Women have traditionally suffered as a result of the UK's state pension system, which has for many years been based on the assumption that women would be reliant on their husbands during retirement.

In order for a woman to get a full basic state pension she will need to accumulate 39 years of pension rights. However, unfortunately the ways in which people build up these rights do not take into account women's working and caring patterns.

Any woman caring full time for children before 1978 would lose pension rights for each year she cared.

Many women work in part time, low paid or multiple jobs. Often this means they don't pay enough National Insurance Contributions in a year to gain full pension rights.

Even at the present time those who care for sick or disabled relatives often do not build up pension rights.

In addition, in the past married women were given the option to pay reduced stamp (now known as national insurance). Many women chose to do this and therefore lost pension rights, whilst some realised the implications of their choice at the time, a great many didn't.

Changes to the state pension system

The Government passed a Pensions Act in 2007 which will mean that from 2010 women only need to have 30 years of pension rights in order to get a full basic state pension (down from 39). In addition, those caring for sick or disabled relatives will be able to build up pension rights if they care for 20 hours a week or more.

However, the Government is doing nothing to help current women pensioners or those reaching state pension age before 2010. Help the Aged and other campaigning organisations have lobbied hard for the new 30 year rule to be applied to all current and future pensioners. However, the Government rejected this on grounds of costs. We then fought for a compromise, that Government should allow people to buy back pension rights for years they had gaps.

Buying back pension rights

At the moment women can improve their pension records by buying back National Insurance Contributions for years when they haven't paid enough. However, they can only do this for the preceding six years, so for someone retiring it will be the six years leading up to them reaching state pension age. This is helpful but for many women the gaps in their records will come from earlier on in their working life often as a result of low paid part time jobs or caring. So the ability to buy back contributions for the last six can be of limited use.

Whilst the last Pensions Act was going through parliament we championed an amendment (change in the law) to allow women to buy back up to nine years of National Insurance Contributions (NICs), and from any part of their working life. The rationale behind this amendment was to address some of the injustice suffered by women from the state system, in particular for those retiring before 2010 who would not benefit from the new 30 year rule.

Help the Aged are now pushing to get Government to reverse its decision and to allow women to buy back more of their pension rights.

Not everyone would benefit from a change such as this. Women with very low pension records but who are married or divorced automatically get 60% of a full basic state pension from their husbands National Insurance records. However, for those with upwards of around 18 years in their own right, it is likely to be worth buying back unless they were likely to receive means tested benefits such as Pension Credit, Housing Benefit or Council Tax Benefit.

For more information and advice we would suggest people contact the new Pension Advisory Service helpline on 0845 601 2923 or contact the Help the Aged Seniorline advice line on 0808 800 6565.

For more informations on pensions, read Can You Claim It?