Most of the world is designed using men’s data (read Caroline Criado Perez’s excellent “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men” for more on this.)

And this bias has real-world oppressive consequences. 

• Women in Britain are 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack, as heart failure trials generally use male participants.
• Cars are designed around the body of “Reference Man”, so although men are more likely to crash, women involved in collisions are nearly 50% more likely to be seriously hurt. 
• Blind auditions, where the panel can’t see who is playing, increase the proportion of female players hired by orchestras to nearly 50%.

Our retirement system is no different. From the State Pension and National Insurance contributions to Automatic Enrolment and the reality of saving when you have to pay for childcare – women’s lived realities have been passed over. 

As a result, in women in the UK have smaller pension pots than men at every stage of their careers. Many are less financially resilient in older age and often have higher levels of vulnerability compared to their male counterparts.

But some financial organisations are trying to change this.

More Diverse Voices worked with the pension platform PensionBee on a series of workshops. We invited female customers and non-customers to help us reimagine the pension system for women. We delved deep into women’s experiences to understand barriers to saving for retirement through focus groups, individual interviews, and surveys. 

The project has influenced product and marketing ideas PensionBee is planning to take forward into this year and beyond. So watch this space!

You can read more about our work here, in Customer Insights Manager Priyal Kanabar blog post on the amazing EDI work at PensionBee.