Pensions Are a Feminist Issue

When I interviewed for an attorney position with the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS), the second largest public pension system in the United States, I was asked, "Why do you want this job?"

I didn't hesitate: "Because pensions are a feminist issue."

I learned this as a child because of my maternal grandmother.

My maternal grandmother had been widowed before I was born. Because my maternal grandfather had worked as a garbage worker for the City of Sacramento, when he died, my grandmother received his pension. That pension allowed her to live independently and buy a home.

My understanding is that what it didn't allow her to do was remarry.

In the early 1970's my maternal grandmother lived with a man who I thought was my grandfather. He was old, he wore suits, he smelled good, he was kind, and he gave me money and candy, all the things a grandfather does. As a child, no one tells you, "By the way, you only have one grandparent. Both of your grandfathers and your paternal grandmother are dead." Nope, you just go about your child business playing the hand you're dealt. You don't know any better, happily so.

Until you know. I couldn't have been more than seven or eight, and, based on everything that man did, I assumed he was my grandfather. So I mistakenly called him my grandfather on the drive home from my grandmother's house.

My mom, the youngest of her siblings and a daddy's girl, sucked her teeth and said with a venom, "THAT AIN'T MY DADDY!"

How was I supposed to know? Nobody explained it to me.

What I learned later was that my grandmother didn't remarry because she was afraid she would lose her pension.

Fast forward to 2015. My dad is widowed and is living in an assisted living center with his second wife. Ninety-five percent of the residents were women. The percentage was just as high when he had to be moved to memory care. Neither assisted living nor memory care is cheap. My dad passed away on December 31, 2018, and the staff were kind enough to tell us that, unless we moved him and his stuff out of his memory care room before January 1, they would have to charge us for the month of January, and the cost would increase from approximately $5600 per month to $7,000 on January 1. Being our father's children -- let's just say my dad was frugal - we were packing up his stuff before the mortuary arrived for his body. We weren't going to waste his money.

Statistically speaking, women tend to outlive men. The only question is whether they will have financial resources that won't outlive them. That's why, to my mind, pensions are feminist issue. They help ensure that women don't fall into poverty in old age because you cannot outlive a pension, unlike a 401K.

When I began working at CalSTRS in 2019, I learned that, unlike CalPERS, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, CalSTRS had to invest its pension fund differently because the makeup of its members was different.

CalSTRS members are majority female because most teachers are women. Along with being majority female, CalSTRS members, because they are teachers, tend to live longer because they don't sit all day, they tend to be more active, and they love what they do.

The average lifespan of a CalPERS member? Seventy.

The average lifespan of a CalSTRS member? Ninety-two. In fact, CalSTRS once gave a party for all of their centenarians and supposedly three hundred showed up.

This is one of the many reasons why I help people, especially women of color, get jobs with the State of California. I don't know how long the State will continue to offer pensions, but I do know that a pension is one stream of income that helps working women live independently in old age.

So, to me, pensions are a feminist issue.