The Paula Principle

Author: peterprinciple

The Econocrats

The previous post started with Trollope's commentary on how the finance system worked in the C19.  In a wholly unplanned segue, this one deals with how economics is taught and practised now.  To their immense credit, a group of students have got together to produce a detailed, evidence-based critique of the discipline: The Econocracy: the perils of leaving economics to the experts. Rethinking Economics is a movement which questions the assumptions on which most contemporary economics courses are based.  To be more precise, it challenges the fact that most economics courses never question their own, neo-classical, assumptions: that people behave as rational knowledgeable agents seeking to optimise their own advantage, and…
Read More

Trollope, crossover and convergence

I've just read a fascinating piece by John Pemberton in the London Review of Books, on Anthony Trollope and his attitude to women writers.  I remember my mother being an avid reader of Trollope, but I didn't pay much attention to him until she pointed out to me that The Way We Live Now had a lot to say about finance capitalism and how the financial sector operated (this was about 20 years ago, after Big Bang but before Big Crash).  The mix of unreliable dealings, systemic instability and prejudice still seems fairly applicable to how the sector works. Pemberton makes two major points which relate directly to the Paula Principle.  The…
Read More

Equal Pay Day; and an appeal

Yesterday the Fawcett Society reminded us: "Thursday 10th November 2016 is Equal Pay Day (EPD). This means that women are effectively working for free from 10th November to the end of the calendar year, because on average they earn less than men. EPD is calculated using the mean full time gender pay gap , which is currently 13.9%." In Paris there were reports that a day earlier women downed tools for a couple of hours at the end of the day, reflecting the fact that the pay gap is a fraction bigger in France.  I believe that they returned to work the  next day, however. Now for the good news:…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
Read More

Working hours again: UK and US

The recent IFS report on the gender pay gap attracted huge coverage - top of the news, and all over the front pages.  It's the first of a series the Institute is doing on this issue, which is excellent news;  I look forward to seeing what comes out. The report does an excellent job in distinguishing between the various types of wage gap, in two major respects.  First, it shows the need to distinguish different groups according to the hours they work.  Obviously, the hourly difference is far smaller than the weekly difference, since women work fewer hours: it shrinks from 36% to 19%.  It shrinks further, to 16%, for…
Read More

Kevin Roberts and vertical ambition

I doubt that I share much of a worldview with Kevin Roberts, who recently resigned as chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi.  That's a powerful position - but S&S is now owned by a parent company, Publicis, and they effectively showed him the door after his remarks about the low numbers of women in senior positions in advertising being 'not a problem'.  (All six of the big advertising agencies have male CEOs.)  'The fucking debate is all over' was apparently his verdict. "Kevin Roberts has an international reputation for an uncompromisingly positive, inspirational leadership style, and an ability to generate ideas and emotional connections that accelerate extraordinary value" is how Kevin's…
Read More

Jazz gigs and stag parties: fresh approaches to long hours

In the past week I've had two conversations closely related to the Paula Principle, and to each other, in rather unlikely settings.   Both dealt with the issue of whether professional occupations such as lawyers and surveyors needed to require people to work 12-14 hours days in order to make progress up the professional ladder. Nigel plays baritone sax in the the band where I also play (the South London Jazz Orchestra, since you ask, see www.slcm.org.uk).   We were waiting for our gig to kick off in a pub in Tulse Hill on a rather damp Sunday afternoon recently, and so started chatting about non-band things.   Nigel has…
Read More

Teamwork

I've been reading a couple of stimulating books which deal, from very different angles, with the future of work.  Martin Ford's The Rise of the Robots sets out some pretty scary pointers to just how much work might be handed over to automated processes: not just routine manual processes but quite a lot of what we now consider to be intellectual and non-routine.  He suggests that we may be heading quickly towards the scenario sketched out by Keynes, where people will work far far fewer hours - the difference being that in the modern version there will be colossal inequalities as the benefits of automation will go to a very small…
Read More

Womenomics

I confess I'd never heard of womenomics before, but an interesting piece in last weekend's Financial Times put me right. It's based on a profile of Miho Otani, a Japanese woman who commands a 3500 tonne warship.  She is intended to represent Prime Minister Abe's drive to have women occupy 30% of the country's management position by 2020 .  ('Abenomics' was coined to describe the PM's economic strategy, hence the fellow-neologism.)  The initiative, apparently, stands little chance of reaching its target. In a way Japan, with Korea, encapsulates the Paula Principle more than any other country.  Japanese women are highly educated.  Young Japanese women enter the labour market in large…
Read More

Mustang

We went on Saturday to the Turkish film Mustang , which tracks the passage from childhood of five girls.  The girls live with their uncle and grandmother (the parents have disappeared, perhaps dead) in quite a rural area, 1000 km from Istanbul.  In the first phase of the film they are carefree and vivacious, larking around with boys at the end of school term and chattering non-stop with each other. Gradually the tenor of the film changes, as the older people assert traditional cultural mores.  Two of the girls are married off to boys they only meet on the day of the betrothal.  The others resist in various ways, but the house…
Read More

The Econocrats

The previous post started with Trollope's commentary on how the finance system worked in the C19.  In a wholly unplanned segue, this one deals with how economics is taught and practised now.  To their immense credit, a group of students have got together to produce a detailed, evidence-based critique of the discipline: The Econocracy: the perils of leaving economics to the experts. Rethinking Economics is a movement which questions the assumptions on which most contemporary economics courses are based.  To be more precise, it challenges the fact that most economics courses never question their own, neo-classical, assumptions: that people behave as rational knowledgeable agents seeking to optimise their own advantage, and…
Read More

Trollope, crossover and convergence

I've just read a fascinating piece by John Pemberton in the London Review of Books, on Anthony Trollope and his attitude to women writers.  I remember my mother being an avid reader of Trollope, but I didn't pay much attention to him until she pointed out to me that The Way We Live Now had a lot to say about finance capitalism and how the financial sector operated (this was about 20 years ago, after Big Bang but before Big Crash).  The mix of unreliable dealings, systemic instability and prejudice still seems fairly applicable to how the sector works. Pemberton makes two major points which relate directly to the Paula Principle.  The…
Read More

