Sir, – Your newspaper reports on an Irish Life study that women in general have lower pension pots than men and implies that this is unfair and must be fixed ("Irish women retire with 22% per cent smaller pensions than men, –says study", Business, October 1st). Why is it that we must frame so many issues in this generic gender-focused way ?
On an individual level, the lower-educated would suffer greatly reduced pension entitlements, as would those in the private sector compared to the public sector. Anyone, be they a man or a woman, who does not work full time or for 40 years running will have less than someone who does, assuming they make equivalent pension contributions. I am sure there are many individual women with pensions far greater than many individual men.
How about a study that instead looks at the pension savings of private-sector, part-time, lower-paid, lower-educated workers compared to full-time, higher-paid, higher-educated, public-sector workers. We can then have a good old-fashioned left versus right argument about the redistribution of wealth. I don’t think that gender has much to do with it. – Yours, etc,
LESTER NAUGHTON,
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Galway.