New research from the Forum Wirtschaftsethik in Germany has found that women within the country are overwhelmingly disadvantaged when it comes to the gender pensions gap.

The research found that women aged over 65 had retirement income of around €17,800 a year, compared to the €25,400 income average for men. However, the gap was less pronounced in the proportions susceptible to poverty – women at around 20 per cent, men at 17.5 per cent - and for those being overburdened by housing costs – women at 15 per cent, men at 11 per cent.

It is also noted by the research that the federal office for statistics in Germany, Destatis, states that the gender pension gap within Germany stands at 29.9 per cent.

The reasons for this, said Forum Wirtschaftsethik, are manifold: It said that women, on average, acquire lower pension entitlements over the course of their working lives because they sometimes work in lower-paying sectors than men, work part-time more often, take more frequent and longer leave for care work, and are less likely to hold management positions.

Issues around the cost of housing may hold the most importance as Germany’s housing market has seen rents increase rapidly in recent years. The research indicated that women aged 65 and over were more heavily burdened by housing costs.

The authors wrote: “15.4 per cent of women aged 65 and over lived in households that were overburdened by their housing costs. This means that these households spent more than 40 per cent of their disposable income on housing. For men in the same age group, this share was only 11 per cent. The proportion of people who were significantly materially and socially deprived was also slightly higher among women in the 65 and over age group (2.9 per cent) than among men of the same age (2.5 per cent).”

They added: “These people, for example, cannot pay their bills on time, cannot heat their homes adequately, or are financially unable to cover unexpected expenses from their own resources or replace worn-out clothing with new ones.”

There seems to be little prospect for improvement in the problem. According to Forum Wirtschaftsethik, there remains a gap in retirement income for those currently employed.

The reason for this, the authors said, was that there is a different part-time work rate between the sexes.

They wrote: “According to the results of the microcensus, in 2021, 47.4 per cent of employed women aged 15 to 64 worked part-time, compared to only 10.6 per cent of men of the same age. This difference is even more pronounced among employed women who live with children in the same household: The part-time work rate for mothers was 63.6 per cent, while for fathers it was only 7.3 per cent.”

They added: “Women also interrupt their employment more frequently and for longer periods than men. For example, the share of fathers receiving parental allowance was only 25.3 per cent in 2021. At the same time, the duration of benefit sought by men was significantly shorter, at an average of 3.7 months, than that of women, at 14.6 months.”

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