Women’s Day: new challenges

8 maart 2012 - Combining career and children is often seen as a major challenge for women. Today, on International Women’s Day, demographers from ‘Population Europe’ see a new challenge dawning: in an ageing Europe the unpaid care for elderly will largely fall on- already juggling - women.

In the near future, childcare might not be the only activity limiting women's involvement in the labour market. Data from Britain shows that already 15% of women aged 50 and over are providing informal care for an elderly person. 

Given rising life expectancy and greater numbers of people surviving into 'old' old age, it is likely that elder care responsibilities will increase across all the countries considered here and that the burden of this additional care may well fall disproportionately on women. This is shown by recent research done by University of Southampton. They expect that a high proportion of those who take on caring responsibilities in mid-life are in part-time work or have to give up work altogether. 

Therefore, it is quite likely that a combination of unpaid care and paid labour will continue to be a characteristic feature of women's work-biographies - and subsequently a big challenge to our pension systems. 

'Women friendly' pensions 

Jane C. Falkingham, Director of the ESRC Centre for Population Change (UK), and her research team suggest that 'women friendly' pension systems should both, reward their contributions in paid work, as well as valued unpaid activities like caring for children and elderly. Falkingham:"For example, by more explicitly linking credited contributions to valued activities, as it is already happening in the UK and Germany, and by de-coupling spouse and survivor benefits from women's own entitlements." 

It is well-documented that women typically fare worse than men in retirement on measures of economic well-being. Cross-national comparisons of retirement outcomes by gender and other socioeconomic characteristics have found that poverty rates are consistently higher among older women, in particular older women living alone, and that this pattern is evident in all countries to varying degrees 

The lower incomes of women are linked to their assumed role as primary carers and the impact this has on their engagement in the labour market and consequently their ability to build up an adequate income for their retirement. 

Possible measures 

Here there is undoubted room for improvement, for example by more explicitly linking credited contributions to valued activities, such as caring for younger children (as is already happening in the UK and Germany), and by de-coupling spouse and survivor benefits from women's own entitlements in order to reward prior contributions (including a proper valuation of unpaid caring activities). 

The association between older women's incomes and work histories is strongest in West Germany and weakest in the UK, where there is evidence of a 'pensions poverty trap' and where only predominantly full-time employment is associated with significantly higher incomes in later life. Work history matters less for widows (in all three countries) and more for recent birth cohorts and more educated women (UK only).