Equal Pay Day; and an appeal

Yesterday the Fawcett Society reminded us: "Thursday 10th November 2016 is Equal Pay Day (EPD). This means that women are effectively working for free from 10th November to the end of the calendar year, because on average they earn less than men. EPD is calculated using the mean full time gender pay gap , which is currently 13.9%." In Paris there were reports that a day earlier women downed tools for a couple of hours at the end of the day, reflecting the fact that the pay gap is a fraction bigger in France.  I believe that they returned to work the  next day, however. Now for the good news:…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
Read More

Working hours again: UK and US

The recent IFS report on the gender pay gap attracted huge coverage - top of the news, and all over the front pages.  It's the first of a series the Institute is doing on this issue, which is excellent news;  I look forward to seeing what comes out. The report does an excellent job in distinguishing between the various types of wage gap, in two major respects.  First, it shows the need to distinguish different groups according to the hours they work.  Obviously, the hourly difference is far smaller than the weekly difference, since women work fewer hours: it shrinks from 36% to 19%.  It shrinks further, to 16%, for…
Read More

Kevin Roberts and vertical ambition

I doubt that I share much of a worldview with Kevin Roberts, who recently resigned as chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi.  That's a powerful position - but S&S is now owned by a parent company, Publicis, and they effectively showed him the door after his remarks about the low numbers of women in senior positions in advertising being 'not a problem'.  (All six of the big advertising agencies have male CEOs.)  'The fucking debate is all over' was apparently his verdict. "Kevin Roberts has an international reputation for an uncompromisingly positive, inspirational leadership style, and an ability to generate ideas and emotional connections that accelerate extraordinary value" is how Kevin's…
Read More

Jazz gigs and stag parties: fresh approaches to long hours

In the past week I've had two conversations closely related to the Paula Principle, and to each other, in rather unlikely settings.   Both dealt with the issue of whether professional occupations such as lawyers and surveyors needed to require people to work 12-14 hours days in order to make progress up the professional ladder. Nigel plays baritone sax in the the band where I also play (the South London Jazz Orchestra, since you ask, see www.slcm.org.uk).   We were waiting for our gig to kick off in a pub in Tulse Hill on a rather damp Sunday afternoon recently, and so started chatting about non-band things.   Nigel has…
Read More

Teamwork

I've been reading a couple of stimulating books which deal, from very different angles, with the future of work.  Martin Ford's The Rise of the Robots sets out some pretty scary pointers to just how much work might be handed over to automated processes: not just routine manual processes but quite a lot of what we now consider to be intellectual and non-routine.  He suggests that we may be heading quickly towards the scenario sketched out by Keynes, where people will work far far fewer hours - the difference being that in the modern version there will be colossal inequalities as the benefits of automation will go to a very small…
Read More

Womenomics

I confess I'd never heard of womenomics before, but an interesting piece in last weekend's Financial Times put me right. It's based on a profile of Miho Otani, a Japanese woman who commands a 3500 tonne warship.  She is intended to represent Prime Minister Abe's drive to have women occupy 30% of the country's management position by 2020 .  ('Abenomics' was coined to describe the PM's economic strategy, hence the fellow-neologism.)  The initiative, apparently, stands little chance of reaching its target. In a way Japan, with Korea, encapsulates the Paula Principle more than any other country.  Japanese women are highly educated.  Young Japanese women enter the labour market in large…
Read More

Mustang

We went on Saturday to the Turkish film Mustang , which tracks the passage from childhood of five girls.  The girls live with their uncle and grandmother (the parents have disappeared, perhaps dead) in quite a rural area, 1000 km from Istanbul.  In the first phase of the film they are carefree and vivacious, larking around with boys at the end of school term and chattering non-stop with each other. Gradually the tenor of the film changes, as the older people assert traditional cultural mores.  Two of the girls are married off to boys they only meet on the day of the betrothal.  The others resist in various ways, but the house…
Read More

The Econocrats

The previous post started with Trollope's commentary on how the finance system worked in the C19.  In a wholly unplanned segue, this one deals with how economics is taught and practised now.  To their immense credit, a group of students have got together to produce a detailed, evidence-based critique of the discipline: The Econocracy: the perils of leaving economics to the experts. Rethinking Economics is a movement which questions the assumptions on which most contemporary economics courses are based.  To be more precise, it challenges the fact that most economics courses never question their own, neo-classical, assumptions: that people behave as rational knowledgeable agents seeking to optimise their own advantage, and…
Read More

Trollope, crossover and convergence

I've just read a fascinating piece by John Pemberton in the London Review of Books, on Anthony Trollope and his attitude to women writers.  I remember my mother being an avid reader of Trollope, but I didn't pay much attention to him until she pointed out to me that The Way We Live Now had a lot to say about finance capitalism and how the financial sector operated (this was about 20 years ago, after Big Bang but before Big Crash).  The mix of unreliable dealings, systemic instability and prejudice still seems fairly applicable to how the sector works. Pemberton makes two major points which relate directly to the Paula Principle.  The…
Read More

Equal Pay Day; and an appeal

Yesterday the Fawcett Society reminded us: "Thursday 10th November 2016 is Equal Pay Day (EPD). This means that women are effectively working for free from 10th November to the end of the calendar year, because on average they earn less than men. EPD is calculated using the mean full time gender pay gap , which is currently 13.9%." In Paris there were reports that a day earlier women downed tools for a couple of hours at the end of the day, reflecting the fact that the pay gap is a fraction bigger in France.  I believe that they returned to work the  next day, however. Now for the good news:…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
Read More

Working hours again: UK and US

The recent IFS report on the gender pay gap attracted huge coverage - top of the news, and all over the front pages.  It's the first of a series the Institute is doing on this issue, which is excellent news;  I look forward to seeing what comes out. The report does an excellent job in distinguishing between the various types of wage gap, in two major respects.  First, it shows the need to distinguish different groups according to the hours they work.  Obviously, the hourly difference is far smaller than the weekly difference, since women work fewer hours: it shrinks from 36% to 19%.  It shrinks further, to 16%, for…
Read More

