Abstract EN:

In the two welfare States of France and Germany, the right to pension benefits is mainly ensured through contributions. In both countries, the recent pension reforms have put even more emphasis on a contribution-based configuration, giving precedence to continuous gainful activity and full time work that includes gradual salary rises. However, many women interrupt their careers or work part-time without their salaries rising, and thus face difficulties in their efforts to ensure a decent pension. In order to improve the pension situation for women, compensation measures have been introduced in France and Germany that take account of the personal situation of the woman, e. G. Regarding the various wage earner models in a partnership or unpaid family work. The comparative study of these measures shows the different national approaches to dealing with the topic of female pensions taken by two countries that are close in geographical, political and cultural terms, yet demonstrate legal and social particularities in their own right. Widow's pension as secondary right represents the main benefit granted to women who lived in a partnership, yet it's considered to be maladjusted to social developments and partnership issues such as divorce. While France seeks to retain and adjust the instrument of widow's pension, Germany is working towards replacing it in terms of an individualisation of pension rights by way of alternative methods like the sharing of pension rights. Family benefits take child-raising periods and unpaid provision of nursing care to an elderly and dependent parent into account in the calculation of pension benefits in order to give women the possibility to improve their rights to an independent pension of their own.