Work like a man….

What do      Theresa May  and Grayson Perry  have in common? Maybe not very much.  But on Desert Island Discs  recently, May chose Walk Like A  Man as one of her numbers.  She hurriedly added that much though she swings along to the song, she did not mean it as a message to any ambitious females, who should walk their own walk. Recently in the New Statesman Perry asks, how did the straight, white man get the keys to the kingdom, and when will he give them back?  He goes for 'Default Man' as the label for this, saucily explaining his reasons :  "I like the word 'default', for not only does it…
Read More

Portia and Paula

We went last week to the Almeida Theatre's extraordinary production of Merchant of Venice.  It's set in Las Vegas, with gaming machines and glitz everywhere, and intermittent appearances from an Elvis imitator.    Portia is a dizzy blonde on 6-inch heels, and the competition to win her  hand is pitched as a TV reality show.  The accents are full-on American, except for Shylock who speaks with a thick German intonation, initially from behind a broad business desk. For the first three acts I enjoyed the imagination that had gone into it and laughed at the jokes embedded into the glitz, but wondered how they were going to pull it into meaningful…
Read More

Flexitime

I was at a City Event yesterday:  capital letters for the Power & Part-time Top Fifty awards.  It was bright, cheerful and positive as the achievements were recognised of 43 women and 7 men who had demonstrably successful careers on a part-time basis.  Many of them were on 4-day weeks, but quite a few work on three days or even less.  One man is on a 9-day fortnight, which sounds to me as if  'part-time' is a label which stuck only precariously to him. I had several interesting conversations with winners or their sponsors, who all had good stories to tell.  I asked them (as per previous PP posts) whether…
Read More

Silver lining: is now the opportunity to change the standing of part-time work?

We know that the 'miracle' of the UK labour market reflects trends that most of us are not happy with: people are working for lower wages and in greater insecurity.   On top of this, they are working fewer hours, so incomes are dropping, and people's uncertainty about their employment depresses their wellbeing. The table below, from Craig Holmes' contribution to a most interesting set of papers from the Policy Network,  shows that 'self-employment' has grown considerably faster for men than women, and we know that this often disguises un- or under-employment.  We also know that underemployment generally is growing, where women and men want to longer hours but can't…
Read More

Why doesn’t women’s work figure in literature?

  We went to the Design Museum, mainly to see my daughter who works there, but also to look at the exhibition on Women, Fashion & Power.  This cigarette card caught my eye because of the title at the bottom (rather blurred, I'm afraid):  "VAD woman'.    How fashionable you think her uniform is, and what it says about her power, is not the question here.  I came across Voluntary Aid Detachments when I read Dorothy Whipple's novel High Wages.  It's one of the very few books I've come across which deals more than just fleetingly with women's paid work.  High Wages  was first published in 1930, and has now been smartly reprinted by…
Read More

Working Women’s Charter

Exactly 40 years A Working Women's Charter was published.   You can see a good TedX talk on it by Pamela Cox.   On Saturday, a group which admirably aims to provide policy debates with a historical perspective, History  & Policy, ran a meeting to reflect on  how many  of the original Charter's demands had been met, and what a new Charter might look like. The first Charter's 10 demands were (in abbreviated form - I looked for an online version of the more detailed list, but in vain): Equal pay Equal occupational opportunities Equal access to education and training Equal working conditions Equal legal rights Free childcare More paid…
Read More

Imposter Syndrome

The TV series Borgen is a rich source of material for the Paula Principle.  We've just finished watching the first series (yes, I know, behind the times).  Its principal character, Birgitte Nyborg, is leader of the Moderate party going into the Danish elections.   She is married to an economics lecturer, with two school-age children, and one recurrent theme is her struggle to get home in time to see the children (and her husband). One episode illustrates in a fleeting moment the imposter syndrome - the tendency of women (more than men) to think that they are not qualified to have got to where they are.  On the eve of the…
Read More

Low pay, part-time and job satisfaction

We seem to be getting a flurry of useful reports just now.  Last week it was the turn of the CIPD to publish very solid one on Pay progression, focussing on the barriers for the low-paid to moving up the ladder.  It has a very strong Foreword from Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman (sic) of the John Lewis Partnership.  He argues that our low pay reflects a productivity problem, and notes how many low-paid people have no clear paths to show them how they might progress. The CIPD use the three  categories of low-pid worker which were developed originally by the Resolution Foundation, and which have proved themselves sound: - Stuck are those who…
Read More

Ageing and skills: how and why we are losing out

A powerful new report, The Missing Million, has just been published by PRIME, the Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise.  It makes the case for enabling far more older people to stay in work.  Many elements of the case are quite familiar:  the challenge  to us all of an ageing population; the need for individuals to assure themselves of a decent income in old age;  the intrinsic value of work, e.g. in the social contacts it brings;  and so on.  But there is a wealth of factual analysis and insights to back it up, some of them quite surprising (to me at least).  Apparently people in the UK on average believe that…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Work like a man….

What do      Theresa May  and Grayson Perry  have in common? Maybe not very much.  But on Desert Island Discs  recently, May chose Walk Like A  Man as one of her numbers.  She hurriedly added that much though she swings along to the song, she did not mean it as a message to any ambitious females, who should walk their own walk. Recently in the New Statesman Perry asks, how did the straight, white man get the keys to the kingdom, and when will he give them back?  He goes for 'Default Man' as the label for this, saucily explaining his reasons :  "I like the word 'default', for not only does it…
Read More

Portia and Paula

We went last week to the Almeida Theatre's extraordinary production of Merchant of Venice.  It's set in Las Vegas, with gaming machines and glitz everywhere, and intermittent appearances from an Elvis imitator.    Portia is a dizzy blonde on 6-inch heels, and the competition to win her  hand is pitched as a TV reality show.  The accents are full-on American, except for Shylock who speaks with a thick German intonation, initially from behind a broad business desk. For the first three acts I enjoyed the imagination that had gone into it and laughed at the jokes embedded into the glitz, but wondered how they were going to pull it into meaningful…
Read More

Flexitime

I was at a City Event yesterday:  capital letters for the Power & Part-time Top Fifty awards.  It was bright, cheerful and positive as the achievements were recognised of 43 women and 7 men who had demonstrably successful careers on a part-time basis.  Many of them were on 4-day weeks, but quite a few work on three days or even less.  One man is on a 9-day fortnight, which sounds to me as if  'part-time' is a label which stuck only precariously to him. I had several interesting conversations with winners or their sponsors, who all had good stories to tell.  I asked them (as per previous PP posts) whether…
Read More

Silver lining: is now the opportunity to change the standing of part-time work?

