Gender Pensions Gap

Background  

With over 6.68 million LGPS members, of which over 75 per cent are female, the Board is committed to supporting gender equity and ensuring better retirement outcomes for all scheme members. This is why the Board decided in 2023 to explore the Gender Pension Gap in the LGPS and commissioned data from the Government Actuary’s Department (GAD) to assess the difference in the annual pension amounts accrued and in payment for male and female scheme members. The LGPS was the first public sector pension scheme to undertake this type of analysis.  

First report from GAD

The first report from GAD identified a substantial difference between the average LGPS pension benefits currently being built up by male and female scheme members for both active and pensioner scheme members.

The report examined data for members actively contributing to the LGPS (“actives”) and members who were receiving pension payments in respect of their previous employment (“pensioners”) as at 31 March 2020. The mean amounts of pay received, accrued pension and pension in payment for these groups respectively was:

Actives’ pay and pension by gender as at 31 March 2020

The report showed promising signs that the gap has reduced over time, particularly with the introduction of the CARE scheme and potentially indicates some progress towards equality. But a gap still exists between male and female scheme members and the Board wanted to explore further the reasons for this.

Second report from GAD

The Board commissioned GAD to explore the gender gaps in more depth, focussing on:

• career patterns – in particular, evidence of recent and past part-time working
• differences relating to employers or categories of employers
• comparing the analysis with the LGA’s 2019 gender pay gap report.

This second report set out that essentially there is no simple answer and there seems to be a complex interaction between the types of work women do, their career patterns (in terms of part-time working and gaps in service) and their ability to progress their careers after having taken on childcare or other caring responsibilities.

The report shows, for example, that:

• part-time working patterns are closely related to gender pension (and pay) gaps for LGPS members. Controlling for differences between men and women in terms of both current and historic part-time working patterns reduces, but does not eliminate, these gender gaps. Possible explanatory factors include length of service and employer differences.
• pay and pension gender gaps can be attributed to both differences for males and females working for the same employer (‘within employer’) and differences in the proportions of males and females working at higher or lower paying employers (‘between employer’) as well as between different categories of employers.

Current status

When the reports were commissioned there was no settled approach to data and methodological issues that would allow detailed comparisons to be drawn between gender gaps with different public sector pension schemes and or even across the different LGPS funds.

The Board has a working group working on next steps following the GAD reports which reports to the Cost Management, Benefit Design and Administration committee (CMBDA). The working group consists of representatives from LGPS funds, employee and employer representatives, as well as actuaries. The working group has an action plan in place which is looking at identifying possible changes that could be made to the LGPS that might help to reduce levels of inequality.

The Board’s work was recognised in the Access and Fairness consultation in August 2025 which covered changes to the LGPS regulations prompted by the Board’s groundbreaking work.

The latest update on the project can be found in the committee meetings page.

• Gender pensions gap 1st report January 2023
• Gender pensions gap 2nd report June 2023
• LGA Gender Pay Gap report