(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Already today, pension payments are unequally distributed between women and men – primarily because women earn less, work fewer years and are more often in part-time positions. With the proposal from the pension commission's majority, the distribution between the sexes will be shifted further – in favor of men.
Just the there are few who doubt – but the commission has thus found it necessary or correct. They want to create greater incentives for people to stay in work longer before they retire. But for those who do not have the strength to work long, those who voluntarily or involuntarily work part-time and those who take education before they start working life, the changes are more whip than carrot. And many of them are women.
Deserves it
On Thursday, therefore, the Gender Equality Center, together with 15 organizations with one million members, launched the campaign "Because we deserve it!". The purpose is to focus on the gender equality consequences of a restructuring of the pension system. The Gender Equality Director Long Litt Woon is of the opinion that the commission itself has not done well enough – despite the fact that the commission's mandate explicitly states that this should be included in the assessment.
- Women perform worse than men, compared with the current pension system, Long Litt Woon states, and points out that the pension commission itself has calculated that women will receive a roughly unchanged pension, while men will receive an increase of five percent.
However, RV leader Torstein Dahle, who was also present at the press conference, and SV's member of the pension commission Henriette Westhrin were quick to state that the picture is probably blacker – for both groups. The purpose of the pension reform is to save about 20 per cent of pension expenses. One of the major measures is to introduce a division figure which means that the longer a cohort is expected to live, the lower the annual pension they receive. Both men and women will therefore receive a lower pension. But women's relative reduction is greater than men's.
fantasy People
Dahle characterized the pension commission's examples and figures as wrong, precisely because they do not take into account this and other factors. This was confirmed by Westhrin, who stated that they operated with "virtual fantasy people" – namely employees who have exactly the same income for 43 years. "Such people do not exist," said Westhrin.
The campaign, which was launched on Thursday, and which includes a signature campaign on likestilling.no, in itself has no broader basis than the desire to create awareness of the gender equality perspective on the pension reform. The affiliated organizations, for their part, have different views on what the biggest problems with the reform are. The Director of Gender Equality was then also aware that one does not necessarily require the pension system to correct other imbalances in society, but believes it is problematic that the system may seem to amplify these imbalances.
Exactly how the pension reform will affect women and men, respectively, is, according to the Pension Commission's proposal, quite uncertain. Therefore, the Gender Equality Center has written a letter to the government, demanding that the pension proposal be "gender tested" before the reform is presented to the Storting. "The Pensions Commission has not carried out any analysis of the gender equality consequences, which makes the proposal for a new pension reform deficient, seen from a gender equality perspective," Long Litt Woon writes in the letter to Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik.
Will not accept
How the pension reform will ultimately look like, after the government will first present its proposal, and the matter will then be negotiated in the Storting, is far from clear. SV leader Kristin Halvorsen believes, however, that there will have to be major changes, if Norwegian women become aware of what the majority proposal means to them.
- 70 percent of women and 40 percent of men come out worse with this reform. It should prove to be a political impossibility to get such a reform through. This is not how ladies in Norway are anymore, said Halvorsen. She agrees that the pension system must stimulate more work, but pointed out that the majority's proposal in practice provides less incentive for low-wage earners.
SV's representative in the pension commission, Henriette Westhrin, has also agreed with the view that the pension system must stimulate work, and also that the pension reform must mean that the total costs are reduced. However, she went along with those who claim that women do not necessarily do not want to look so bad, because women are constantly working more and because we will eventually get closer to equal pay in society.
- Those who say that there will eventually be equal pay are not the ones who take the lead in the March 8 train to get it done. We have to fight on several fronts, said Westhrin.
Among the parties, only SV and RV, which are both against the proposal from the commission's majority, have joined the campaign. But also the Center Women and the women's committee in the Oslo Labor Party are involved. In addition, a number of trade unions, especially with employees in female-dominated occupations, the Norwegian Women and Family Association (formerly the Housewives 'Association) and the Farmers' Women's Association have joined.