We know that the 'miracle' of the UK labour market reflects trends that most of us are not happy with: people are working for lower wages and in greater insecurity.   On top of this, they are working fewer hours, so incomes are dropping, and people's uncertainty about their employment depresses their wellbeing. The table below, from Craig Holmes' contribution to a most interesting set of papers from the Policy Network,  shows that 'self-employment' has grown considerably faster for men than women, and we know that this often disguises un- or under-employment.  We also know that underemployment generally is growing, where women and men want to longer hours but can't…
Read More

Why doesn’t women’s work figure in literature?

  We went to the Design Museum, mainly to see my daughter who works there, but also to look at the exhibition on Women, Fashion & Power.  This cigarette card caught my eye because of the title at the bottom (rather blurred, I'm afraid):  "VAD woman'.    How fashionable you think her uniform is, and what it says about her power, is not the question here.  I came across Voluntary Aid Detachments when I read Dorothy Whipple's novel High Wages.  It's one of the very few books I've come across which deals more than just fleetingly with women's paid work.  High Wages  was first published in 1930, and has now been smartly reprinted by…
Read More

Working Women’s Charter

Exactly 40 years A Working Women's Charter was published.   You can see a good TedX talk on it by Pamela Cox.   On Saturday, a group which admirably aims to provide policy debates with a historical perspective, History  & Policy, ran a meeting to reflect on  how many  of the original Charter's demands had been met, and what a new Charter might look like. The first Charter's 10 demands were (in abbreviated form - I looked for an online version of the more detailed list, but in vain): Equal pay Equal occupational opportunities Equal access to education and training Equal working conditions Equal legal rights Free childcare More paid…
Read More

Imposter Syndrome

The TV series Borgen is a rich source of material for the Paula Principle.  We've just finished watching the first series (yes, I know, behind the times).  Its principal character, Birgitte Nyborg, is leader of the Moderate party going into the Danish elections.   She is married to an economics lecturer, with two school-age children, and one recurrent theme is her struggle to get home in time to see the children (and her husband). One episode illustrates in a fleeting moment the imposter syndrome - the tendency of women (more than men) to think that they are not qualified to have got to where they are.  On the eve of the…
Read More

Low pay, part-time and job satisfaction

We seem to be getting a flurry of useful reports just now.  Last week it was the turn of the CIPD to publish very solid one on Pay progression, focussing on the barriers for the low-paid to moving up the ladder.  It has a very strong Foreword from Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman (sic) of the John Lewis Partnership.  He argues that our low pay reflects a productivity problem, and notes how many low-paid people have no clear paths to show them how they might progress. The CIPD use the three  categories of low-pid worker which were developed originally by the Resolution Foundation, and which have proved themselves sound: - Stuck are those who…
Read More

Ageing and skills: how and why we are losing out

A powerful new report, The Missing Million, has just been published by PRIME, the Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise.  It makes the case for enabling far more older people to stay in work.  Many elements of the case are quite familiar:  the challenge  to us all of an ageing population; the need for individuals to assure themselves of a decent income in old age;  the intrinsic value of work, e.g. in the social contacts it brings;  and so on.  But there is a wealth of factual analysis and insights to back it up, some of them quite surprising (to me at least).  Apparently people in the UK on average believe that…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Work like a man….

What do      Theresa May  and Grayson Perry  have in common? Maybe not very much.  But on Desert Island Discs  recently, May chose Walk Like A  Man as one of her numbers.  She hurriedly added that much though she swings along to the song, she did not mean it as a message to any ambitious females, who should walk their own walk. Recently in the New Statesman Perry asks, how did the straight, white man get the keys to the kingdom, and when will he give them back?  He goes for 'Default Man' as the label for this, saucily explaining his reasons :  "I like the word 'default', for not only does it…
Read More

Portia and Paula

We went last week to the Almeida Theatre's extraordinary production of Merchant of Venice.  It's set in Las Vegas, with gaming machines and glitz everywhere, and intermittent appearances from an Elvis imitator.    Portia is a dizzy blonde on 6-inch heels, and the competition to win her  hand is pitched as a TV reality show.  The accents are full-on American, except for Shylock who speaks with a thick German intonation, initially from behind a broad business desk. For the first three acts I enjoyed the imagination that had gone into it and laughed at the jokes embedded into the glitz, but wondered how they were going to pull it into meaningful…
Read More

Flexitime

I was at a City Event yesterday:  capital letters for the Power & Part-time Top Fifty awards.  It was bright, cheerful and positive as the achievements were recognised of 43 women and 7 men who had demonstrably successful careers on a part-time basis.  Many of them were on 4-day weeks, but quite a few work on three days or even less.  One man is on a 9-day fortnight, which sounds to me as if  'part-time' is a label which stuck only precariously to him. I had several interesting conversations with winners or their sponsors, who all had good stories to tell.  I asked them (as per previous PP posts) whether…
Read More

Silver lining: is now the opportunity to change the standing of part-time work?

We know that the 'miracle' of the UK labour market reflects trends that most of us are not happy with: people are working for lower wages and in greater insecurity.   On top of this, they are working fewer hours, so incomes are dropping, and people's uncertainty about their employment depresses their wellbeing. The table below, from Craig Holmes' contribution to a most interesting set of papers from the Policy Network,  shows that 'self-employment' has grown considerably faster for men than women, and we know that this often disguises un- or under-employment.  We also know that underemployment generally is growing, where women and men want to longer hours but can't…
Read More

Why doesn’t women’s work figure in literature?

