Women born before 1998 instructed ‘take motion now’ to keep away from pension mistake | Personal Finance | Finance

Women born before 1998 have been instructed they need to take motion – or face bother in their retirement. New analysis show surprising figures that girls retire with virtually half the wealth accrued by males – a course of that begins at age 28, new analysis has discovered.

While 22% of males aged 28 said retirement was a financial precedence, that quantity fell to just 8% among girls, according to a survey by investment platform AJ Bell. It means that girls need to begin considering about their retirement much earlier than they are presently doing, specialists say.

Women did not prioritise their pension at the same fee as males until age 41, by which time it was inconceivable to catch up, AJ Bell discovered. “At 28, many women will be starting to think about getting married or starting a family and graduates might also be looking over their shoulder at their student debt balance,” says Charlene Young from AJ Bell.

“As many take career breaks, cracks start appearing from missed or lower contributions in the key years when pension growth is so important. These cracks manifest as a chunky gender pension gap by retirement.”

This hole is compounded by the gender pay hole, which sees girls in full-time employment earn 7% less than males on average. Many more girls are in part-time employment than males, too, that means they are more doubtless to miss out on auto-enrolment into worker pension contributions.

Since 2012, most employees routinely pay 5% of their income into a office pension and employers contribute at least 3%, but this is not computerized for people incomes less than £10,000. Some 21% of girls aged between 29 and 40 work part-time, in contrast with 5% of males.

By the time girls attain ages 55-59 (with 55 being the minimal office pension age), they undergo a wealth hole of 48% to males, according to Department of Work and Pensions analysis between 2020 and 2022. Pension supplier Legal and General put the average pension pots at £156,000 for males and £81,000 for girls aged over 55.

There are indicators some girls are taking motion. Women paid more into their pensions than males in January 2026, according to knowledge from retirement firm PensionBee, for only the second time in its historical past, with females aged in their 40s driving the increase.

Female clients contributed 104% of the quantity males contributed, despite accounting for only 42% of complete purchasers. Back in 2024, girls contributed less than half (48%) of the complete contributed by males, and this rose to 58% in 2025.

PensionBee said it is the first time it has seen girls’s pension contributions surpassing those from males since 2018. Women aged 40 to 49 contributed 185% of the equal contributions made by males in January, driving much of the general increase.

The surge in pension contributions coincided with HM Revenue and Customs’ January self-assessment tax deadline.

PensionBee steered that self-employed and freelance girls in their 40s are making important last-minute lump sum contributions to bolster their pension financial savings and make the most of pensions tax reduction.

Maike Currie, VP personal finance at PensionBee, said: “Seeing women out-contribute men – for the crucial self-assessment month of January – is very encouraging, showing more women in their 40s are in self-employment and/or are higher rate tax payers and conscious of the importance of making pension contributions.”

She added: “However, across other age groups, the picture is still very uneven, despite improvements on previous years. Women aged 18 to 29 contributed 7% less than men, while those aged 60 to 69 contributed 26% less, a gap that reflects a lifetime of compounding disadvantage rather than disengagement.”

The last time PensionBee feminine purchasers contributed more than their male counterparts was in April 2018, before the coronavirus pandemic.

Ms Currie added: “There is clearly growing engagement and a determination from women in their mid-40s in particular to bolster their retirement savings.

“However, closing the gender pension gap will require systemic reform. Women remain over-represented among the UK’s ‘invisible workers’ – falling outside the net of auto-enrolment, which has very much been designed around formal employment structures and the payroll.”

PensionBee was based in 2014 and has over £6 billion in belongings on behalf of 275,000 clients.