Enlarge image
A woman wants to go shopping (symbolic image): In old age, female workers face low pensions
Photo:
Noah Wedel / imago images / Noah Wedel
They work full-time, pay pension contributions for decades - and end up with a mini-pension: millions of women with a full-time job in Germany are heading towards retirement benefits of less than 1000 euros net even after 40 years of work.
This emerges from a response from the Federal Ministry of Labor to a request from the left, which is available to the editorial network Germany.
According to this, around 2.7 million women are affected.
With a total of 7.1 million full-time employees, this corresponds to a share of around 38 percent.
In order to get a monthly pension of 1000 euros net, employees currently have to earn 2844 euros gross per month for 40 years.
To be entitled to a pension of 1,200 euros, employees need a gross monthly wage of 3,413 euros for 40 years, the editorial network quotes from the ministry's answer.
Accordingly, women will be disproportionately affected by low pensions.
With a total of 32.6 percent, only just under a third of all full-time employees are women.
But the proportion of women among full-time employees with low pensions is significantly higher: 48.5 percent of full-time employees who are heading for a pension of less than 1,000 euros even after 45 years of work are female.
In view of inflation and the already high level of old-age poverty among women, these are "catastrophic numbers," said Left Party leader Dietmar Bartsch, who had made the request to the Ministry of Labor.
"More than half of all full-time workers will receive less than 1,200 euros after 40 years of drudgery," Bartsch told the editorial network.
"Millions of women face a slide into poverty in old age," he warned.
nis/AFP