WASPI women have been failed by state

THIS week, I will be performing in a production of Sunset Song, at the Albany.

This is a beautifully written adaptation of the novel, written by Lewis Grassic Gibbon in 1932.

I studied the novel in Mr McGivern’s Higher English class in Wellington Academy, and I have loved it ever since.

The piece is set in the north east of Scotland around the outbreak of World War I, and explores the changing relationship between the people and the land, and the powers exerting influence on both.

The main character is a girl: Chris Guthrie, and her journey into womanhood is explored, somewhat in the shadow of the experiences of her mother.

Both characters suffer against the tension of the expectations placed on them to be a wife and a mother, again, and againor to work the land, instead of being a scholar.

I feel the injustice of lack of choice, and the constraints of place and time on this woman every time I step into the character of Jean Chris’s mum.

WASPI women were born about 20 years after Sunset Song was written, in the 1950s. Their experience is a further example that can be added to the chronology of many gender-based injustices woven across generations.

WASPI women continue to campaign regarding their context whereby the pension age for women was raised, then raised again, without an appropriately comprehensive or extensive notification of this action that would affect them, being in place.

It is this lack of notice of the change in pension age, which left millions of women unable to plan financially for their retirement and, in some cases, left them with no income. WASPI women made financial, employment and family decisions, based on a particular set of assumptions and then the rug was pulled from under them.

It is logical to assert, and should be of no surprise to comment that, when developing a pension system, it might be useful to understand and accommodate for the fact that the pension context for women is more complex than for men. It is significantly more likely that a woman will have career breaks, changes in employment status, or irregularities of income throughout her working life, due to caring responsibilities for others.

This also has not happened, and therefore some WASPI women, who expected to retire at 60, but now retire at 66, may also therefore have missing years in their pensions.

Other women have been unable to reduce their working hours to help with caring responsibilities, having the knock-on effect of young parents being unable to afford childcare and return to work. The ripples continue throughout the local economy, and the younger generations.

A system was needed that understood all of this complexity, communicated clearly, did not miss people out and gave women confidence that any additional payments into that system were administered well. The WASPI women were failed on all of this.

These compound injustices, highlighted by the WASPI campaigners has resulted in the Department for Work and Pensions being found guilty of maladministration by the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman, who have now recommended that compensation should be paid to the 3.6 million affected WASPI women across the country.

By raising the state pension age for women, and then raising it again, The UK government saved £181 billion. Even if compensation is paid out, the government has still benefited from this unjust policy.

In 2019, the Labour party manifesto stated that WASPI women should be compensated, at the time quoting £58 billion amounting to £16,000 each. This is in stark contrast to up to £50,000 that some women have lost.

Conservatives and Labour have now stated their latest positions, which is not to pay even the most meagre compensation suggested by the report from the ombudsman last week.

Remembering that all of this comes on top of decades of unequal pay, poor maternity pay, smaller pensions, it seems the campaign must continue.

In the meantime, yet again, women are paying the price.