Erosion of pension rights: Experiences of older women in Ireland

ABSTRACT

The recent economic crisis of 2008 and the fragility of government revenues sharply illuminated the contested nature of pension rights in Europe. The crisis intensified calls for an overhaul of pension systems across Europe including raising retirement age, increasing contribution years, auto-enrolment in occupational schemes, and changing tax relief on private pension contributions. However, the impact of the economic crisis and the implications of pension-policy changes are not the same for everyone: vulnerable groups, such as older women workers, are often ignored. Using a feminist political economy of ageing approach and a life-course perspective, we examine the impact of the economic crisis on the pension provision of older women workers in Ireland, where pension reforms have intensified since 2008. This research, which fills an important gap in Irish literature on pensions and provides insights to the European discourse on austerity and pensions, verifies that gendered vulnerability constrains women’s pension accumulation, thus undermining their social citizenship rights.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic crisis
• older women workers
• pensions
• Ireland
• gendered vulnerabilities
• social citizenship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Women need to register every year in which they are involved in caring responsibilities before the end of the calendar year. This scheme excludes many women who were affected by the marriage bar, since it is not retrospective pre-1994.

2 For example, an analysis of women in home duties for the years 1996 and 1998 found that over a third of them had been out of the workforce for over 20 years (Russell et al., 2002).

3 This includes persons in employment aged 20–69 years with an occupational pension, private pension, or both (CSO, 2011a). The 2009 data are the latest data that are available.

4 Ethical approval was obtained for the research from the National University of Ireland Galway ethics committee (ref 20-271-10).

5 Seasonally adjusted standardised unemployment rate for 2013 was 13.1. As of February 2014, the unemployment rate was 11.9%.

6 The belief that property is a good investment a more universally held notion. See Pettigrew et al. (2007) with respect to young people.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (CARDI) [grant number 20-271-10] and by a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship within the European Community Framework Programme' -FP7-2013-IOF [grant number 628665].