  We went to the Design Museum, mainly to see my daughter who works there, but also to look at the exhibition on Women, Fashion & Power.  This cigarette card caught my eye because of the title at the bottom (rather blurred, I'm afraid):  "VAD woman'.    How fashionable you think her uniform is, and what it says about her power, is not the question here.  I came across Voluntary Aid Detachments when I read Dorothy Whipple's novel High Wages.  It's one of the very few books I've come across which deals more than just fleetingly with women's paid work.  High Wages  was first published in 1930, and has now been smartly reprinted by…
Read More

Working Women’s Charter

Exactly 40 years A Working Women's Charter was published.   You can see a good TedX talk on it by Pamela Cox.   On Saturday, a group which admirably aims to provide policy debates with a historical perspective, History  & Policy, ran a meeting to reflect on  how many  of the original Charter's demands had been met, and what a new Charter might look like. The first Charter's 10 demands were (in abbreviated form - I looked for an online version of the more detailed list, but in vain): Equal pay Equal occupational opportunities Equal access to education and training Equal working conditions Equal legal rights Free childcare More paid…
Read More

Imposter Syndrome

The TV series Borgen is a rich source of material for the Paula Principle.  We've just finished watching the first series (yes, I know, behind the times).  Its principal character, Birgitte Nyborg, is leader of the Moderate party going into the Danish elections.   She is married to an economics lecturer, with two school-age children, and one recurrent theme is her struggle to get home in time to see the children (and her husband). One episode illustrates in a fleeting moment the imposter syndrome - the tendency of women (more than men) to think that they are not qualified to have got to where they are.  On the eve of the…
Read More

Low pay, part-time and job satisfaction

We seem to be getting a flurry of useful reports just now.  Last week it was the turn of the CIPD to publish very solid one on Pay progression, focussing on the barriers for the low-paid to moving up the ladder.  It has a very strong Foreword from Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman (sic) of the John Lewis Partnership.  He argues that our low pay reflects a productivity problem, and notes how many low-paid people have no clear paths to show them how they might progress. The CIPD use the three  categories of low-pid worker which were developed originally by the Resolution Foundation, and which have proved themselves sound: - Stuck are those who…
Read More

Ageing and skills: how and why we are losing out

A powerful new report, The Missing Million, has just been published by PRIME, the Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise.  It makes the case for enabling far more older people to stay in work.  Many elements of the case are quite familiar:  the challenge  to us all of an ageing population; the need for individuals to assure themselves of a decent income in old age;  the intrinsic value of work, e.g. in the social contacts it brings;  and so on.  But there is a wealth of factual analysis and insights to back it up, some of them quite surprising (to me at least).  Apparently people in the UK on average believe that…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Work like a man….

What do      Theresa May  and Grayson Perry  have in common? Maybe not very much.  But on Desert Island Discs  recently, May chose Walk Like A  Man as one of her numbers.  She hurriedly added that much though she swings along to the song, she did not mean it as a message to any ambitious females, who should walk their own walk. Recently in the New Statesman Perry asks, how did the straight, white man get the keys to the kingdom, and when will he give them back?  He goes for 'Default Man' as the label for this, saucily explaining his reasons :  "I like the word 'default', for not only does it…
Read More

Portia and Paula

We went last week to the Almeida Theatre's extraordinary production of Merchant of Venice.  It's set in Las Vegas, with gaming machines and glitz everywhere, and intermittent appearances from an Elvis imitator.    Portia is a dizzy blonde on 6-inch heels, and the competition to win her  hand is pitched as a TV reality show.  The accents are full-on American, except for Shylock who speaks with a thick German intonation, initially from behind a broad business desk. For the first three acts I enjoyed the imagination that had gone into it and laughed at the jokes embedded into the glitz, but wondered how they were going to pull it into meaningful…
Read More

Flexitime

I was at a City Event yesterday:  capital letters for the Power & Part-time Top Fifty awards.  It was bright, cheerful and positive as the achievements were recognised of 43 women and 7 men who had demonstrably successful careers on a part-time basis.  Many of them were on 4-day weeks, but quite a few work on three days or even less.  One man is on a 9-day fortnight, which sounds to me as if  'part-time' is a label which stuck only precariously to him. I had several interesting conversations with winners or their sponsors, who all had good stories to tell.  I asked them (as per previous PP posts) whether…
Read More

Silver lining: is now the opportunity to change the standing of part-time work?

We know that the 'miracle' of the UK labour market reflects trends that most of us are not happy with: people are working for lower wages and in greater insecurity.   On top of this, they are working fewer hours, so incomes are dropping, and people's uncertainty about their employment depresses their wellbeing. The table below, from Craig Holmes' contribution to a most interesting set of papers from the Policy Network,  shows that 'self-employment' has grown considerably faster for men than women, and we know that this often disguises un- or under-employment.  We also know that underemployment generally is growing, where women and men want to longer hours but can't…
Read More

Why doesn’t women’s work figure in literature?

