The Paula Principle

Month: March 2021

AI and Gender

We're starting to learn more about the biases buried deep within our data. Many of the knowledge bases that we have long thought of as objective turn out to be systematically skewed. I first became aware of this reading Mark Glezerman's Gender Medicine, which brought to light the way medical research uses evidence derived from research on men only. This can have literally fatal consequences, for example in the way women's strokes fail to be recognised and treated. Glezerman's book was followed by the better-known Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez. Awareness of this has been boosted recently because of the way AI systems use existing data to bake in biases.…
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GPG: the effects of age – a different ‘scarring’

I've just been through a major desk refurb. This was an actual physical reconstruction (courtesy of my brother-in-law's carpentering talents) and not just a clearing out of papers, but I did come across a few interesting items that had slipped out of sight. These included a press cutting from a few months ago on the gender pay gap for the over 50s. The piece cited a report from an organisation called Rest Less. I couldn't find the report on their website but the headline showed a median salary gap of 23% for full timers over 50, and 25% for those over 60. This is large in itself, but of course…
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A sad consequence of the PP

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…
Read More

AI and Gender

We're starting to learn more about the biases buried deep within our data. Many of the knowledge bases that we have long thought of as objective turn out to be systematically skewed. I first became aware of this reading Mark Glezerman's Gender Medicine, which brought to light the way medical research uses evidence derived from research on men only. This can have literally fatal consequences, for example in the way women's strokes fail to be recognised and treated. Glezerman's book was followed by the better-known Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez. Awareness of this has been boosted recently because of the way AI systems use existing data to bake in biases.…
Read More

GPG: the effects of age – a different ‘scarring’

I've just been through a major desk refurb. This was an actual physical reconstruction (courtesy of my brother-in-law's carpentering talents) and not just a clearing out of papers, but I did come across a few interesting items that had slipped out of sight. These included a press cutting from a few months ago on the gender pay gap for the over 50s. The piece cited a report from an organisation called Rest Less. I couldn't find the report on their website but the headline showed a median salary gap of 23% for full timers over 50, and 25% for those over 60. This is large in itself, but of course…
Read More

A sad consequence of the PP

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…
Read More

AI and Gender

We're starting to learn more about the biases buried deep within our data. Many of the knowledge bases that we have long thought of as objective turn out to be systematically skewed. I first became aware of this reading Mark Glezerman's Gender Medicine, which brought to light the way medical research uses evidence derived from research on men only. This can have literally fatal consequences, for example in the way women's strokes fail to be recognised and treated. Glezerman's book was followed by the better-known Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez. Awareness of this has been boosted recently because of the way AI systems use existing data to bake in biases.…
Read More

GPG: the effects of age – a different ‘scarring’

I've just been through a major desk refurb. This was an actual physical reconstruction (courtesy of my brother-in-law's carpentering talents) and not just a clearing out of papers, but I did come across a few interesting items that had slipped out of sight. These included a press cutting from a few months ago on the gender pay gap for the over 50s. The piece cited a report from an organisation called Rest Less. I couldn't find the report on their website but the headline showed a median salary gap of 23% for full timers over 50, and 25% for those over 60. This is large in itself, but of course…
Read More

A sad consequence of the PP

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…
Read More