Money Box Live: Why Are Women Retiring with Less?

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For every £1 a man has in his private pension pot a woman has just 42p according to research from pension company Royal London.

When it comes to the State Pension, the gap has closed considerably for people retiring today. But women in their 80s are still getting up to 25% less than men.

This week on Money Box Live, we're looking at the reasons behind is as well as what can be done to boost savings.

Find out more about a little known pot of money the government has set aside mainly for women, who didn't work because they were looking after children, between 1978 and 2010 - which is largely going unclaimed. We also hear the struggle of a woman who struggled after the state pension age for women was raised from 60 to 66 and what might happen next with the campaign against it.

With Felicity Hannah is Sir Steve Webb, former pensions minister and and now partner at pensions consultancy Lane Clark and Peacock and Daniela Silcock who has her own pensions research company.

Presenter: Felicity Hannah Producer: Sarah Rogers and Helen Ledwick Editor: Jess Quayle

(This episode was first broadcast on Wednesday the 16th of July 2025)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:05.0	Hello, today on this Moneybox Live podcast, a perplexing problem.
0:09.5	Why are women still retiring with less money than men?
0:13.0	Figures out just this week suggest that for every £1 a man has in his private pension pot,
0:17.9	a woman has just £42.
0:20.4	When it comes to the state pension, the gap has closed considerably for people retiring today.
0:25.5	But women in their 80s are still getting up to 25% less than men.
0:30.6	Moneybox Live producer Helen Ledwick has been speaking to people in Manchester City Centre
0:34.8	to find out how aware women and men are about this and if they're
0:38.9	planning for it. I think we knew that, didn't we? A lot of women work at part-time for a period of their
0:45.5	career. They have to either work longer to make it up or finish with less. We've both got
0:52.5	public service pensions and the one is certainly smaller than the other. I've been putting in my pension for years,
1:00.0	like double what I needed to. So mine's pretty healthy. So you have planned the head and you've
1:04.6	thought about this. I've seen my mum with her pension and she's, you know, from the 60s.
1:08.9	And she's battling for her pension so yeah I've
1:12.2	been planning mine for a long time I've always known and wanted to be self-reliant and
1:17.5	not reliant on my husband so I've always worked towards being financially
1:21.6	independent even though I don't need to be it's not something I've thought about no but
1:27.4	obviously yeah yeah it's in all aspects
1:30.6	of life, isn't it, where women get a letter deal.
1:33.5	What do you do about it?
1:35.4	And for yourself, is kind of retirement planning something you've thought about?
	...

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