  We went to the Design Museum, mainly to see my daughter who works there, but also to look at the exhibition on Women, Fashion & Power.  This cigarette card caught my eye because of the title at the bottom (rather blurred, I'm afraid):  "VAD woman'.    How fashionable you think her uniform is, and what it says about her power, is not the question here.  I came across Voluntary Aid Detachments when I read Dorothy Whipple's novel High Wages.  It's one of the very few books I've come across which deals more than just fleetingly with women's paid work.  High Wages  was first published in 1930, and has now been smartly reprinted by…
Read More

Working Women’s Charter

Exactly 40 years A Working Women's Charter was published.   You can see a good TedX talk on it by Pamela Cox.   On Saturday, a group which admirably aims to provide policy debates with a historical perspective, History  & Policy, ran a meeting to reflect on  how many  of the original Charter's demands had been met, and what a new Charter might look like. The first Charter's 10 demands were (in abbreviated form - I looked for an online version of the more detailed list, but in vain): Equal pay Equal occupational opportunities Equal access to education and training Equal working conditions Equal legal rights Free childcare More paid…
Read More

Imposter Syndrome

The TV series Borgen is a rich source of material for the Paula Principle.  We've just finished watching the first series (yes, I know, behind the times).  Its principal character, Birgitte Nyborg, is leader of the Moderate party going into the Danish elections.   She is married to an economics lecturer, with two school-age children, and one recurrent theme is her struggle to get home in time to see the children (and her husband). One episode illustrates in a fleeting moment the imposter syndrome - the tendency of women (more than men) to think that they are not qualified to have got to where they are.  On the eve of the…
Read More

Low pay, part-time and job satisfaction

We seem to be getting a flurry of useful reports just now.  Last week it was the turn of the CIPD to publish very solid one on Pay progression, focussing on the barriers for the low-paid to moving up the ladder.  It has a very strong Foreword from Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman (sic) of the John Lewis Partnership.  He argues that our low pay reflects a productivity problem, and notes how many low-paid people have no clear paths to show them how they might progress. The CIPD use the three  categories of low-pid worker which were developed originally by the Resolution Foundation, and which have proved themselves sound: - Stuck are those who…
Read More

Ageing and skills: how and why we are losing out

A powerful new report, The Missing Million, has just been published by PRIME, the Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise.  It makes the case for enabling far more older people to stay in work.  Many elements of the case are quite familiar:  the challenge  to us all of an ageing population; the need for individuals to assure themselves of a decent income in old age;  the intrinsic value of work, e.g. in the social contacts it brings;  and so on.  But there is a wealth of factual analysis and insights to back it up, some of them quite surprising (to me at least).  Apparently people in the UK on average believe that…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Work like a man….

What do      Theresa May  and Grayson Perry  have in common? Maybe not very much.  But on Desert Island Discs  recently, May chose Walk Like A  Man as one of her numbers.  She hurriedly added that much though she swings along to the song, she did not mean it as a message to any ambitious females, who should walk their own walk. Recently in the New Statesman Perry asks, how did the straight, white man get the keys to the kingdom, and when will he give them back?  He goes for 'Default Man' as the label for this, saucily explaining his reasons :  "I like the word 'default', for not only does it…
Read More

Portia and Paula

We went last week to the Almeida Theatre's extraordinary production of Merchant of Venice.  It's set in Las Vegas, with gaming machines and glitz everywhere, and intermittent appearances from an Elvis imitator.    Portia is a dizzy blonde on 6-inch heels, and the competition to win her  hand is pitched as a TV reality show.  The accents are full-on American, except for Shylock who speaks with a thick German intonation, initially from behind a broad business desk. For the first three acts I enjoyed the imagination that had gone into it and laughed at the jokes embedded into the glitz, but wondered how they were going to pull it into meaningful…
Read More

Flexitime

I was at a City Event yesterday:  capital letters for the Power & Part-time Top Fifty awards.  It was bright, cheerful and positive as the achievements were recognised of 43 women and 7 men who had demonstrably successful careers on a part-time basis.  Many of them were on 4-day weeks, but quite a few work on three days or even less.  One man is on a 9-day fortnight, which sounds to me as if  'part-time' is a label which stuck only precariously to him. I had several interesting conversations with winners or their sponsors, who all had good stories to tell.  I asked them (as per previous PP posts) whether…
Read More

Silver lining: is now the opportunity to change the standing of part-time work?

We know that the 'miracle' of the UK labour market reflects trends that most of us are not happy with: people are working for lower wages and in greater insecurity.   On top of this, they are working fewer hours, so incomes are dropping, and people's uncertainty about their employment depresses their wellbeing. The table below, from Craig Holmes' contribution to a most interesting set of papers from the Policy Network,  shows that 'self-employment' has grown considerably faster for men than women, and we know that this often disguises un- or under-employment.  We also know that underemployment generally is growing, where women and men want to longer hours but can't…
Read More

Why doesn’t women’s work figure in literature?

  We went to the Design Museum, mainly to see my daughter who works there, but also to look at the exhibition on Women, Fashion & Power.  This cigarette card caught my eye because of the title at the bottom (rather blurred, I'm afraid):  "VAD woman'.    How fashionable you think her uniform is, and what it says about her power, is not the question here.  I came across Voluntary Aid Detachments when I read Dorothy Whipple's novel High Wages.  It's one of the very few books I've come across which deals more than just fleetingly with women's paid work.  High Wages  was first published in 1930, and has now been smartly reprinted by…
Read More

Working Women’s Charter

Exactly 40 years A Working Women's Charter was published.   You can see a good TedX talk on it by Pamela Cox.   On Saturday, a group which admirably aims to provide policy debates with a historical perspective, History  & Policy, ran a meeting to reflect on  how many  of the original Charter's demands had been met, and what a new Charter might look like. The first Charter's 10 demands were (in abbreviated form - I looked for an online version of the more detailed list, but in vain): Equal pay Equal occupational opportunities Equal access to education and training Equal working conditions Equal legal rights Free childcare More paid…
Read More

Imposter Syndrome

The TV series Borgen is a rich source of material for the Paula Principle.  We've just finished watching the first series (yes, I know, behind the times).  Its principal character, Birgitte Nyborg, is leader of the Moderate party going into the Danish elections.   She is married to an economics lecturer, with two school-age children, and one recurrent theme is her struggle to get home in time to see the children (and her husband). One episode illustrates in a fleeting moment the imposter syndrome - the tendency of women (more than men) to think that they are not qualified to have got to where they are.  On the eve of the…
Read More

Low pay, part-time and job satisfaction

We seem to be getting a flurry of useful reports just now.  Last week it was the turn of the CIPD to publish very solid one on Pay progression, focussing on the barriers for the low-paid to moving up the ladder.  It has a very strong Foreword from Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman (sic) of the John Lewis Partnership.  He argues that our low pay reflects a productivity problem, and notes how many low-paid people have no clear paths to show them how they might progress. The CIPD use the three  categories of low-pid worker which were developed originally by the Resolution Foundation, and which have proved themselves sound: - Stuck are those who…
Read More

Ageing and skills: how and why we are losing out

A powerful new report, The Missing Million, has just been published by PRIME, the Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise.  It makes the case for enabling far more older people to stay in work.  Many elements of the case are quite familiar:  the challenge  to us all of an ageing population; the need for individuals to assure themselves of a decent income in old age;  the intrinsic value of work, e.g. in the social contacts it brings;  and so on.  But there is a wealth of factual analysis and insights to back it up, some of them quite surprising (to me at least).  Apparently people in the UK on average believe that…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Work like a man….

