You know something is wrong when your grandmother starts protesting: The impact of the rise in State Pension age on women in the UK

Abstract

This paper argues that recent pension reforms in the United Kingdom have been a major consequence of the financial crisis. It is further argued that this area of policy represents a key site of retrenching inequalities. These reforms have had drastic effects on many older women with a nationwide campaign developing as a consequence. The WASPI acronym arises from one of the founding groups of the campaign – Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI). ‘WASPI’ has come to stand for those women born in the 1950s who have been most severely impacted by the reforms. I apply feminist theory as an analytical framework to unpack the gender-blindness of this particular aspect of government policy. The pension reforms are contextualised against a background of financial crisis, the ensuing austerity agenda involving reductions in public spending, and attempts to dismantle the welfare state.