Social security
Around 2000 there were changes designed to end the discrimination against women.  Women's benefits no longer depended on their husbands National Insurance contributions. The state pension age was set at 60 for women, and 65 for men in 1948. At that time most men did not live to claim their pension for long. Women lived on average about 5 years longer than men.  In 1995 the law was changed so that the women's pension age would be made equal with men. After 2007 the age people could claim a pension was gradually raised because life expectancy had improved. On average men lived to be more than 80 and women about 84.