MUSICIANS and other self-employed women workers are hit hardest by the gender pensions gap and will not have sufficient savings to support themselves in retirement, trade unions warned today.

Delegates at the TUC Women’s Conference said that the largest causal factor of the pensions gap is women being more likely to take time off work to assume caring responsibilities, with union reps noting that, women on average carry out 60 per cent more unpaid work than men.

Hailey Willington of the Musicians Union said that cost-of-living pressures have meant that many musicians are dipping into their paid or private pensions pot to be able to afford heating and food.

She said: “Even if women in music were earning as much as their [male] peers, without lobbying the government to review and see incentives provided for pension saving amongst self-employed workers, musicians will continue to be especially vulnerable to poverty later in life.”

Ms Willington said that closing the gender pensions gap “necessitates eliminating the gender pay gap” through normalising equal sharing of care responsibilities of parents, affordable childcare, and ensuring that women who take time out of the workforce for caring responsibilities have their contributions recognised.

Unison vice-president Julia Mwaluke said that addressing the gender pay gap “should be a priority for all,” while NASUWT’s Philippa Bell warned that the pension gap is “going to be a future catastrophe and we need to act now.”

The conference voted for the TUC to lobby the government against further pension age rises and address the root causes of the gap.