What do      Theresa May  and Grayson Perry  have in common? Maybe not very much.  But on Desert Island Discs  recently, May chose Walk Like A  Man as one of her numbers.  She hurriedly added that much though she swings along to the song, she did not mean it as a message to any ambitious females, who should walk their own walk. Recently in the New Statesman Perry asks, how did the straight, white man get the keys to the kingdom, and when will he give them back?  He goes for 'Default Man' as the label for this, saucily explaining his reasons :  "I like the word 'default', for not only does it…
Read More

Portia and Paula

We went last week to the Almeida Theatre's extraordinary production of Merchant of Venice.  It's set in Las Vegas, with gaming machines and glitz everywhere, and intermittent appearances from an Elvis imitator.    Portia is a dizzy blonde on 6-inch heels, and the competition to win her  hand is pitched as a TV reality show.  The accents are full-on American, except for Shylock who speaks with a thick German intonation, initially from behind a broad business desk. For the first three acts I enjoyed the imagination that had gone into it and laughed at the jokes embedded into the glitz, but wondered how they were going to pull it into meaningful…
Read More

Flexitime

I was at a City Event yesterday:  capital letters for the Power & Part-time Top Fifty awards.  It was bright, cheerful and positive as the achievements were recognised of 43 women and 7 men who had demonstrably successful careers on a part-time basis.  Many of them were on 4-day weeks, but quite a few work on three days or even less.  One man is on a 9-day fortnight, which sounds to me as if  'part-time' is a label which stuck only precariously to him. I had several interesting conversations with winners or their sponsors, who all had good stories to tell.  I asked them (as per previous PP posts) whether…
Read More

Silver lining: is now the opportunity to change the standing of part-time work?

We know that the 'miracle' of the UK labour market reflects trends that most of us are not happy with: people are working for lower wages and in greater insecurity.   On top of this, they are working fewer hours, so incomes are dropping, and people's uncertainty about their employment depresses their wellbeing. The table below, from Craig Holmes' contribution to a most interesting set of papers from the Policy Network,  shows that 'self-employment' has grown considerably faster for men than women, and we know that this often disguises un- or under-employment.  We also know that underemployment generally is growing, where women and men want to longer hours but can't…
Read More

Why doesn’t women’s work figure in literature?

  We went to the Design Museum, mainly to see my daughter who works there, but also to look at the exhibition on Women, Fashion & Power.  This cigarette card caught my eye because of the title at the bottom (rather blurred, I'm afraid):  "VAD woman'.    How fashionable you think her uniform is, and what it says about her power, is not the question here.  I came across Voluntary Aid Detachments when I read Dorothy Whipple's novel High Wages.  It's one of the very few books I've come across which deals more than just fleetingly with women's paid work.  High Wages  was first published in 1930, and has now been smartly reprinted by…
Read More

Working Women’s Charter

Exactly 40 years A Working Women's Charter was published.   You can see a good TedX talk on it by Pamela Cox.   On Saturday, a group which admirably aims to provide policy debates with a historical perspective, History  & Policy, ran a meeting to reflect on  how many  of the original Charter's demands had been met, and what a new Charter might look like. The first Charter's 10 demands were (in abbreviated form - I looked for an online version of the more detailed list, but in vain): Equal pay Equal occupational opportunities Equal access to education and training Equal working conditions Equal legal rights Free childcare More paid…
Read More

Imposter Syndrome

The TV series Borgen is a rich source of material for the Paula Principle.  We've just finished watching the first series (yes, I know, behind the times).  Its principal character, Birgitte Nyborg, is leader of the Moderate party going into the Danish elections.   She is married to an economics lecturer, with two school-age children, and one recurrent theme is her struggle to get home in time to see the children (and her husband). One episode illustrates in a fleeting moment the imposter syndrome - the tendency of women (more than men) to think that they are not qualified to have got to where they are.  On the eve of the…
Read More

Low pay, part-time and job satisfaction

We seem to be getting a flurry of useful reports just now.  Last week it was the turn of the CIPD to publish very solid one on Pay progression, focussing on the barriers for the low-paid to moving up the ladder.  It has a very strong Foreword from Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman (sic) of the John Lewis Partnership.  He argues that our low pay reflects a productivity problem, and notes how many low-paid people have no clear paths to show them how they might progress. The CIPD use the three  categories of low-pid worker which were developed originally by the Resolution Foundation, and which have proved themselves sound: - Stuck are those who…
Read More

Ageing and skills: how and why we are losing out

A powerful new report, The Missing Million, has just been published by PRIME, the Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise.  It makes the case for enabling far more older people to stay in work.  Many elements of the case are quite familiar:  the challenge  to us all of an ageing population; the need for individuals to assure themselves of a decent income in old age;  the intrinsic value of work, e.g. in the social contacts it brings;  and so on.  But there is a wealth of factual analysis and insights to back it up, some of them quite surprising (to me at least).  Apparently people in the UK on average believe that…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Work like a man….

