One of the key themes in the Paula Principle is to scrutinise the notion of convergence between men and women's career patterns. The PP is founded on the fact that women's qualification levels have not only converged on men's but long ago surpassed them - crossover rather than convergence. Meanwhile respective earnings have only slowly drifted close together, so the careers gap remains large. As a result the female/male competence gap is increasing faster than the male/female careers gap is closing. In anything other than a simplistic sense, convergence is not happening. But this is not the key point. Talk of convergence has a dangerous tendency to reinforce the idea…

A couple of fairly gloomy charts, I'm afraid, but I find it constantly important to get the message across about how the Paula Principle affects the whole life course. Indeed, its biggest impact is on the second half of people's lives: first, because the gender earnings gap is greatest for older workers, and secondly because this carries on into life after work. Remember that by now, because of the competence crossover (women surpassing men in qualifications etc) a lot of these women pensioners are better qualified than their male counterparts. First the international picture, shown in the OECD chart below. My techno-incompetence (lopping off the figures from the vertical axis)…

One of the key themes in the Paula Principle is to scrutinise the notion of convergence between men and women's career patterns. The PP is founded on the fact that women's qualification levels have not only converged on men's but long ago surpassed them - crossover rather than convergence. Meanwhile respective earnings have only slowly drifted close together, so the careers gap remains large. As a result the female/male competence gap is increasing faster than the male/female careers gap is closing. In anything other than a simplistic sense, convergence is not happening. But this is not the key point. Talk of convergence has a dangerous tendency to reinforce the idea…

A couple of fairly gloomy charts, I'm afraid, but I find it constantly important to get the message across about how the Paula Principle affects the whole life course. Indeed, its biggest impact is on the second half of people's lives: first, because the gender earnings gap is greatest for older workers, and secondly because this carries on into life after work. Remember that by now, because of the competence crossover (women surpassing men in qualifications etc) a lot of these women pensioners are better qualified than their male counterparts. First the international picture, shown in the OECD chart below. My techno-incompetence (lopping off the figures from the vertical axis)…