Kevin Roberts and vertical ambition

I doubt that I share much of a worldview with Kevin Roberts, who recently resigned as chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi.  That's a powerful position - but S&S is now owned by a parent company, Publicis, and they effectively showed him the door after his remarks about the low numbers of women in senior positions in advertising being 'not a problem'.  (All six of the big advertising agencies have male CEOs.)  'The fucking debate is all over' was apparently his verdict. "Kevin Roberts has an international reputation for an uncompromisingly positive, inspirational leadership style, and an ability to generate ideas and emotional connections that accelerate extraordinary value" is how Kevin's…
Read More

Jazz gigs and stag parties: fresh approaches to long hours

In the past week I've had two conversations closely related to the Paula Principle, and to each other, in rather unlikely settings.   Both dealt with the issue of whether professional occupations such as lawyers and surveyors needed to require people to work 12-14 hours days in order to make progress up the professional ladder. Nigel plays baritone sax in the the band where I also play (the South London Jazz Orchestra, since you ask, see www.slcm.org.uk).   We were waiting for our gig to kick off in a pub in Tulse Hill on a rather damp Sunday afternoon recently, and so started chatting about non-band things.   Nigel has…
Read More

Teamwork

I've been reading a couple of stimulating books which deal, from very different angles, with the future of work.  Martin Ford's The Rise of the Robots sets out some pretty scary pointers to just how much work might be handed over to automated processes: not just routine manual processes but quite a lot of what we now consider to be intellectual and non-routine.  He suggests that we may be heading quickly towards the scenario sketched out by Keynes, where people will work far far fewer hours - the difference being that in the modern version there will be colossal inequalities as the benefits of automation will go to a very small…
Read More

Womenomics

I confess I'd never heard of womenomics before, but an interesting piece in last weekend's Financial Times put me right. It's based on a profile of Miho Otani, a Japanese woman who commands a 3500 tonne warship.  She is intended to represent Prime Minister Abe's drive to have women occupy 30% of the country's management position by 2020 .  ('Abenomics' was coined to describe the PM's economic strategy, hence the fellow-neologism.)  The initiative, apparently, stands little chance of reaching its target. In a way Japan, with Korea, encapsulates the Paula Principle more than any other country.  Japanese women are highly educated.  Young Japanese women enter the labour market in large…
Read More

Mustang

We went on Saturday to the Turkish film Mustang , which tracks the passage from childhood of five girls.  The girls live with their uncle and grandmother (the parents have disappeared, perhaps dead) in quite a rural area, 1000 km from Istanbul.  In the first phase of the film they are carefree and vivacious, larking around with boys at the end of school term and chattering non-stop with each other. Gradually the tenor of the film changes, as the older people assert traditional cultural mores.  Two of the girls are married off to boys they only meet on the day of the betrothal.  The others resist in various ways, but the house…
Read More

The Econocrats

The previous post started with Trollope's commentary on how the finance system worked in the C19.  In a wholly unplanned segue, this one deals with how economics is taught and practised now.  To their immense credit, a group of students have got together to produce a detailed, evidence-based critique of the discipline: The Econocracy: the perils of leaving economics to the experts. Rethinking Economics is a movement which questions the assumptions on which most contemporary economics courses are based.  To be more precise, it challenges the fact that most economics courses never question their own, neo-classical, assumptions: that people behave as rational knowledgeable agents seeking to optimise their own advantage, and…
Read More

Trollope, crossover and convergence

I've just read a fascinating piece by John Pemberton in the London Review of Books, on Anthony Trollope and his attitude to women writers.  I remember my mother being an avid reader of Trollope, but I didn't pay much attention to him until she pointed out to me that The Way We Live Now had a lot to say about finance capitalism and how the financial sector operated (this was about 20 years ago, after Big Bang but before Big Crash).  The mix of unreliable dealings, systemic instability and prejudice still seems fairly applicable to how the sector works. Pemberton makes two major points which relate directly to the Paula Principle.  The…
Read More

Equal Pay Day; and an appeal

Yesterday the Fawcett Society reminded us: "Thursday 10th November 2016 is Equal Pay Day (EPD). This means that women are effectively working for free from 10th November to the end of the calendar year, because on average they earn less than men. EPD is calculated using the mean full time gender pay gap , which is currently 13.9%." In Paris there were reports that a day earlier women downed tools for a couple of hours at the end of the day, reflecting the fact that the pay gap is a fraction bigger in France.  I believe that they returned to work the  next day, however. Now for the good news:…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
Read More

Working hours again: UK and US

The recent IFS report on the gender pay gap attracted huge coverage - top of the news, and all over the front pages.  It's the first of a series the Institute is doing on this issue, which is excellent news;  I look forward to seeing what comes out. The report does an excellent job in distinguishing between the various types of wage gap, in two major respects.  First, it shows the need to distinguish different groups according to the hours they work.  Obviously, the hourly difference is far smaller than the weekly difference, since women work fewer hours: it shrinks from 36% to 19%.  It shrinks further, to 16%, for…
Read More

Kevin Roberts and vertical ambition

I doubt that I share much of a worldview with Kevin Roberts, who recently resigned as chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi.  That's a powerful position - but S&S is now owned by a parent company, Publicis, and they effectively showed him the door after his remarks about the low numbers of women in senior positions in advertising being 'not a problem'.  (All six of the big advertising agencies have male CEOs.)  'The fucking debate is all over' was apparently his verdict. "Kevin Roberts has an international reputation for an uncompromisingly positive, inspirational leadership style, and an ability to generate ideas and emotional connections that accelerate extraordinary value" is how Kevin's…
Read More

Jazz gigs and stag parties: fresh approaches to long hours

In the past week I've had two conversations closely related to the Paula Principle, and to each other, in rather unlikely settings.   Both dealt with the issue of whether professional occupations such as lawyers and surveyors needed to require people to work 12-14 hours days in order to make progress up the professional ladder. Nigel plays baritone sax in the the band where I also play (the South London Jazz Orchestra, since you ask, see www.slcm.org.uk).   We were waiting for our gig to kick off in a pub in Tulse Hill on a rather damp Sunday afternoon recently, and so started chatting about non-band things.   Nigel has…
Read More

Teamwork

I've been reading a couple of stimulating books which deal, from very different angles, with the future of work.  Martin Ford's The Rise of the Robots sets out some pretty scary pointers to just how much work might be handed over to automated processes: not just routine manual processes but quite a lot of what we now consider to be intellectual and non-routine.  He suggests that we may be heading quickly towards the scenario sketched out by Keynes, where people will work far far fewer hours - the difference being that in the modern version there will be colossal inequalities as the benefits of automation will go to a very small…
Read More

