RETIRED women effectively go for four and a half months each year without getting a pension due to the gender pension income gap in Britain, the TUC has revealed.

The income gap between men and women in retirement is now 38 per cent, more than twice the level of the gender pay gap, which is currently 15.4 per cent, according to the Prospect union.

This disparity has the same effect as making women wait the first 139 days of the year before they get their pension today on the “gender pensions gap day.”

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said that, at the current rate of progress, it could take more than 50 years to close the pension gap.

She said: “Too many women are paying the price in retirement for taking time out of work or cutting back their hours when their children were small.

“Ministers must act now, or we will consign more generations of women to poverty in retirement.

“We need to fix our pension system so that all women can benefit from a workplace pension with decent contributions from their employer, regardless of how much they earn.”

Ms O’Grady also called for investment in childcare as caring responsibilities are one of the “key drivers” of the pension and gender pay gaps.

Prospect senior deputy general secretary Sue Ferns said: “The first thing the government needs to do is acknowledge the problem and ask [the Office for National Statistics] to start benchmarking the gender pension gap so we can properly measure progress year-on-year.

“Changing the auto-enrolment rules could be done quite quickly and would be one way for the government to demonstrate support for working women.”