The Future of Social Security: Women the Deciding Factor in Retirement Sys

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/01/30/MNGFD9OR1T2.DTL
The Future of Social Security: Women the Deciding Factor in Retirement System Debate
Excerpt: "Since women generally live longer than men, earn less, are less likely to have a significant pension, and lose more years of retirement-building income when they stop working to raise kids or take care of parents, they depend more on Social Security when they retire. Most over 85 are women. It is the only source of income for 29 percent of unmarried female seniors. Seventy percent of all Social Security beneficiaries older than 85 are women." (San Francisco Chronicle)

85 year od women can't procreate so ...

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/01/30/MNGFD9OR1T2.DTL

THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL SECURITY
Women the deciding factor in retirement system debate
They live longer, have fewer other sources of income
Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

<SNIP>Some say waiting to fix the problem will force much more drastic changes, because there will be no time to slowly accumulate cost savings. Liberals say the system needs only minor tweaking before 2042, when the Social Security trustees who oversee the system say taxes will cover only 73 percent of benefits. And the idea of private accounts wouldn't address this looming problem.

<SNIP>In that way, the next few months of Social Security debate promises to be a blur of dueling bar graphs and focus-group testimonials from beneficiaries. Yet both sides say the real battle will be over values, not numbers, as Americans decide what - if anything - to do to that most sacrosanct of entitlement programs.

<snip>"It's demeaning to women not to have the choice to invest in private accounts," said Leanne Abdnor, a former vice president at the conservative Cato Institute whom Bush appointed to the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security. "Women should have the same choice to make with their bank accounts as they have with their bodies."
<snip>

One of Abdnor's appeals is directed at the married working woman, contending she "typically receives the 50 percent spousal benefit, which she would have gotten anyway, even if she paid nothing into the system."

<snip>They will remind women that Social Security is about more than just retirement, said National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy. It's "a social insurance policy, life insurance, disability and retirement all rolled into one," she said.

Convincing women of the risks involved in private accounts is key, Gandy said, because "women are most likely the ones to be looking out for the long- term security for the family. And women are most likely to need that security in their elder years."

<snip> "But first," she said, "I want to see if (creating private accounts) affects any one else's benefits. I wouldn't be into that."