What do      Theresa May  and Grayson Perry  have in common? Maybe not very much.  But on Desert Island Discs  recently, May chose Walk Like A  Man as one of her numbers.  She hurriedly added that much though she swings along to the song, she did not mean it as a message to any ambitious females, who should walk their own walk. Recently in the New Statesman Perry asks, how did the straight, white man get the keys to the kingdom, and when will he give them back?  He goes for 'Default Man' as the label for this, saucily explaining his reasons :  "I like the word 'default', for not only does it…
Read More

Portia and Paula

We went last week to the Almeida Theatre's extraordinary production of Merchant of Venice.  It's set in Las Vegas, with gaming machines and glitz everywhere, and intermittent appearances from an Elvis imitator.    Portia is a dizzy blonde on 6-inch heels, and the competition to win her  hand is pitched as a TV reality show.  The accents are full-on American, except for Shylock who speaks with a thick German intonation, initially from behind a broad business desk. For the first three acts I enjoyed the imagination that had gone into it and laughed at the jokes embedded into the glitz, but wondered how they were going to pull it into meaningful…
Read More

Flexitime

I was at a City Event yesterday:  capital letters for the Power & Part-time Top Fifty awards.  It was bright, cheerful and positive as the achievements were recognised of 43 women and 7 men who had demonstrably successful careers on a part-time basis.  Many of them were on 4-day weeks, but quite a few work on three days or even less.  One man is on a 9-day fortnight, which sounds to me as if  'part-time' is a label which stuck only precariously to him. I had several interesting conversations with winners or their sponsors, who all had good stories to tell.  I asked them (as per previous PP posts) whether…
Read More

Silver lining: is now the opportunity to change the standing of part-time work?

We know that the 'miracle' of the UK labour market reflects trends that most of us are not happy with: people are working for lower wages and in greater insecurity.   On top of this, they are working fewer hours, so incomes are dropping, and people's uncertainty about their employment depresses their wellbeing. The table below, from Craig Holmes' contribution to a most interesting set of papers from the Policy Network,  shows that 'self-employment' has grown considerably faster for men than women, and we know that this often disguises un- or under-employment.  We also know that underemployment generally is growing, where women and men want to longer hours but can't…
Read More

Why doesn’t women’s work figure in literature?

  We went to the Design Museum, mainly to see my daughter who works there, but also to look at the exhibition on Women, Fashion & Power.  This cigarette card caught my eye because of the title at the bottom (rather blurred, I'm afraid):  "VAD woman'.    How fashionable you think her uniform is, and what it says about her power, is not the question here.  I came across Voluntary Aid Detachments when I read Dorothy Whipple's novel High Wages.  It's one of the very few books I've come across which deals more than just fleetingly with women's paid work.  High Wages  was first published in 1930, and has now been smartly reprinted by…
Read More

Working Women’s Charter

Exactly 40 years A Working Women's Charter was published.   You can see a good TedX talk on it by Pamela Cox.   On Saturday, a group which admirably aims to provide policy debates with a historical perspective, History  & Policy, ran a meeting to reflect on  how many  of the original Charter's demands had been met, and what a new Charter might look like. The first Charter's 10 demands were (in abbreviated form - I looked for an online version of the more detailed list, but in vain): Equal pay Equal occupational opportunities Equal access to education and training Equal working conditions Equal legal rights Free childcare More paid…
Read More

Imposter Syndrome

The TV series Borgen is a rich source of material for the Paula Principle.  We've just finished watching the first series (yes, I know, behind the times).  Its principal character, Birgitte Nyborg, is leader of the Moderate party going into the Danish elections.   She is married to an economics lecturer, with two school-age children, and one recurrent theme is her struggle to get home in time to see the children (and her husband). One episode illustrates in a fleeting moment the imposter syndrome - the tendency of women (more than men) to think that they are not qualified to have got to where they are.  On the eve of the…
Read More

Low pay, part-time and job satisfaction

We seem to be getting a flurry of useful reports just now.  Last week it was the turn of the CIPD to publish very solid one on Pay progression, focussing on the barriers for the low-paid to moving up the ladder.  It has a very strong Foreword from Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman (sic) of the John Lewis Partnership.  He argues that our low pay reflects a productivity problem, and notes how many low-paid people have no clear paths to show them how they might progress. The CIPD use the three  categories of low-pid worker which were developed originally by the Resolution Foundation, and which have proved themselves sound: - Stuck are those who…
Read More

Ageing and skills: how and why we are losing out

A powerful new report, The Missing Million, has just been published by PRIME, the Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise.  It makes the case for enabling far more older people to stay in work.  Many elements of the case are quite familiar:  the challenge  to us all of an ageing population; the need for individuals to assure themselves of a decent income in old age;  the intrinsic value of work, e.g. in the social contacts it brings;  and so on.  But there is a wealth of factual analysis and insights to back it up, some of them quite surprising (to me at least).  Apparently people in the UK on average believe that…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Work like a man….

What do      Theresa May  and Grayson Perry  have in common? Maybe not very much.  But on Desert Island Discs  recently, May chose Walk Like A  Man as one of her numbers.  She hurriedly added that much though she swings along to the song, she did not mean it as a message to any ambitious females, who should walk their own walk. Recently in the New Statesman Perry asks, how did the straight, white man get the keys to the kingdom, and when will he give them back?  He goes for 'Default Man' as the label for this, saucily explaining his reasons :  "I like the word 'default', for not only does it…
Read More

Portia and Paula

We went last week to the Almeida Theatre's extraordinary production of Merchant of Venice.  It's set in Las Vegas, with gaming machines and glitz everywhere, and intermittent appearances from an Elvis imitator.    Portia is a dizzy blonde on 6-inch heels, and the competition to win her  hand is pitched as a TV reality show.  The accents are full-on American, except for Shylock who speaks with a thick German intonation, initially from behind a broad business desk. For the first three acts I enjoyed the imagination that had gone into it and laughed at the jokes embedded into the glitz, but wondered how they were going to pull it into meaningful…
Read More

Flexitime

I was at a City Event yesterday:  capital letters for the Power & Part-time Top Fifty awards.  It was bright, cheerful and positive as the achievements were recognised of 43 women and 7 men who had demonstrably successful careers on a part-time basis.  Many of them were on 4-day weeks, but quite a few work on three days or even less.  One man is on a 9-day fortnight, which sounds to me as if  'part-time' is a label which stuck only precariously to him. I had several interesting conversations with winners or their sponsors, who all had good stories to tell.  I asked them (as per previous PP posts) whether…
Read More

Silver lining: is now the opportunity to change the standing of part-time work?

