Female Transition to Retirement

The European countries’ policies related to female participation in the labour market as well as approach to retirement ages have evolved in the course of the past two decades.This is the response to demographic, social and economic developments in Europe. After many decades of low and falling age of transition to retirement, women engage more in the labour market activity, and they also retire later. In this paper we look at the past and future evolution of transition from work to retirement of women. We also look at the current developments at the labour market as well as directions of changes in pension systems, from the gender equality perspective. Based on the set of labour market and pension system indicators, we propose a Pension Rights Gap Index that measures the distance to full pension rights scenario, taking into account wage levels and duration of employment as well as generosity and income redistribution mechanisms within pension systems.