Amid fears this week about Chancellor Rachel Reeves raiding pensions to plug tax gaps, there was better news on the State Pension for women.

Research by pensions consultancy LCP has found that the ‘gender pension gap’ on the State Pension has been almost completely eliminated when it comes to the pensions of people retiring today.

A new Freedom of Information request by LCP Partner and former Pensions Minister Sir Steve Webb found that the gap between men and women has shrunk to under 1%.

According to the FOI, the average newly-retired man now gets a pension of £209.95 per week, with the average newly-retired woman getting £208.15 – within 1% of her male counterpart.

Sir Steve believes that full equalisation is in sight.

Of course things are not perfect and women are still the poor relation when it comes to pensions but we should recognise this progress.

It's also a reminder that too many women in the past have been disadvantaged by the whole pension system, both the state and private sectors. They have been treated as second class citizens.

There was a failure to recognise that many women were working part time hours for much of their careers, particularly while bringing up children, or taking career breaks to look after their families.

The government’s pension strategy now should be to do everything possible to boost women’s pensions, particularly where women are only able to work part time hours. Better off women pensions is not just good for women, it's good for the economy.

It cannot be fair or right that the price of bringing up children is to be penalised when it comes to pensions.

Many divorcing women also find themselves adrift when they split from their partner. Good legal and Financial Planning advice can help but this is not always affordable for many. Again women are disadvantaged here.

A wider issue here for men and women is fairness in pensions in general. It's reasonable that you shouldn’t expect a Rolls Royce pension if you’ve only made Ford Fiesta contributions but you should have a right to expect that your pension will at least be adequate in retirement to support a basic lifestyle without resorting to other benefits.

Making someone in poor health wait until 67 or 68 (or even higher eventually if we are to believe the pundits) to receive the State Pension is simply not fair or right and must be reviewed. Simply pushing up the State Pension age again and again is not a solution and will harm both men and women at the lower income scales who tend to have shorter lifespans, as government surveys have shown.

Pensions in the UK are, realistically, in a bit of a mess and the Triple Lock will be of little benefit to people whose life expectancy doesn’t go much beyond their late sixties and will never enjoy it.

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Kevin O’Donnell is editor of Financial Planning Today and a journalist with 40 years of experience. This topical comment on the Financial Planning news appears most weeks, usually on Fridays but occasionally other days.  Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Follow @FPT_Kevin 

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