UK women ‘twice as likely to miss out on pensions auto-enrolment’

theguardian.com:

Women are more than twice as likely as men to miss out on being automatically put into a workplace pension, according to a report.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) said its study suggested that more than one in 10 women were in jobs where their employers did not have to enter them into a workplace pension, compared with fewer than one in 20 men.

About 1.4 million women earn less than the £10,000 threshold that requires their employers automatically to enrol them into a pension, said the TUC. This means they are potentially missing out on an occupational pension.

Northern Ireland, the West Midlands and Wales are the areas with the highest proportion of female employees who do not qualify for auto-enrolment, according to the study.

The Prospect union has calculated that the income gap between men and women in retirement is now 40.5%, more than twice the level of the gender pay gap.

Paul Nowak, the TUC’s general secretary, said: “We need to fix our pension system so that all women can benefit from a decent income in retirement. But many are missing out on having any sort of occupational pension at all. Unless ministers act now, more women will be consigned to poverty in retirement.

“Ministers should start by scrapping the earnings threshold for auto-enrolment. Workers should have the chance to build up a pension, regardless of how much they earn.”

One driver of the gender pensions income gap is the unequal division of caring responsibilities, the TUC said, which means women are much more likely to take time out of work or work part-time to look after children. That makes it harder to build up a workplace pension.

Other causes include the gender pay gap, and historical differences in national insurance that have left women with lower