The violation of gender equality in pensions is now a major fairness issue for the Spanish social security system. Women are therefore 510 euros less per month than men and only 57% have access to a retirement pension compared to 82% for men.
This is a global health problem, although Spain is among the EU countries with the highest pension requirement, with a median difference of 41.1% in 2024, according to Eurostat.
For comparison, on average across EU countries, the median pension of women aged 65 and over in 2024 was 24.9% lower than that of men – The largest differences in median pensions were recorded, including Spain, in Luxembourg (43.3%) and lower countries (39.6%), while the least was observed in Estonia (-0.3%), Hungary (0.4%) and Denmark (2.7%) -.
He is concerned about progress in reducing violations in Spain, while other European countries undergo a (graphic) acercamento.
The fact that female principals have less stable income reduces their economic autonomy and increases the risk of poverty and social exclusion of women in life. The fact is that more women than men live on insufficient income and are dependent on family members or social services.
Además in Spain, 3 out of every 10 female mayors dependent on a lifetime pension, one of the lowest performance of the system. In men, however, this dependence is residual.
This exacerbates the desire because these pensions are not designed to guarantee a sufficient level of rent, causing economic and structural vulnerability in the streets of advanced education.
The gender gap in pensions and horror predictions have an economic cost: according to the ClosinGap report, Mapfre remains 28,500 million to Spain’s PIB every year. Less economic dynamism is not only due to less private consumption by large women with low purchasing power.
It also reflects a reduction in the labor force participation of people—mostly women—caring for mothers in need.
The desire is also observed in the accumulated legacy: in 2022, the future female mayors at the age of 67 will accumulate Assets 6,700 euros less than men. There are also important differences in the forecast: in reality, the gap in private pension plans has widened, from 300 euros in 2016 to 1,250 euros less in 2022. All this makes it difficult for mayors to supplement their low pensions and cope with unexpected events or long-term care.
Likewise, women, who tend to live longer than men, typically need bigger and more expensive cheers – starting in their 80s, the cost of care multiplies the average woman’s pension by 1.8. This creates a “vulnerability circle” in which long-lived women cannot finance adequate care, increasing their risk of poverty and institutional or family dependency.
In short, the gender gap in pensions is not only a social justice issue, but has a negative impact on social cohesion as current cohorts of women age and the next generation they will continue to promote structural wishes and influence intergenerational equality.
The factors that cause these imbalances are well known and therefore urgent to address. First, the shortest working career, working for a limited time, as well as being committed to an unpaid career translate into a penalty in terms of access to contributory pensions, as many women do not complete the required years of retirement and many women only have non-contributory pensions.
Second, salary aspirations and job occupations—female sectors tend to have lower rewards—accumulate over a lifetime in pension differentials. En tercer I end, the desirable division of unpaid care limits women’s work paths.
There is also a need for structural reforms that take place on the ground: reducing the pay gap, improving the working careers of women to enter professional sectors with higher added value and reducing the gap in the number of employees.
In order to achieve real co-responsibility for these things between women and men and, among others, increase membership credits for children, Introduce mayoral or staff care credits and automatically recognize the credit during the reducción period of the janitor day.
Before the prospect of chronicling the imbalance, it is advisable to put your hand to work: at the current rate, it is decided, without relevant changes in labor and social policies, that the gap between men and women in average pensions will take 48 years to close in Spain.
*** Mónica Melle Hernández is a professor of economics at UCM.
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