Womenomics

I confess I'd never heard of womenomics before, but an interesting piece in last weekend's Financial Times put me right. It's based on a profile of Miho Otani, a Japanese woman who commands a 3500 tonne warship.  She is intended to represent Prime Minister Abe's drive to have women occupy 30% of the country's management position by 2020 .  ('Abenomics' was coined to describe the PM's economic strategy, hence the fellow-neologism.)  The initiative, apparently, stands little chance of reaching its target. In a way Japan, with Korea, encapsulates the Paula Principle more than any other country.  Japanese women are highly educated.  Young Japanese women enter the labour market in large…
Read More

Mustang

We went on Saturday to the Turkish film Mustang , which tracks the passage from childhood of five girls.  The girls live with their uncle and grandmother (the parents have disappeared, perhaps dead) in quite a rural area, 1000 km from Istanbul.  In the first phase of the film they are carefree and vivacious, larking around with boys at the end of school term and chattering non-stop with each other. Gradually the tenor of the film changes, as the older people assert traditional cultural mores.  Two of the girls are married off to boys they only meet on the day of the betrothal.  The others resist in various ways, but the house…
Read More

The Econocrats

The previous post started with Trollope's commentary on how the finance system worked in the C19.  In a wholly unplanned segue, this one deals with how economics is taught and practised now.  To their immense credit, a group of students have got together to produce a detailed, evidence-based critique of the discipline: The Econocracy: the perils of leaving economics to the experts. Rethinking Economics is a movement which questions the assumptions on which most contemporary economics courses are based.  To be more precise, it challenges the fact that most economics courses never question their own, neo-classical, assumptions: that people behave as rational knowledgeable agents seeking to optimise their own advantage, and…
Read More

Trollope, crossover and convergence

I've just read a fascinating piece by John Pemberton in the London Review of Books, on Anthony Trollope and his attitude to women writers.  I remember my mother being an avid reader of Trollope, but I didn't pay much attention to him until she pointed out to me that The Way We Live Now had a lot to say about finance capitalism and how the financial sector operated (this was about 20 years ago, after Big Bang but before Big Crash).  The mix of unreliable dealings, systemic instability and prejudice still seems fairly applicable to how the sector works. Pemberton makes two major points which relate directly to the Paula Principle.  The…
Read More

Equal Pay Day; and an appeal

Yesterday the Fawcett Society reminded us: "Thursday 10th November 2016 is Equal Pay Day (EPD). This means that women are effectively working for free from 10th November to the end of the calendar year, because on average they earn less than men. EPD is calculated using the mean full time gender pay gap , which is currently 13.9%." In Paris there were reports that a day earlier women downed tools for a couple of hours at the end of the day, reflecting the fact that the pay gap is a fraction bigger in France.  I believe that they returned to work the  next day, however. Now for the good news:…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
Read More

Working hours again: UK and US

The recent IFS report on the gender pay gap attracted huge coverage - top of the news, and all over the front pages.  It's the first of a series the Institute is doing on this issue, which is excellent news;  I look forward to seeing what comes out. The report does an excellent job in distinguishing between the various types of wage gap, in two major respects.  First, it shows the need to distinguish different groups according to the hours they work.  Obviously, the hourly difference is far smaller than the weekly difference, since women work fewer hours: it shrinks from 36% to 19%.  It shrinks further, to 16%, for…
Read More

Kevin Roberts and vertical ambition

I doubt that I share much of a worldview with Kevin Roberts, who recently resigned as chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi.  That's a powerful position - but S&S is now owned by a parent company, Publicis, and they effectively showed him the door after his remarks about the low numbers of women in senior positions in advertising being 'not a problem'.  (All six of the big advertising agencies have male CEOs.)  'The fucking debate is all over' was apparently his verdict. "Kevin Roberts has an international reputation for an uncompromisingly positive, inspirational leadership style, and an ability to generate ideas and emotional connections that accelerate extraordinary value" is how Kevin's…
Read More

Jazz gigs and stag parties: fresh approaches to long hours

In the past week I've had two conversations closely related to the Paula Principle, and to each other, in rather unlikely settings.   Both dealt with the issue of whether professional occupations such as lawyers and surveyors needed to require people to work 12-14 hours days in order to make progress up the professional ladder. Nigel plays baritone sax in the the band where I also play (the South London Jazz Orchestra, since you ask, see www.slcm.org.uk).   We were waiting for our gig to kick off in a pub in Tulse Hill on a rather damp Sunday afternoon recently, and so started chatting about non-band things.   Nigel has…
Read More

Teamwork

I've been reading a couple of stimulating books which deal, from very different angles, with the future of work.  Martin Ford's The Rise of the Robots sets out some pretty scary pointers to just how much work might be handed over to automated processes: not just routine manual processes but quite a lot of what we now consider to be intellectual and non-routine.  He suggests that we may be heading quickly towards the scenario sketched out by Keynes, where people will work far far fewer hours - the difference being that in the modern version there will be colossal inequalities as the benefits of automation will go to a very small…
Read More

Womenomics

I confess I'd never heard of womenomics before, but an interesting piece in last weekend's Financial Times put me right. It's based on a profile of Miho Otani, a Japanese woman who commands a 3500 tonne warship.  She is intended to represent Prime Minister Abe's drive to have women occupy 30% of the country's management position by 2020 .  ('Abenomics' was coined to describe the PM's economic strategy, hence the fellow-neologism.)  The initiative, apparently, stands little chance of reaching its target. In a way Japan, with Korea, encapsulates the Paula Principle more than any other country.  Japanese women are highly educated.  Young Japanese women enter the labour market in large…
Read More

Mustang

We went on Saturday to the Turkish film Mustang , which tracks the passage from childhood of five girls.  The girls live with their uncle and grandmother (the parents have disappeared, perhaps dead) in quite a rural area, 1000 km from Istanbul.  In the first phase of the film they are carefree and vivacious, larking around with boys at the end of school term and chattering non-stop with each other. Gradually the tenor of the film changes, as the older people assert traditional cultural mores.  Two of the girls are married off to boys they only meet on the day of the betrothal.  The others resist in various ways, but the house…
Read More

