"Institute of grandmothers": How will the new retirement age affect women
Last week, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev proposed raise the retirement age in Russia - up to sixty-three years for women and sixty-five years for men against the current norm - fifty-five years for women and sixty years for men. It is planned to raise the age step by step, starting in 2019, and finally the new norms will come into force in 2028 for men and in 2034 for women. The reform project will soon be submitted to the State Duma; in the first reading it is planned to consider it already in the spring session, that is, until the end of July.
Pensioners make up about thirty percent of the population of Russia, and the reform of this sphere is one of the most unpopular government decisions. However, its initiators consider the solution of the issue inevitable: the population is aging, because of the demographic pit of the nineties, the number of working citizens is decreasing, and the number of pensioners, on the contrary, is growing - therefore maintaining a system in which pensions are paid from contributions to those who work is becoming harder.
By raising the retirement age in principle, the authors of the project practically equalize the retirement of men and women - there will be two years of difference instead of five. This decision is attributed to gender equality in Russia and the change in the status of women in society. RBC, which has an explanatory note to the draft law, quotes from it: the document calls one of the reasons for the reform “an equal distribution of domestic burden on family members”. It is obvious that the authors in many respects give what they desire for the real: in practice, and with the position of women in general, and with how they feel in retirement, everything is not so simple.
At the same time, in many countries similar measures have already entered into force, and the retirement age of men and women has caught up - for example, in Belgium (sixty-five years), Great Britain (in December it will reach sixty-six years for men and women), Iceland (sixty-seven years ), The Netherlands (sixty-eight years old) or Canada (sixty-five years old). At the same time, in countries where the difference still persists, it is difficult to explain it with something besides traditions and a patriarchal way of life, according to which a woman should work less than a man and devote more attention to family and home. “It’s an established social norm that women have a social bonus for caring for children and the elderly,” said Lilia Ovcharova, Director of Social Research at HSE, “Women have a longer life, retirement from an economic point of view should be the same. "
According to Eurostat, Europeans have an average of 39% less retirement savings than men
The gender pay gap still exists and has a direct effect on retirement - and because of it, women often earn less than men by the end of their careers, which can affect the amount of payments (according to Eurostat, European women have an average 39% less retirement benefits). savings than men). In addition, childcare is still considered primarily “female” - women often leave their jobs for several years for the sake of it. If we add to it an earlier retirement, the working experience of women turns out to be much less than that of men - which is reflected in their financial condition with the onset of retirement.
That is why some experts believe that equalizing the retirement age is not only an unavoidable measure, but also a change that will benefit women. "A woman has a lower salary than men. At the same time, they also work less, as there are periods of childcare. As a result, a woman approaches retirement age with a smaller number of individual pension ratios," said Oksana Sinyavskaya. According to the Pension Fund of Russia, 22% of pensioners work in our country - changes in legislation can consolidate this and, in theory, should help women stay active longer and continue to build a career without regard to age.
All over the world, older people work much more often than a few decades ago: it is not only a matter of raising the retirement age, but also increasing life expectancy and improving the quality of medical care - the state of health allows many to extend the "third age". Since 2000, the number of working people of sixty to sixty-four years in Bulgaria and Hungary has more than tripled, and in Latvia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France and Germany more than doubled. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in 2015-2016, 84.7% of citizens of fifty-five to sixty-four years worked in Iceland, 76.1% in New Zealand, 74.5% in Sweden, 72 in Switzerland 8%, in Norway - 72.6%.
True, to say that in Russia people continue to work after retirement, only to remain active, at least inappropriate: they are more often pushed by financial reasons and the difficult economic situation. Russia is among the top five countries in terms of pensioners' living standards - only Brazil, Greece and India are in the rating of the investment company Natixis Global Asset Management. Dissatisfaction with the financial situation is the main motivation for the Russians to continue working in retirement. Often this applies primarily to women: in the absence of a partner (and the average life expectancy of women in Russia is ten years longer than that of men), the likelihood that a woman will continue working at retirement age increases by 25%. "Every second woman in the first five years after the onset of the generally established retirement age continues to work, which is almost twice as high as in the mid-1990s," the scientists note. At the same time, the employment rate of women of sixty to seventy-two years in Russia has grown more in the last twenty years than among men of the same age.
What could give women new opportunities, in practice, can result in even greater discrimination and difficulties. Many of those who would like to (or have to) continue to work, prevent their health from doing so: according to the research holding Romir, the majority (47%) of those who do not want to continue working in retirement call poor health and fatigue. Some experts note that because of this, one pension can replace another - and the number of those who draw up a disability pension will increase.
In addition, there is still age discrimination in the labor market: according to HeadHunter, 19% of companies are not ready to hire employees older than forty-five. 69% of the hiring managers of companies surveyed by the international personnel agency Kelly Services, at least once denied candidates over fifty years of age. Among the most frequent concerns of employers is that an older employee will be incapable of learning, will not be able to fit into a young team, will not be set to develop, will embarrass a manager younger than him or will often get sick.
If a woman at the age of fifty-five left a job to look after her grandchildren, the new retirement age will not leave her such an opportunity.
“In a situation where there are fewer young people than the elderly, the old design of the pension system does not withstand the load. In most Western countries, the risks associated with aging are transferred to private hands. States are interested in people working as long as possible and independently planning retirement finances, - notes sociologist, doctoral student at the University of London, author of the books “Single: Sex, Love, and Family Outside Marriage” and “Dear Children: Falling Births and Higher“ Prices ”for Motherhood in the 21st Century ins -. For this purpose, changing labor laws The main objective of the new system is the elimination of age discrimination in the labor market. ". The sociologist notes that if you raise the retirement age, but do not change the system whereby a 40-year-old person finds it difficult to find a good job, a significant part of the population may become poorer: still have to live. "
A sociologist predicts that pension reform will affect the so-called institute of grandmothers. If earlier, according to the traditional scenario, a woman left her job at fifty-five years to look after her grandchildren, the new retirement age would not leave her that opportunity. Anna Shadrina notes that city dwellers began postponing the emergence of children to a later time back in the nineties, and now they increasingly use the services of nannies - this helps the younger generation to feel more independent from the attitudes of their elders. At the same time, for the older women themselves, according to the sociologist, this means the loss of the usual form of investment in their own mature age: the fact that they do not have the ability to take care of their grandchildren may mean that their own children will not take care of them, but will take advantage of commercial services. Some experts point out that these changes will affect even younger working women: if there are not enough places in kindergartens, women will have to spend more time on parental leave than they planned.
However, the “institute of grandmothers” has long needed reform: along with the installation of non-obligatory early motherhood, society has fully matured even before the abolition of the mandatory watch for raising grandchildren. Grandmothers of retirement age may well have their own plans for life, not allowing them to spend all their time on their grandchildren, and raising the retirement age establishes this right by law.
Photo: marilyn barbone - stock.adobe.com, Wikimedia Commons, Flickr