We know that the 'miracle' of the UK labour market reflects trends that most of us are not happy with: people are working for lower wages and in greater insecurity.   On top of this, they are working fewer hours, so incomes are dropping, and people's uncertainty about their employment depresses their wellbeing. The table below, from Craig Holmes' contribution to a most interesting set of papers from the Policy Network,  shows that 'self-employment' has grown considerably faster for men than women, and we know that this often disguises un- or under-employment.  We also know that underemployment generally is growing, where women and men want to longer hours but can't…
Read More

Why doesn’t women’s work figure in literature?

  We went to the Design Museum, mainly to see my daughter who works there, but also to look at the exhibition on Women, Fashion & Power.  This cigarette card caught my eye because of the title at the bottom (rather blurred, I'm afraid):  "VAD woman'.    How fashionable you think her uniform is, and what it says about her power, is not the question here.  I came across Voluntary Aid Detachments when I read Dorothy Whipple's novel High Wages.  It's one of the very few books I've come across which deals more than just fleetingly with women's paid work.  High Wages  was first published in 1930, and has now been smartly reprinted by…
Read More

Working Women’s Charter

Exactly 40 years A Working Women's Charter was published.   You can see a good TedX talk on it by Pamela Cox.   On Saturday, a group which admirably aims to provide policy debates with a historical perspective, History  & Policy, ran a meeting to reflect on  how many  of the original Charter's demands had been met, and what a new Charter might look like. The first Charter's 10 demands were (in abbreviated form - I looked for an online version of the more detailed list, but in vain): Equal pay Equal occupational opportunities Equal access to education and training Equal working conditions Equal legal rights Free childcare More paid…
Read More

Imposter Syndrome

The TV series Borgen is a rich source of material for the Paula Principle.  We've just finished watching the first series (yes, I know, behind the times).  Its principal character, Birgitte Nyborg, is leader of the Moderate party going into the Danish elections.   She is married to an economics lecturer, with two school-age children, and one recurrent theme is her struggle to get home in time to see the children (and her husband). One episode illustrates in a fleeting moment the imposter syndrome - the tendency of women (more than men) to think that they are not qualified to have got to where they are.  On the eve of the…
Read More

Low pay, part-time and job satisfaction

We seem to be getting a flurry of useful reports just now.  Last week it was the turn of the CIPD to publish very solid one on Pay progression, focussing on the barriers for the low-paid to moving up the ladder.  It has a very strong Foreword from Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman (sic) of the John Lewis Partnership.  He argues that our low pay reflects a productivity problem, and notes how many low-paid people have no clear paths to show them how they might progress. The CIPD use the three  categories of low-pid worker which were developed originally by the Resolution Foundation, and which have proved themselves sound: - Stuck are those who…
Read More

Ageing and skills: how and why we are losing out

A powerful new report, The Missing Million, has just been published by PRIME, the Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise.  It makes the case for enabling far more older people to stay in work.  Many elements of the case are quite familiar:  the challenge  to us all of an ageing population; the need for individuals to assure themselves of a decent income in old age;  the intrinsic value of work, e.g. in the social contacts it brings;  and so on.  But there is a wealth of factual analysis and insights to back it up, some of them quite surprising (to me at least).  Apparently people in the UK on average believe that…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Work like a man….

What do      Theresa May  and Grayson Perry  have in common? Maybe not very much.  But on Desert Island Discs  recently, May chose Walk Like A  Man as one of her numbers.  She hurriedly added that much though she swings along to the song, she did not mean it as a message to any ambitious females, who should walk their own walk. Recently in the New Statesman Perry asks, how did the straight, white man get the keys to the kingdom, and when will he give them back?  He goes for 'Default Man' as the label for this, saucily explaining his reasons :  "I like the word 'default', for not only does it…
Read More

Portia and Paula

We went last week to the Almeida Theatre's extraordinary production of Merchant of Venice.  It's set in Las Vegas, with gaming machines and glitz everywhere, and intermittent appearances from an Elvis imitator.    Portia is a dizzy blonde on 6-inch heels, and the competition to win her  hand is pitched as a TV reality show.  The accents are full-on American, except for Shylock who speaks with a thick German intonation, initially from behind a broad business desk. For the first three acts I enjoyed the imagination that had gone into it and laughed at the jokes embedded into the glitz, but wondered how they were going to pull it into meaningful…
Read More

Flexitime

I was at a City Event yesterday:  capital letters for the Power & Part-time Top Fifty awards.  It was bright, cheerful and positive as the achievements were recognised of 43 women and 7 men who had demonstrably successful careers on a part-time basis.  Many of them were on 4-day weeks, but quite a few work on three days or even less.  One man is on a 9-day fortnight, which sounds to me as if  'part-time' is a label which stuck only precariously to him. I had several interesting conversations with winners or their sponsors, who all had good stories to tell.  I asked them (as per previous PP posts) whether…
Read More

Silver lining: is now the opportunity to change the standing of part-time work?

We know that the 'miracle' of the UK labour market reflects trends that most of us are not happy with: people are working for lower wages and in greater insecurity.   On top of this, they are working fewer hours, so incomes are dropping, and people's uncertainty about their employment depresses their wellbeing. The table below, from Craig Holmes' contribution to a most interesting set of papers from the Policy Network,  shows that 'self-employment' has grown considerably faster for men than women, and we know that this often disguises un- or under-employment.  We also know that underemployment generally is growing, where women and men want to longer hours but can't…
Read More

Why doesn’t women’s work figure in literature?

