While many of us might not be able to visit our mothers this Mothering Sunday for fear of infecting them with coronavirus, perhaps we should take the time to consider how having children affects the gender pay gap.

Data from The Chartered Insurance Institute shows that the average pension pot of a 65-year-old woman is £35,800, just one fifth the size of the average man’s pension at the same age.

Earlier in March, research from Now Pensions and the Pensions Policy Institute revealed that the average annual private pension income for men aged 65 and over is £8,620, compared to just £3,920 for their female counterparts.

While the 8.9 per cent gender pay gap is partially responsible for this disparity, national IFA LEBC stated that the ‘motherhood penalty’ is also to blame.

This is because 27 per cent of new mothers take an extended career break to care for their children, compared with just 2 per cent of fathers.

In her advice to working women, LEBC director of public policy, Kay Ingram, advises women remain in employer’s pension schemes during maternity leave, continue to pay into pensions during extended periods of leave and request to join employer schemes even if they earn a salary of less than £10,000.

Ingram’s other recommendations include applying for child benefit, claiming marriage allowance and taking advantage of government childcare subsidies where possible.

Steps like these could be essential to bolstering mothers’ pensions while the disparity between their savings and those of fathers exists, which is especially important when you consider the fact that women tend to outlive men.

Some groups are taking action to try and reduce or eliminate the gap between men and women, with a number of financial services providers having agreed to lobby the government to make changes to auto-enrolment, pension freedoms and pension sharing rules in November 2019.

The group of insurers, professional bodies, guidance services and financial advisers released a manifesto that argued that, without intervention through gender pay gap reporting, it could take until the year 2100 for women to reach pension parity.

At the very least I’m sure many will agree that it seems unjust that women, who already have to sacrifice their time and sometimes their health in order to give birth to future generations, find themselves hampered in their retirement because they have children.

Food for thought for us all, when we Skype our Mothers this Sunday.

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