Make Social Security Fair To Women

Today, the majority of women work for pay. In 1996, six out of 10 women were in the labor force. This fact has led to overly optimistic predictions about women and retirement income when, in fact, there is a real problem for women.

The problem is fourfold:

1, Only 48 percent of private-sector, full-time female workers were covered by pension plans in 1993.

2, Women tend to leave the work force for child rearing or other care giving, thus losing the necessary years of continuous employment to vest in a pension system.

3, Women still earn only 74 percent of what men earn for the same work (adding up to $250,000 less over a lifetime).

4, Women live an average of seven years longer than men, which compounds their pension problems.

Women retiring during the next 20 years will have less than one third of the income necessary to retire comfortably. The latest median income figure for women over 65 was $9,356. Older women are twice as likely as older men to be living in poverty.

So, many women look to Social Security for help. In fact, 27 percent of older women depend on Social Security for 90 percent of their income. Twenty percent of older women depend upon Social Security as their sole source of retirement income. Social Security was never intended to be a sole source of income for people over 65. Indeed, there are some basic system assumptions in the 1935 plan that shortchange women.

The “traditional” family with the husband as the sole paid worker, an unpaid homemaker (usually the woman), and children is not the universal profile of a family now. As a result, disparities exist.

Perhaps the most important disparity is the dilemma of the two-worker family receiving a single benefit. A woman in a two-earner couple who is entitled to both a worker’s benefit and a spousal benefit on her husband’s earnings can receive only the greater of the two. Because women earn only 74 percent of what men earn, the spousal benefit is usually larger. Thus, the woman receives the same benefit she would have received if she had never worked outside the home.

It seems obvious that Social Security needs to be looked at through the eyes of those in the greatest need - older women today - and those in the greatest peril - younger women who may find a system even more out of touch with their future economic needs.

Politicians would have us think that this issue is too complex for us to understand, but we can all understand our mothers facing the fear of living in poverty in a country where they have worked hard all their lives.

To learn more about this issue, you are welcome to attend a free Spokane forum, The Truth about Women and Social Security. Sponsored by local chapters of the Older Women’s League and the American Association of University Women, the forum will take place from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Feb. 26 at Providence Auditorium, 24 W. Ninth.