The Econocrats

The previous post started with Trollope's commentary on how the finance system worked in the C19.  In a wholly unplanned segue, this one deals with how economics is taught and practised now.  To their immense credit, a group of students have got together to produce a detailed, evidence-based critique of the discipline: The Econocracy: the perils of leaving economics to the experts. Rethinking Economics is a movement which questions the assumptions on which most contemporary economics courses are based.  To be more precise, it challenges the fact that most economics courses never question their own, neo-classical, assumptions: that people behave as rational knowledgeable agents seeking to optimise their own advantage, and…
Read More

Trollope, crossover and convergence

I've just read a fascinating piece by John Pemberton in the London Review of Books, on Anthony Trollope and his attitude to women writers.  I remember my mother being an avid reader of Trollope, but I didn't pay much attention to him until she pointed out to me that The Way We Live Now had a lot to say about finance capitalism and how the financial sector operated (this was about 20 years ago, after Big Bang but before Big Crash).  The mix of unreliable dealings, systemic instability and prejudice still seems fairly applicable to how the sector works. Pemberton makes two major points which relate directly to the Paula Principle.  The…
Read More

Equal Pay Day; and an appeal

Yesterday the Fawcett Society reminded us: "Thursday 10th November 2016 is Equal Pay Day (EPD). This means that women are effectively working for free from 10th November to the end of the calendar year, because on average they earn less than men. EPD is calculated using the mean full time gender pay gap , which is currently 13.9%." In Paris there were reports that a day earlier women downed tools for a couple of hours at the end of the day, reflecting the fact that the pay gap is a fraction bigger in France.  I believe that they returned to work the  next day, however. Now for the good news:…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
Read More

Working hours again: UK and US

The recent IFS report on the gender pay gap attracted huge coverage - top of the news, and all over the front pages.  It's the first of a series the Institute is doing on this issue, which is excellent news;  I look forward to seeing what comes out. The report does an excellent job in distinguishing between the various types of wage gap, in two major respects.  First, it shows the need to distinguish different groups according to the hours they work.  Obviously, the hourly difference is far smaller than the weekly difference, since women work fewer hours: it shrinks from 36% to 19%.  It shrinks further, to 16%, for…
Read More

Kevin Roberts and vertical ambition

I doubt that I share much of a worldview with Kevin Roberts, who recently resigned as chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi.  That's a powerful position - but S&S is now owned by a parent company, Publicis, and they effectively showed him the door after his remarks about the low numbers of women in senior positions in advertising being 'not a problem'.  (All six of the big advertising agencies have male CEOs.)  'The fucking debate is all over' was apparently his verdict. "Kevin Roberts has an international reputation for an uncompromisingly positive, inspirational leadership style, and an ability to generate ideas and emotional connections that accelerate extraordinary value" is how Kevin's…
Read More

Jazz gigs and stag parties: fresh approaches to long hours

In the past week I've had two conversations closely related to the Paula Principle, and to each other, in rather unlikely settings.   Both dealt with the issue of whether professional occupations such as lawyers and surveyors needed to require people to work 12-14 hours days in order to make progress up the professional ladder. Nigel plays baritone sax in the the band where I also play (the South London Jazz Orchestra, since you ask, see www.slcm.org.uk).   We were waiting for our gig to kick off in a pub in Tulse Hill on a rather damp Sunday afternoon recently, and so started chatting about non-band things.   Nigel has…
Read More

Teamwork

I've been reading a couple of stimulating books which deal, from very different angles, with the future of work.  Martin Ford's The Rise of the Robots sets out some pretty scary pointers to just how much work might be handed over to automated processes: not just routine manual processes but quite a lot of what we now consider to be intellectual and non-routine.  He suggests that we may be heading quickly towards the scenario sketched out by Keynes, where people will work far far fewer hours - the difference being that in the modern version there will be colossal inequalities as the benefits of automation will go to a very small…
Read More

Womenomics

I confess I'd never heard of womenomics before, but an interesting piece in last weekend's Financial Times put me right. It's based on a profile of Miho Otani, a Japanese woman who commands a 3500 tonne warship.  She is intended to represent Prime Minister Abe's drive to have women occupy 30% of the country's management position by 2020 .  ('Abenomics' was coined to describe the PM's economic strategy, hence the fellow-neologism.)  The initiative, apparently, stands little chance of reaching its target. In a way Japan, with Korea, encapsulates the Paula Principle more than any other country.  Japanese women are highly educated.  Young Japanese women enter the labour market in large…
Read More

Mustang

We went on Saturday to the Turkish film Mustang , which tracks the passage from childhood of five girls.  The girls live with their uncle and grandmother (the parents have disappeared, perhaps dead) in quite a rural area, 1000 km from Istanbul.  In the first phase of the film they are carefree and vivacious, larking around with boys at the end of school term and chattering non-stop with each other. Gradually the tenor of the film changes, as the older people assert traditional cultural mores.  Two of the girls are married off to boys they only meet on the day of the betrothal.  The others resist in various ways, but the house…
Read More

The Econocrats

The previous post started with Trollope's commentary on how the finance system worked in the C19.  In a wholly unplanned segue, this one deals with how economics is taught and practised now.  To their immense credit, a group of students have got together to produce a detailed, evidence-based critique of the discipline: The Econocracy: the perils of leaving economics to the experts. Rethinking Economics is a movement which questions the assumptions on which most contemporary economics courses are based.  To be more precise, it challenges the fact that most economics courses never question their own, neo-classical, assumptions: that people behave as rational knowledgeable agents seeking to optimise their own advantage, and…
Read More

Trollope, crossover and convergence

I've just read a fascinating piece by John Pemberton in the London Review of Books, on Anthony Trollope and his attitude to women writers.  I remember my mother being an avid reader of Trollope, but I didn't pay much attention to him until she pointed out to me that The Way We Live Now had a lot to say about finance capitalism and how the financial sector operated (this was about 20 years ago, after Big Bang but before Big Crash).  The mix of unreliable dealings, systemic instability and prejudice still seems fairly applicable to how the sector works. Pemberton makes two major points which relate directly to the Paula Principle.  The…
Read More

