Social Security is granting five years of extra contributions to women who have given birth or adopted their children.

Pension regulations give special protection to women who, due to maternity, suffered interruptions in their contributions throughout their working careers, with obvious detriment to the future calculation of their retirement pension. In fact, in some cases, they even grant five additional years of contributions to mitigate the impact of the gender pension gap.

The General Social Security Law includes in its article 236 ( you can consult it at this link ) what it calls benefits for the care of children or minors, within the catalogue of measures for the protection of families.

This article states that "the period of contributions counts for all purposes , except for compliance with the minimum contribution period required, as the period in which contributions have been interrupted due to the termination of the employment relationship or the end of the collection of unemployment benefits when such circumstances have occurred between the nine months prior to birth, or the three months prior to the adoption or permanent foster care of a minor, and the end of the sixth year following said situation ."

This contribution period will be a maximum of 270 days per child born or adopted and may not exceed the maximum number of days of contribution interruption at any time. Furthermore, the law states that the total period considered as contributions cannot exceed five years .

Although this benefit, the law details, does not distinguish between the father or the mother, it is mostly granted to working mothers and, in fact, the text warns that " in the event of a dispute between them, the right will be granted to the mother ."

Although the regulations clearly state that these five years do not count towards the minimum contribution period (which determines whether a person qualifies or not, in the case of retirement it is 15 years), the benefits of this maximum of five years are clear when calculating the pension .

In the most common case, that of a retirement pension, the benefit is very clear due to the method used to calculate Social Security pensions . The contribution bases for the previous 25 years are taken into account to constitute the regulatory base and, in addition, all the years worked are computed to calculate the percentage of the regulatory base to which the worker is entitled.

The calculation method explains everything: if a working woman can add contribution bases in periods that weren't counted as contributions, she will expand her statutory base. But not only that, since having more years of contributions will mean receiving a higher percentage of the statutory base and, therefore, a higher pension.