Mill on the Floss – again, this time linked to the WMC

You may recall that The Paula Principle begins with scenes from George Eliot's Mill on the Floss. There again, you might not, so a recap: Tom and Maggie Tulliver are brother and sister; she is twice as bright (or 'cute, as her father puts it) as he is but he is the one on whom precious family funds are spent sending away for an education; the 'schooling' turns out to be personal tutorials in topics such as Euclid and algebra, given by Mr Stelling, a parson with an expensive wife to keep; Tom cannot relate these to his practical interests and so learns little; meanwhile Maggie devours books at home,…
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The pension pay gap

By the time a woman is aged 65 to 69, her average pension wealth is £35,700, roughly a fifth of that of a man her age, according to a study at the end of 2018 conducted by the Chartered Institute of Insurance. The emphasis is mine. It's an amazing figure - one sex's pension wealth at just 20% of the other's. How does that rather abstract notion of 'pension wealth' translate into income difference? A recent report from the trade union Prospect (Tackling the gender pension gap) found that the gender pensions income gap (39.5%) was more than double the size of the total gender pay gap (18.5%), with the…
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Mill on the Floss – again, this time linked to the WMC

You may recall that The Paula Principle begins with scenes from George Eliot's Mill on the Floss. There again, you might not, so a recap: Tom and Maggie Tulliver are brother and sister; she is twice as bright (or 'cute, as her father puts it) as he is but he is the one on whom precious family funds are spent sending away for an education; the 'schooling' turns out to be personal tutorials in topics such as Euclid and algebra, given by Mr Stelling, a parson with an expensive wife to keep; Tom cannot relate these to his practical interests and so learns little; meanwhile Maggie devours books at home,…
Read More

The pension pay gap

By the time a woman is aged 65 to 69, her average pension wealth is £35,700, roughly a fifth of that of a man her age, according to a study at the end of 2018 conducted by the Chartered Institute of Insurance. The emphasis is mine. It's an amazing figure - one sex's pension wealth at just 20% of the other's. How does that rather abstract notion of 'pension wealth' translate into income difference? A recent report from the trade union Prospect (Tackling the gender pension gap) found that the gender pensions income gap (39.5%) was more than double the size of the total gender pay gap (18.5%), with the…
Read More