Equal Pay Day; and an appeal

Yesterday the Fawcett Society reminded us: "Thursday 10th November 2016 is Equal Pay Day (EPD). This means that women are effectively working for free from 10th November to the end of the calendar year, because on average they earn less than men. EPD is calculated using the mean full time gender pay gap , which is currently 13.9%." In Paris there were reports that a day earlier women downed tools for a couple of hours at the end of the day, reflecting the fact that the pay gap is a fraction bigger in France.  I believe that they returned to work the  next day, however. Now for the good news:…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
Read More

Working hours again: UK and US

The recent IFS report on the gender pay gap attracted huge coverage - top of the news, and all over the front pages.  It's the first of a series the Institute is doing on this issue, which is excellent news;  I look forward to seeing what comes out. The report does an excellent job in distinguishing between the various types of wage gap, in two major respects.  First, it shows the need to distinguish different groups according to the hours they work.  Obviously, the hourly difference is far smaller than the weekly difference, since women work fewer hours: it shrinks from 36% to 19%.  It shrinks further, to 16%, for…
Read More

Kevin Roberts and vertical ambition

I doubt that I share much of a worldview with Kevin Roberts, who recently resigned as chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi.  That's a powerful position - but S&S is now owned by a parent company, Publicis, and they effectively showed him the door after his remarks about the low numbers of women in senior positions in advertising being 'not a problem'.  (All six of the big advertising agencies have male CEOs.)  'The fucking debate is all over' was apparently his verdict. "Kevin Roberts has an international reputation for an uncompromisingly positive, inspirational leadership style, and an ability to generate ideas and emotional connections that accelerate extraordinary value" is how Kevin's…
Read More

Jazz gigs and stag parties: fresh approaches to long hours

In the past week I've had two conversations closely related to the Paula Principle, and to each other, in rather unlikely settings.   Both dealt with the issue of whether professional occupations such as lawyers and surveyors needed to require people to work 12-14 hours days in order to make progress up the professional ladder. Nigel plays baritone sax in the the band where I also play (the South London Jazz Orchestra, since you ask, see www.slcm.org.uk).   We were waiting for our gig to kick off in a pub in Tulse Hill on a rather damp Sunday afternoon recently, and so started chatting about non-band things.   Nigel has…
Read More

Teamwork

I've been reading a couple of stimulating books which deal, from very different angles, with the future of work.  Martin Ford's The Rise of the Robots sets out some pretty scary pointers to just how much work might be handed over to automated processes: not just routine manual processes but quite a lot of what we now consider to be intellectual and non-routine.  He suggests that we may be heading quickly towards the scenario sketched out by Keynes, where people will work far far fewer hours - the difference being that in the modern version there will be colossal inequalities as the benefits of automation will go to a very small…
Read More

Womenomics

I confess I'd never heard of womenomics before, but an interesting piece in last weekend's Financial Times put me right. It's based on a profile of Miho Otani, a Japanese woman who commands a 3500 tonne warship.  She is intended to represent Prime Minister Abe's drive to have women occupy 30% of the country's management position by 2020 .  ('Abenomics' was coined to describe the PM's economic strategy, hence the fellow-neologism.)  The initiative, apparently, stands little chance of reaching its target. In a way Japan, with Korea, encapsulates the Paula Principle more than any other country.  Japanese women are highly educated.  Young Japanese women enter the labour market in large…
Read More

Mustang

We went on Saturday to the Turkish film Mustang , which tracks the passage from childhood of five girls.  The girls live with their uncle and grandmother (the parents have disappeared, perhaps dead) in quite a rural area, 1000 km from Istanbul.  In the first phase of the film they are carefree and vivacious, larking around with boys at the end of school term and chattering non-stop with each other. Gradually the tenor of the film changes, as the older people assert traditional cultural mores.  Two of the girls are married off to boys they only meet on the day of the betrothal.  The others resist in various ways, but the house…
Read More

The Econocrats

The previous post started with Trollope's commentary on how the finance system worked in the C19.  In a wholly unplanned segue, this one deals with how economics is taught and practised now.  To their immense credit, a group of students have got together to produce a detailed, evidence-based critique of the discipline: The Econocracy: the perils of leaving economics to the experts. Rethinking Economics is a movement which questions the assumptions on which most contemporary economics courses are based.  To be more precise, it challenges the fact that most economics courses never question their own, neo-classical, assumptions: that people behave as rational knowledgeable agents seeking to optimise their own advantage, and…
Read More

Trollope, crossover and convergence

I've just read a fascinating piece by John Pemberton in the London Review of Books, on Anthony Trollope and his attitude to women writers.  I remember my mother being an avid reader of Trollope, but I didn't pay much attention to him until she pointed out to me that The Way We Live Now had a lot to say about finance capitalism and how the financial sector operated (this was about 20 years ago, after Big Bang but before Big Crash).  The mix of unreliable dealings, systemic instability and prejudice still seems fairly applicable to how the sector works. Pemberton makes two major points which relate directly to the Paula Principle.  The…
Read More

Equal Pay Day; and an appeal

Yesterday the Fawcett Society reminded us: "Thursday 10th November 2016 is Equal Pay Day (EPD). This means that women are effectively working for free from 10th November to the end of the calendar year, because on average they earn less than men. EPD is calculated using the mean full time gender pay gap , which is currently 13.9%." In Paris there were reports that a day earlier women downed tools for a couple of hours at the end of the day, reflecting the fact that the pay gap is a fraction bigger in France.  I believe that they returned to work the  next day, however. Now for the good news:…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
Read More

Working hours again: UK and US

The recent IFS report on the gender pay gap attracted huge coverage - top of the news, and all over the front pages.  It's the first of a series the Institute is doing on this issue, which is excellent news;  I look forward to seeing what comes out. The report does an excellent job in distinguishing between the various types of wage gap, in two major respects.  First, it shows the need to distinguish different groups according to the hours they work.  Obviously, the hourly difference is far smaller than the weekly difference, since women work fewer hours: it shrinks from 36% to 19%.  It shrinks further, to 16%, for…
Read More

Kevin Roberts and vertical ambition

I doubt that I share much of a worldview with Kevin Roberts, who recently resigned as chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi.  That's a powerful position - but S&S is now owned by a parent company, Publicis, and they effectively showed him the door after his remarks about the low numbers of women in senior positions in advertising being 'not a problem'.  (All six of the big advertising agencies have male CEOs.)  'The fucking debate is all over' was apparently his verdict. "Kevin Roberts has an international reputation for an uncompromisingly positive, inspirational leadership style, and an ability to generate ideas and emotional connections that accelerate extraordinary value" is how Kevin's…
Read More

