The gender pension gap has been almost completely eliminated when it comes to the state pensions of people retiring today, according to new data.
A new FOI by LCP Partner and former Pensions Minister Steve Webb revealed that the gap between men and women has shrunk to under 1%.
The data relates to the most recent group of retirees for which figures are available, those retiring in the year to November 2024.
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.
Mr Webb reported that the reply from the DWP said that “the amounts for men and women are on course to be equal very shortly.”
The change dates back to 2016 when the new state pension system was introduced, after Mr Webb had been Pensions Minister and was one of the architects of the new system. He said one of its specific goals was to gradually eliminate the gender pension gap in state pensions.
The new system had to be phased in gradually, not least to protect the rights people had already built up under the old system. But those transitional protections are gradually working their way out of the system, he said, with the result that the gap between men and women is reducing with every passing year.
Mr Webb said: “When there is so much negative news about gaps between men and women when it comes to pensions, these figures show that things can be changed provided that there is the political will to do so.
“There are however, far too many women who have already retired who are living on reduced pensions and I will continue to campaign for them to be treated fairly, including by rooting out all of the errors which have led to so many being underpaid for so long.”
The state pension was introduced in the late 1940s when there was a big difference between the typical pensions paid to men and women.
Even today, the average state pension paid to men and women who retired under the old state pension system differs greatly, with men getting an average of £217.30 compared with an average of £186.44 for woman.
That puts the average woman on just 86% of the pension of her male counterpart. The figures also ignore the fact that many women on decent state pensions now are widows whose pension only rose when their husband died and who previously spent many years on a lower figure, Mr Webb pointed out.