Gender role patterns contribute to the fact that almost nine out of ten senior citizens receiving the least pension are women.

Even though equality has come a long way, today’s pensioners receive payments based on what they earned throughout their working lives.

Thus, gender roles from the 1950s and 1960s help create differences today, wrote VG newspaper.

There are currently 912,100 retired pensioners in Norway, and according to Nav forecasts, the figure will pass one million by 2021.

A change in rates this autumn means that between August and September, 5,000 more people were defined as minimum wage pensioners. In total, there are 156,090 people in this group, and 134,935 of them are women.

Among those who took out full retirement, the men’s average pension was 19% higher than the women’s, estimates Nav.

‘Differences in the labour market are reflected in the pension system. Therefore, this is a labour market problem, as well as a retirement problem’, said section manager, Ole Christian Lien, of Nav.

He is aware that the differences between female and male retirees will decline over time, but the forecasts say there will be a difference in the future too.

Still, women are, on average, earning less than men, which is often explained by different occupational choices, and that women more often work part-time. Thus, they receive lower retirement pensions.

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today