Jazz gigs and stag parties: fresh approaches to long hours

In the past week I've had two conversations closely related to the Paula Principle, and to each other, in rather unlikely settings.   Both dealt with the issue of whether professional occupations such as lawyers and surveyors needed to require people to work 12-14 hours days in order to make progress up the professional ladder. Nigel plays baritone sax in the the band where I also play (the South London Jazz Orchestra, since you ask, see www.slcm.org.uk).   We were waiting for our gig to kick off in a pub in Tulse Hill on a rather damp Sunday afternoon recently, and so started chatting about non-band things.   Nigel has…
Read More

Teamwork

I've been reading a couple of stimulating books which deal, from very different angles, with the future of work.  Martin Ford's The Rise of the Robots sets out some pretty scary pointers to just how much work might be handed over to automated processes: not just routine manual processes but quite a lot of what we now consider to be intellectual and non-routine.  He suggests that we may be heading quickly towards the scenario sketched out by Keynes, where people will work far far fewer hours - the difference being that in the modern version there will be colossal inequalities as the benefits of automation will go to a very small…
Read More

Womenomics

I confess I'd never heard of womenomics before, but an interesting piece in last weekend's Financial Times put me right. It's based on a profile of Miho Otani, a Japanese woman who commands a 3500 tonne warship.  She is intended to represent Prime Minister Abe's drive to have women occupy 30% of the country's management position by 2020 .  ('Abenomics' was coined to describe the PM's economic strategy, hence the fellow-neologism.)  The initiative, apparently, stands little chance of reaching its target. In a way Japan, with Korea, encapsulates the Paula Principle more than any other country.  Japanese women are highly educated.  Young Japanese women enter the labour market in large…
Read More

Mustang

We went on Saturday to the Turkish film Mustang , which tracks the passage from childhood of five girls.  The girls live with their uncle and grandmother (the parents have disappeared, perhaps dead) in quite a rural area, 1000 km from Istanbul.  In the first phase of the film they are carefree and vivacious, larking around with boys at the end of school term and chattering non-stop with each other. Gradually the tenor of the film changes, as the older people assert traditional cultural mores.  Two of the girls are married off to boys they only meet on the day of the betrothal.  The others resist in various ways, but the house…
Read More

The Econocrats

The previous post started with Trollope's commentary on how the finance system worked in the C19.  In a wholly unplanned segue, this one deals with how economics is taught and practised now.  To their immense credit, a group of students have got together to produce a detailed, evidence-based critique of the discipline: The Econocracy: the perils of leaving economics to the experts. Rethinking Economics is a movement which questions the assumptions on which most contemporary economics courses are based.  To be more precise, it challenges the fact that most economics courses never question their own, neo-classical, assumptions: that people behave as rational knowledgeable agents seeking to optimise their own advantage, and…
Read More

Trollope, crossover and convergence

I've just read a fascinating piece by John Pemberton in the London Review of Books, on Anthony Trollope and his attitude to women writers.  I remember my mother being an avid reader of Trollope, but I didn't pay much attention to him until she pointed out to me that The Way We Live Now had a lot to say about finance capitalism and how the financial sector operated (this was about 20 years ago, after Big Bang but before Big Crash).  The mix of unreliable dealings, systemic instability and prejudice still seems fairly applicable to how the sector works. Pemberton makes two major points which relate directly to the Paula Principle.  The…
Read More

Equal Pay Day; and an appeal

Yesterday the Fawcett Society reminded us: "Thursday 10th November 2016 is Equal Pay Day (EPD). This means that women are effectively working for free from 10th November to the end of the calendar year, because on average they earn less than men. EPD is calculated using the mean full time gender pay gap , which is currently 13.9%." In Paris there were reports that a day earlier women downed tools for a couple of hours at the end of the day, reflecting the fact that the pay gap is a fraction bigger in France.  I believe that they returned to work the  next day, however. Now for the good news:…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
Read More

Working hours again: UK and US

The recent IFS report on the gender pay gap attracted huge coverage - top of the news, and all over the front pages.  It's the first of a series the Institute is doing on this issue, which is excellent news;  I look forward to seeing what comes out. The report does an excellent job in distinguishing between the various types of wage gap, in two major respects.  First, it shows the need to distinguish different groups according to the hours they work.  Obviously, the hourly difference is far smaller than the weekly difference, since women work fewer hours: it shrinks from 36% to 19%.  It shrinks further, to 16%, for…
Read More

Kevin Roberts and vertical ambition

I doubt that I share much of a worldview with Kevin Roberts, who recently resigned as chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi.  That's a powerful position - but S&S is now owned by a parent company, Publicis, and they effectively showed him the door after his remarks about the low numbers of women in senior positions in advertising being 'not a problem'.  (All six of the big advertising agencies have male CEOs.)  'The fucking debate is all over' was apparently his verdict. "Kevin Roberts has an international reputation for an uncompromisingly positive, inspirational leadership style, and an ability to generate ideas and emotional connections that accelerate extraordinary value" is how Kevin's…
Read More

Jazz gigs and stag parties: fresh approaches to long hours

In the past week I've had two conversations closely related to the Paula Principle, and to each other, in rather unlikely settings.   Both dealt with the issue of whether professional occupations such as lawyers and surveyors needed to require people to work 12-14 hours days in order to make progress up the professional ladder. Nigel plays baritone sax in the the band where I also play (the South London Jazz Orchestra, since you ask, see www.slcm.org.uk).   We were waiting for our gig to kick off in a pub in Tulse Hill on a rather damp Sunday afternoon recently, and so started chatting about non-band things.   Nigel has…
Read More

Teamwork

I've been reading a couple of stimulating books which deal, from very different angles, with the future of work.  Martin Ford's The Rise of the Robots sets out some pretty scary pointers to just how much work might be handed over to automated processes: not just routine manual processes but quite a lot of what we now consider to be intellectual and non-routine.  He suggests that we may be heading quickly towards the scenario sketched out by Keynes, where people will work far far fewer hours - the difference being that in the modern version there will be colossal inequalities as the benefits of automation will go to a very small…
Read More

