In many countries retirement age is much later for men - some by 5 years, some even 10 years. Does anyone know the reasons behind this? I primarily want to know the official reasons of countries, but assumptions are also very welcome!

izzitme101 · 2025-10-19T19:52:51+00:00

equality when its convenient only

Punder_man · 2025-10-19T18:39:51+00:00

If I were a conspiracy theorist.. i'd posit that the reason for it is to force men to work longer knowing that in nearly every country men have shorter life expectancy than women which then in turn leads men to funding women in their retirements...

But that's only a theory..
A matriarchy theory...

AdIllustrious6191 · 2025-10-19T18:46:38+00:00

It should be the other way around, since women live longer. Maybe men working longer leads to an earlier death? It just seems blatantly unfair. I'm hoping someone else can explain it.

Salamadierha · 2025-10-19T19:20:11+00:00

It costs less for pensions, and provides more taxes from wages. Then the men die within a year or two of retirement, so win win.

Spins13 · 2025-10-19T19:54:38+00:00

The official reason is you are a misogynist if you want equality and basic human decency. For some reason, only few question this 🤷‍♂️

oloughlinant · 2025-10-19T21:37:32+00:00

In Australia women’s retirement age was increased to match men’s. The retirement age was also increased to 67. So equal but later retirements.

StangF150 · 2025-10-19T20:22:39+00:00

To up the odds we die working, so they don't have to pay out pocket change from the vast mandatory money governments collect.

Red-Pilled-Aussie · 2025-10-20T00:16:47+00:00

Pretty much cause men are considered disposable utilities.

Tested-Trio-Father · 2025-10-19T19:28:36+00:00

My assumption is that it's a holdover from when men were still considered the primary bread winner.

mrmensplights · 2025-10-20T03:54:08+00:00

There is no possible argument for it. It's just female privilege and institutionalized misandry. A little holdover that feminists just never worked up an appetite to address for some reason...

Luckily, in general pressure on pension systems and the resulting pension system reforms are seeing broad equalization of retirement ages. A handful of eastern European countries not withstanding.

a_aniq · 2025-10-19T18:49:43+00:00

Government has to pay after retirement age. Got to increase contribution per capita. The retirement age should be more in countries with more old people (esp. where govt. Income is primarily driven by tax money).

Birdcage17 · 2025-10-20T04:11:19+00:00

The official theory, and actually the prevailing concern behind this kind of policy is that traditional culture gives preferential treatment to women to facilitate them focus on taking care of the children and grandchildren.

Things are different now. Women don’t want to take their traditional gender role and men are often forced to both bring most income and share half the chores and child care. Yet, women form a strong coalition that any attempt to make retirement equal for men, which should be 5-8 years earlier than women, is politically unviable

zeropoundpom · 2025-10-20T06:14:02+00:00

Wait till you hear about the WASPI women in the UK! A bunch of entitled boomer women who are demanding the government compensate them for the fact their pension age got raised to match men's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Against_State_Pension_Inequality

TheSlayer_52 · 2025-10-20T08:51:44+00:00

Men retiring 5-10 years later (eg China: 63 vs. 58, russia: 65 vs 60) is feminist policy in action men are worked to death to fund systems while women live 4-6 years longer (WHO, 2025) OECD says it’s for “pension sustainability” but it’s really men paying for feminist-driven welfare gaps (60% SNAP to women, USDA 2025). In the US men face 93% of workplace deaths (BLS, 2025) yet get no break, feminism’s “equality” ignores this CDC: 70% female-led divorces burden men further, time to challenge laws like Title IX and family courts to stop men being disposable. #MensStrength

tkoubek · 2025-10-19T23:10:12+00:00

In Argentina, the retirement age for women is 65 and 70 for men. The rationale behind this law is that these five-year gaps in favor of women are compensation for household chores and childcare.

Y0uHad0n3J0b · 2025-10-21T02:04:20+00:00

They love talking about “equity” instead of “equality”. If they really believe that, then women should have later retirement dates than men, since they live longer.

Njaulv · 2025-10-21T07:00:38+00:00

Which is even funnier when you consider that women live longer than men on average.

Johhny6969hehe · 2025-10-19T20:11:37+00:00

Here in Poland, the retirement age is 65 for men and 60 for women. Today, of course, it is unfair, but historically it came from the fact that after World War II, the governments in the country saw that statistically a man marries a woman with a difference of 5 years between them, and the idea was for both people to be able to retire at the same time (although at different ages) and enjoy retirement together. It was completely natural for men to start working earlier and stay working longer, which was also good for the economy, but generally, no one particularly cared. Unfortunately, according to calculations in my country, allowing equal retirement ages would lead to enormous budgetary problems, as hundreds of thousands of men could retire overnight, and someone would have to pay for them. This would likely also negatively impact women's finances and the economy as a whole, as a large number of workers would suddenly disappear from the labor market, leaving no one to replace them. Currently, no politician has the courage to equalize the retirement age also because in my country women constitute over 51% of the electorate, so it is simply more profitable to create election programs for women than for men.

Surv1ver · 2025-10-19T18:57:22+00:00

I think the official explanation is often that it is normal for couples to have a statistic age gap similar to the gap in retirement age, so that a man and his wife can retire at the same time.

DiZzY_404 · 2025-10-19T22:14:07+00:00

My uneducated guess is many countries that have a slightly lower retirement age for women and couples filing for retirement at the same time, women being generally slightly younger than their partners.

cabesa-balbesa · 2025-10-20T02:55:56+00:00

And what was the arrangement back in the days when women didn’t vote?

cabesa-balbesa · 2025-10-20T02:57:46+00:00

I’m guessing they believe that men are useless past the age where the can do hard physical labor and women can still babysit or some shit like that.

CeleryMan20 · 2025-10-20T21:10:26+00:00

Because of misogyny by the Patriarchy, silly! /s

apokrif1 · 2025-10-23T17:28:30+00:00

Because men's life expectancy is longer /s

abramN · 2025-10-19T18:40:19+00:00

Gotta optimize the productive time. Men are living longer so can work longer for society.

randonumero · 2025-10-19T19:39:07+00:00

In many countries it has to do with traditional gender roles and job opportunities available to women. In many places a man at 65 may still be able to find work that pays well enough to not need the state pension but some women may not. In some cases it's also due to less attachment of women in the work force and many women having had to leave the workforce to care for kids.

The long and short is that many countries have cultures that view gender roles a certain way.

NumerousImprovements · 2025-10-19T23:04:32+00:00

I mean, don’t we all always talk about how there are just differences between men and women? Are we pretending we’ve never heard this before?

Men live longer, and (very generally speaking), live better for longer.

I disagree with it because both genders can start working at the same age, and once you’ve done your time, that shouldn’t depend on what gender you are; men give just as much of their life working for society as women do.

But it’s because men are still capable of working at that age usually, and it’s par for the course for a capitalist system to get as much out of their workforce as possible.

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