On average, the gender pension gap jumps from £100 to £100,000 over a woman’s working life. This International Women's Day find out what’s driving such a huge difference in women and men’s pensions, and what you can do between the ages of 22 and 65 to help get pensions equality.

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Beat the pension gap


Find out what the pension gap is for your age, and how you can beat it.

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Pension mirror

The Pension Mirror will guess your age and how the average woman and man’s pension pots compare.

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Beat the gap

Beat the gap

Our Beat the Gap tool makes it personal, showing you when your own pension gap is most likely to occur and the top three ways you can help beat it.

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The three key drivers behind the gender pension gap


The pension system is better suited to a more typically male pattern of working and savings. Things like pay inequalities, part time working and time off to manage childcare continue to make it harder for women to save as much across their working life and are the biggest drivers of the gender pension gap.

Source: Women & Retirement Report 2023

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The Gender Pay Gap

Although pay inequalities continue to exist, younger generations, especially women are saving for retirement earlier, 62% of women currently aged 22–29 said they started to save for retirement by the age of 25. This is good news but women still tend to earn less than men at all points in their working lives and as a result typically save less into their pension over this time. 

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Childcare

After women have children the gap between their pension and a typical man’s starts to widen. For men, having children doesn’t normally impact their pension. This is because women tend to take on the lion’s share of childcare. Research tells us that 37% of mothers have left a job to cover childcare compared with 18% of fathers.

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Working pattern

Employment breaks and part time working are big drivers of the gender pension gap. Earning less and potentially missing out on employer contributions into their pension, makes it harder for women to save enough for an equal retirement. 47% of mothers have gone part time to look after their children compared to 15% of fathers and men’s salaries are more likely to grow consistently over their working life.

Beat the gap


See what you can do to help beat the pension gap.

Source : Women & Retirement Report 2023

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How we're taking on the Gender Pension Gap

To help close the gap we’re working with organisations across our industry, the education sector and the Government.  We’re committed to highlighting the issue, providing support and guidance as well as campaigning for pension reforms that could make it easier for women to save for retirement.

Campaigning for change: raising awareness at scale

Campaigning for change: raising awareness at scale

Our 5th International Women’s Day partnership helped shine a light on the gender pension gap.  Our 2024 campaign brought our own data and expertise to life through our new Beat The Gap tool and social media.

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Gender Pension Gap Q&A

20 years of Women & Retirement research

We’re celebrating 20 years of industry leading research into Women & Retirement, the findings we use to lead the discussion and make recommendations to lobby for change. We champion making better pensions information and education material available for our scheme members and for all women.

We use platforms like International Women’s Day to raise awareness.  We are proud to have been recognised at the 2024 Pension Age awards, winning the Diversity Award for our Women and Retirement activity.

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Our recommendations

Our recommendations

  • Tackle causes of the Gender Pension Gap
  • Support ethnic minorities in their different approaches to funding their retirement
  • Encourage better financial understanding across all demographics
  • Improve pension guidance and education to young women
  • Remove the auto-enrolment contribution threshold
  • Improve knowledge on annuities and joint annuities in particular

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