Womenomics

I confess I'd never heard of womenomics before, but an interesting piece in last weekend's Financial Times put me right. It's based on a profile of Miho Otani, a Japanese woman who commands a 3500 tonne warship.  She is intended to represent Prime Minister Abe's drive to have women occupy 30% of the country's management position by 2020 .  ('Abenomics' was coined to describe the PM's economic strategy, hence the fellow-neologism.)  The initiative, apparently, stands little chance of reaching its target. In a way Japan, with Korea, encapsulates the Paula Principle more than any other country.  Japanese women are highly educated.  Young Japanese women enter the labour market in large…
Read More

Mustang

We went on Saturday to the Turkish film Mustang , which tracks the passage from childhood of five girls.  The girls live with their uncle and grandmother (the parents have disappeared, perhaps dead) in quite a rural area, 1000 km from Istanbul.  In the first phase of the film they are carefree and vivacious, larking around with boys at the end of school term and chattering non-stop with each other. Gradually the tenor of the film changes, as the older people assert traditional cultural mores.  Two of the girls are married off to boys they only meet on the day of the betrothal.  The others resist in various ways, but the house…
Read More

The Econocrats

The previous post started with Trollope's commentary on how the finance system worked in the C19.  In a wholly unplanned segue, this one deals with how economics is taught and practised now.  To their immense credit, a group of students have got together to produce a detailed, evidence-based critique of the discipline: The Econocracy: the perils of leaving economics to the experts. Rethinking Economics is a movement which questions the assumptions on which most contemporary economics courses are based.  To be more precise, it challenges the fact that most economics courses never question their own, neo-classical, assumptions: that people behave as rational knowledgeable agents seeking to optimise their own advantage, and…
Read More

Trollope, crossover and convergence

I've just read a fascinating piece by John Pemberton in the London Review of Books, on Anthony Trollope and his attitude to women writers.  I remember my mother being an avid reader of Trollope, but I didn't pay much attention to him until she pointed out to me that The Way We Live Now had a lot to say about finance capitalism and how the financial sector operated (this was about 20 years ago, after Big Bang but before Big Crash).  The mix of unreliable dealings, systemic instability and prejudice still seems fairly applicable to how the sector works. Pemberton makes two major points which relate directly to the Paula Principle.  The…
Read More

Equal Pay Day; and an appeal

Yesterday the Fawcett Society reminded us: "Thursday 10th November 2016 is Equal Pay Day (EPD). This means that women are effectively working for free from 10th November to the end of the calendar year, because on average they earn less than men. EPD is calculated using the mean full time gender pay gap , which is currently 13.9%." In Paris there were reports that a day earlier women downed tools for a couple of hours at the end of the day, reflecting the fact that the pay gap is a fraction bigger in France.  I believe that they returned to work the  next day, however. Now for the good news:…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
Read More

Working hours again: UK and US

The recent IFS report on the gender pay gap attracted huge coverage - top of the news, and all over the front pages.  It's the first of a series the Institute is doing on this issue, which is excellent news;  I look forward to seeing what comes out. The report does an excellent job in distinguishing between the various types of wage gap, in two major respects.  First, it shows the need to distinguish different groups according to the hours they work.  Obviously, the hourly difference is far smaller than the weekly difference, since women work fewer hours: it shrinks from 36% to 19%.  It shrinks further, to 16%, for…
Read More

Kevin Roberts and vertical ambition

I doubt that I share much of a worldview with Kevin Roberts, who recently resigned as chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi.  That's a powerful position - but S&S is now owned by a parent company, Publicis, and they effectively showed him the door after his remarks about the low numbers of women in senior positions in advertising being 'not a problem'.  (All six of the big advertising agencies have male CEOs.)  'The fucking debate is all over' was apparently his verdict. "Kevin Roberts has an international reputation for an uncompromisingly positive, inspirational leadership style, and an ability to generate ideas and emotional connections that accelerate extraordinary value" is how Kevin's…
Read More

Jazz gigs and stag parties: fresh approaches to long hours

In the past week I've had two conversations closely related to the Paula Principle, and to each other, in rather unlikely settings.   Both dealt with the issue of whether professional occupations such as lawyers and surveyors needed to require people to work 12-14 hours days in order to make progress up the professional ladder. Nigel plays baritone sax in the the band where I also play (the South London Jazz Orchestra, since you ask, see www.slcm.org.uk).   We were waiting for our gig to kick off in a pub in Tulse Hill on a rather damp Sunday afternoon recently, and so started chatting about non-band things.   Nigel has…
Read More

Teamwork

I've been reading a couple of stimulating books which deal, from very different angles, with the future of work.  Martin Ford's The Rise of the Robots sets out some pretty scary pointers to just how much work might be handed over to automated processes: not just routine manual processes but quite a lot of what we now consider to be intellectual and non-routine.  He suggests that we may be heading quickly towards the scenario sketched out by Keynes, where people will work far far fewer hours - the difference being that in the modern version there will be colossal inequalities as the benefits of automation will go to a very small…
Read More

Womenomics

I confess I'd never heard of womenomics before, but an interesting piece in last weekend's Financial Times put me right. It's based on a profile of Miho Otani, a Japanese woman who commands a 3500 tonne warship.  She is intended to represent Prime Minister Abe's drive to have women occupy 30% of the country's management position by 2020 .  ('Abenomics' was coined to describe the PM's economic strategy, hence the fellow-neologism.)  The initiative, apparently, stands little chance of reaching its target. In a way Japan, with Korea, encapsulates the Paula Principle more than any other country.  Japanese women are highly educated.  Young Japanese women enter the labour market in large…
Read More

Mustang

We went on Saturday to the Turkish film Mustang , which tracks the passage from childhood of five girls.  The girls live with their uncle and grandmother (the parents have disappeared, perhaps dead) in quite a rural area, 1000 km from Istanbul.  In the first phase of the film they are carefree and vivacious, larking around with boys at the end of school term and chattering non-stop with each other. Gradually the tenor of the film changes, as the older people assert traditional cultural mores.  Two of the girls are married off to boys they only meet on the day of the betrothal.  The others resist in various ways, but the house…
Read More