EU: A transgendered woman who was told she would have to wait for her pension until the male pension age of 65 was a victim of a breach of her human rights, European judges said yesterday.
Linda Grant (68), from St Albans, England, was awarded £1,100 in damages and £19,000 in costs by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
The judges said the British government's refusal to recognise her female status and give her a pension from the age of 60 violated her "right to respect for private and family life", enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.
Ms Grant lived as a man until the age of 24, serving in the army for three years and then working as a police officer.
After her sex-change surgery, her birth certificate continued to describe her as male, although she was identified as a woman on her national insurance card. She also paid national insurance contributions at the female rate until the difference in rates was abolished in 1975.
She applied for a state pension from her 60th birthday, but was told she would have to wait until 65, the pensionable age for men, because the decision was governed by gender details on the birth certificate.
Her appeal was turned down, but she demanded that her case be reopened when the human rights judges backed a similar case brought in 2002 by Christine Goodwin.