Belgium's recent pension reform provides "an excellent opportunity" for greater gender equality, according to the Institute for the Equality of Women and Men. It highlights the need for reforms to help narrow the gap between women and men.
The Belgian pension system is based on various schemes and pillars and has undergone many changes. Not only is the current model complex, it also no longer meets the great diversity of family models and the challenges of gender equality, a commissioned study shows.
"The current pension gap is mainly a reflection of gender inequalities in the labour market. With the rise in education levels and female employment, pension inequality should disappear. But that is not the case," said Liesbet Stevens, deputy director of the Institute.
"Career choice, shorter careers for women, the high rate of part-time work for women (42.5% of employed women) and gender or maternity discrimination in the labour market explain the persistence of the pension gap."
Looking to the future
Measures should be taken to improve the situation of women in the labour market, including greater pay transparency, the development of full-time or equivalent quality jobs and a better distribution of thematic leave (such as parental leave and carer's leave) within households.
At the same time, the reform of the pension system is also an excellent opportunity to reduce the pension gap between women and men in the future, said Stevens: "taking part-time work better into account when calculating pensions, protecting the equalisation of leave periods for care and move towards greater individualisation of rights."
The family pension can be reformed by means of budget-neutral measures so that the partner with the lowest income (usually the woman) receives an amount directly.
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Additionally, combatting the pension gap between women and men does not only concern the first pension pillar (the state pension), but also requires action on supplementary pensions: the latest figures from the Federal Pension Service show that for recent retirees, the gap between women and men is 20% for state pensions, but as high as 50% for supplementary ones.
The Institute also stressed that it is pleased that the various federal services responsible for pensions increasingly produce and publish statistics disaggregated by gender. As a result, they map out differences between women and men in the field of pensions – making it possible to better inform citizens about the stakes of this debate.
