Women and Occupational Pension Provision: Past and Future

This chapter ( ¹ ) traces the history of female access to occupational pension provision, noting some changes introduced by the Social Security Pensions Act 1975 and the Social Security Act 1986 ( ² ). Women have consistently been under-represented as members of employers’ pension schemes. A small minority within the current generation of elderly people have entitlement to occupational pension benefits derived from their own earnings over a working lifetime. The limited access of women (and especially of those women who have ever married) to occupational pension benefits is a reflection both of lifetime labour market status and of a domestic division of labour which assigns the major responsibility for the unpaid work of the home to women. Occupational widows’ benefit provision does not necessarily compensate married women for a lack of benefits in their own right.