is essentially true for all pension systems: the link between labour market participation and retirement income that is the foundation of any kind of pension system, fundamentally discriminates women.
Wouter De Tavernier
Associatie KU Leuven
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Lifecourses, pensions and poverty among elderly women in Belgium: interactions between family history, work history and pension regulations, Ageing and Society, February 2014, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s0144686x14000129.
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