RETIRED women face a pension gap that leaves them effectively without income for four-and-a-half months a year, a new TUC analysis found today.

The income gap between retired men and women now stands at 37.9 per cent, averaging at £7,000 a year difference and far surpassing the gender pay gap, which currently stands at 14.3 per cent, a calculation by Prospect union found.

The TUC highlights that the amount of time women spend out of paid work or working part-time because of caring responsibilities is one of the most significant factors as it limits their ability to build up a workplace pension.

It found women are five times more likely than men to be out of work because of caring responsibilities, increasing to 6.5 times for black and ethnic minority women.

It found that one in 11 women aged 25 to 29 are taking on caregiving responsibilities without being in paid work, while fewer than one in 100 men in the same age group are in a similar situation.

Other drivers of the gender pensions gap include auto-enrolment, with employers not having to enrol many low-paid and part-time workers into a workplace pension, and historic differences in National Insurance which have left women with lower state pensions on average.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “Women kept out of work for caring responsibilities should build up extra state pension to recognise the value of that work.”

He said plans to introduce day-one rights to flexible working and parental rights should help families share caring responsibilities.

“Commitments to introducing a fair pay agreement in social care and reforming the childcare and early years sector will also help to tackle drivers of the pensions gap,” Mr Nowak added.

National Pensioners Convention general secretary Jan Shortt said: “We need to see movement in the care sector that takes so many women away from work or pays them a lot less for working in the sector.”

She added that the erosion of the basic state pension needs to also be addressed.

The NPC recommends setting it at 70 per cent of the National Living Wage (excluding London), amounting to £294 per week if applied today. 

Fawcett Society head of policy Alesha De-Freitas said: “In tandem with urgently needed reforms to childcare and flexible working to ensure that women can combine caring responsibilities with well-paid work, we need reforms to the pension system to ensure that women are not left with a choice between financial dependency on their partners, or destitution, in retirement.”