Insufficient pensions, double penalty of capitalization, single-parent families without safety net: wage gaps between men and women are a systemic risk whose cost will be collective.
On March 8, we celebrate. We present figures, we organize round tables, we publish columns. And on March 9, we tidy up. I chaired the DEI Council of one of the world’s largest asset managers. I saw from the inside how these commitments are formulated — and how they evaporate. What I mean here is not militant. It’s arithmetic.
Pay inequalities between women and men are not a social justice problem awaiting a solution. They are an economic time bomb whose fuse has been burning silently for decades, and whose explosion has a precise name: retirement. For every hundred euros a man earns, a woman receives seventy-eight. Over forty years of working life, this gap represents the equivalent of an apartment — not purchased, of savings not built up, of an unfunded retirement.
But there is a figure that we rarely mention, because it is disturbing: for a strictly identical position, in the same company, the gap is only 3.6%. This statistic is regularly brandished as proof that the problem is residual. It demonstrates the opposite. Discrimination does not occur on the pay slip — it is played before. These are the positions that women do not access. These are entire professions which, when they become more feminine, see their remuneration lower. It is not the nature of the work that determines its value. That’s who does it.
What we still say too little, and which I see every day from Evevest: the double penalty of capitalization. Faced with an insufficient basic pension – one third less than that of men – the supplementary pension is not a luxury, it is a necessity. However, less income means less savings capacity. But because the basic pension will be lower, the necessary savings effort is, proportionally, even greater. Women are exactly those who most need to capitalize for their retirement — and those who can least afford it. This asymmetry is at the heart of the problem. It is almost never named as such.
Single parenthood makes it worse without a net. In France, 2.2 million single-parent families – four out of five headed by a woman, their number increasing by 50% since 1990. A separation reduces the woman’s standard of living by 19% in the following year, compared to 3% for the man. There alimony keeps afloat. It does not generate savings. And there are more and more single women — four million. After the age of 75, one in two lives alone, compared to one in five men. The reversion system is a bet on the permanence of the couple. This bet is lost more and more often.
Three levers exist, precise and feasible. Revalorizing feminized professions: care, support, teaching. Ségur de la santé has proven that it is possible in a few months when the political will is there. Really open access to positions — not by quota, but by making biases visible and discrepancies punishable: the 2023 European directive on salary transparency provides the framework. And finally take care of caregivers: two thirds are women, and they are the ones who reduce or leave their jobs to care for a dependent parent or a child with a disability. Without worthy solutions, this burden will continue to weigh on careers — and on savings that will never be built up.
March 8 is not a symbolic date. It’s a deadline. Data from INSEE, DREES and the Retirement Orientation Council describe this phenomenon with increasing precision. The cost of inaction will be counted in minimum old age, in social assistance, in national solidarity spent to make up for what could have been prevented. This is not a women’s problem. It is a systemic risk that we collectively choose to defer.
Anne-Laure Frischlander-Jacobson, founder of Evevest, evevest.fr
Teacher at Paris-Dauphine University, former Europe manager of a large international asset manager and former president of a Diversity & Inclusion Council
