State Pension Age for Women Debate
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Madeleine Moon
Main Page: Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)Department Debates - View all Madeleine Moon's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
State Pension Age for Women
Madeleine Moon Excerpts(7 years ago)
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Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
This is a simple question of justice, of fairness and of righting a wrong that has been done to women of the 1950s generation. I was born in the 1950s—many in the Chamber will not remember them—and women did not work. We were told that we would have to rely on our husband’s pension.
Later, when we went into work, given the opportunity, we were told, “You’re working part-time; you cannot enter a private pension agreement.” We did not work not because we did not want to, but because there were no employment opportunities for working women. Some women could not be in teaching if they were married in the early 1950s; they had to give up work.
Now, those same 1950s women are called—I find this quite offensive—the “sandwich generation”: we are the ones looking after grandchildren and our elderly parents. At the same time, we are having to give up work because our pension is not there. Too many women are now living in poverty. Too many women, when they can get work, are having to accept zero-hours contracts, temporary jobs and low pay, no matter what their qualifications or skills base.
It is wrong that a generation of women have been treated in this way, ignored by Government and not even communicated with—the contempt that that generation of women have had to cope with all their working lives has been exacerbated by this Government. It is time for justice for the WASPI women.