UK: Removing a privilege for women that men pay for is unfair

Article here. Excerpt:

'If there are any female Guardian Money readers born on 5 March 1953, then congratulations (or commiserations): you officially reached state pension age on Wednesday 6 January, and can start claiming your basic state pension of up to £115.95 a week.

But if you are a woman born exactly one year later, on 5 March 1954, then you won’t hit state pension age until July 2019 – ie, not for another three-and-a-half years. By that time the woman born in 1953 will arguably be in a much stronger financial position because she will have received well in excess of £20,000 of basic state pension (assuming she is entitled to the full amount), purely because she happened to arrive in the world 12 months before you did.

If anyone is looking for reasons why many women are up in arms about “unfair” changes to the state pension age, then the weird quirk in the UK pension rules outlined above is just one.
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Clearly there was a lack of fairness – so we equalised the SPA at 65 for men and women. As with any change in policy, one group will always be affected first. In this case, women born in 1950 were the first to see an increase in their SPA. Due to further sharp rises in life expectancy, we then had to make the difficult decision to speed up the rises to 65 and 66.

The government listened to concerns, and introduced a measure to ensure that the maximum change to SPA that anyone would face is 18 months rather than two years. This concession means that it will reach 66 by October 2020, rather than April 2020, and is worth more than £1bn.

It is important to remember that those affected by faster equalisation will reach state pension age after the introduction of the new state pension which will be more generous for many women. Forecasts show that 10 years after implementation, over 650,000 women will benefit – receiving on average £8 a week more.'