The gender pension gap in China

Today, China is facing an increasingly serious aging population, and pensions have become the main source of income for more and more retirees. However, under the current pension system, women are generally at a disadvantage in terms of pension rights and interests. Because women retire earlier, they often receive less pension income than men, resulting in a gender pension gap. This paper mainly discusses the question of “how gender affects pension rights and interests,” combing through research results and perspectives on the gender pension gap in china and abroad, analyzing the current design and status quo of China's pension insurance system, and further analyzing the connection between women's “career ceiling,” “motherhood penalty,” and pensions. This paper argues that China's future pension system reform should take gender factors into account more, not just unifying the retirement age. More importantly, it is crucial to face up to the “institutional gap” that women face when switching between work and family, so as to promote research from “equality of results” to a focus on “fairness of process” and further optimize the design of China's pension insurance system.