  We went to the Design Museum, mainly to see my daughter who works there, but also to look at the exhibition on Women, Fashion & Power.  This cigarette card caught my eye because of the title at the bottom (rather blurred, I'm afraid):  "VAD woman'.    How fashionable you think her uniform is, and what it says about her power, is not the question here.  I came across Voluntary Aid Detachments when I read Dorothy Whipple's novel High Wages.  It's one of the very few books I've come across which deals more than just fleetingly with women's paid work.  High Wages  was first published in 1930, and has now been smartly reprinted by…
Read More

Working Women’s Charter

Exactly 40 years A Working Women's Charter was published.   You can see a good TedX talk on it by Pamela Cox.   On Saturday, a group which admirably aims to provide policy debates with a historical perspective, History  & Policy, ran a meeting to reflect on  how many  of the original Charter's demands had been met, and what a new Charter might look like. The first Charter's 10 demands were (in abbreviated form - I looked for an online version of the more detailed list, but in vain): Equal pay Equal occupational opportunities Equal access to education and training Equal working conditions Equal legal rights Free childcare More paid…
Read More

Imposter Syndrome

The TV series Borgen is a rich source of material for the Paula Principle.  We've just finished watching the first series (yes, I know, behind the times).  Its principal character, Birgitte Nyborg, is leader of the Moderate party going into the Danish elections.   She is married to an economics lecturer, with two school-age children, and one recurrent theme is her struggle to get home in time to see the children (and her husband). One episode illustrates in a fleeting moment the imposter syndrome - the tendency of women (more than men) to think that they are not qualified to have got to where they are.  On the eve of the…
Read More

Low pay, part-time and job satisfaction

We seem to be getting a flurry of useful reports just now.  Last week it was the turn of the CIPD to publish very solid one on Pay progression, focussing on the barriers for the low-paid to moving up the ladder.  It has a very strong Foreword from Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman (sic) of the John Lewis Partnership.  He argues that our low pay reflects a productivity problem, and notes how many low-paid people have no clear paths to show them how they might progress. The CIPD use the three  categories of low-pid worker which were developed originally by the Resolution Foundation, and which have proved themselves sound: - Stuck are those who…
Read More

Ageing and skills: how and why we are losing out

A powerful new report, The Missing Million, has just been published by PRIME, the Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise.  It makes the case for enabling far more older people to stay in work.  Many elements of the case are quite familiar:  the challenge  to us all of an ageing population; the need for individuals to assure themselves of a decent income in old age;  the intrinsic value of work, e.g. in the social contacts it brings;  and so on.  But there is a wealth of factual analysis and insights to back it up, some of them quite surprising (to me at least).  Apparently people in the UK on average believe that…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Work like a man….

What do      Theresa May  and Grayson Perry  have in common? Maybe not very much.  But on Desert Island Discs  recently, May chose Walk Like A  Man as one of her numbers.  She hurriedly added that much though she swings along to the song, she did not mean it as a message to any ambitious females, who should walk their own walk. Recently in the New Statesman Perry asks, how did the straight, white man get the keys to the kingdom, and when will he give them back?  He goes for 'Default Man' as the label for this, saucily explaining his reasons :  "I like the word 'default', for not only does it…
Read More

Portia and Paula

We went last week to the Almeida Theatre's extraordinary production of Merchant of Venice.  It's set in Las Vegas, with gaming machines and glitz everywhere, and intermittent appearances from an Elvis imitator.    Portia is a dizzy blonde on 6-inch heels, and the competition to win her  hand is pitched as a TV reality show.  The accents are full-on American, except for Shylock who speaks with a thick German intonation, initially from behind a broad business desk. For the first three acts I enjoyed the imagination that had gone into it and laughed at the jokes embedded into the glitz, but wondered how they were going to pull it into meaningful…
Read More

Flexitime

I was at a City Event yesterday:  capital letters for the Power & Part-time Top Fifty awards.  It was bright, cheerful and positive as the achievements were recognised of 43 women and 7 men who had demonstrably successful careers on a part-time basis.  Many of them were on 4-day weeks, but quite a few work on three days or even less.  One man is on a 9-day fortnight, which sounds to me as if  'part-time' is a label which stuck only precariously to him. I had several interesting conversations with winners or their sponsors, who all had good stories to tell.  I asked them (as per previous PP posts) whether…
Read More

Silver lining: is now the opportunity to change the standing of part-time work?

We know that the 'miracle' of the UK labour market reflects trends that most of us are not happy with: people are working for lower wages and in greater insecurity.   On top of this, they are working fewer hours, so incomes are dropping, and people's uncertainty about their employment depresses their wellbeing. The table below, from Craig Holmes' contribution to a most interesting set of papers from the Policy Network,  shows that 'self-employment' has grown considerably faster for men than women, and we know that this often disguises un- or under-employment.  We also know that underemployment generally is growing, where women and men want to longer hours but can't…
Read More

Why doesn’t women’s work figure in literature?

  We went to the Design Museum, mainly to see my daughter who works there, but also to look at the exhibition on Women, Fashion & Power.  This cigarette card caught my eye because of the title at the bottom (rather blurred, I'm afraid):  "VAD woman'.    How fashionable you think her uniform is, and what it says about her power, is not the question here.  I came across Voluntary Aid Detachments when I read Dorothy Whipple's novel High Wages.  It's one of the very few books I've come across which deals more than just fleetingly with women's paid work.  High Wages  was first published in 1930, and has now been smartly reprinted by…
Read More

Working Women’s Charter

Exactly 40 years A Working Women's Charter was published.   You can see a good TedX talk on it by Pamela Cox.   On Saturday, a group which admirably aims to provide policy debates with a historical perspective, History  & Policy, ran a meeting to reflect on  how many  of the original Charter's demands had been met, and what a new Charter might look like. The first Charter's 10 demands were (in abbreviated form - I looked for an online version of the more detailed list, but in vain): Equal pay Equal occupational opportunities Equal access to education and training Equal working conditions Equal legal rights Free childcare More paid…
Read More

Imposter Syndrome

The TV series Borgen is a rich source of material for the Paula Principle.  We've just finished watching the first series (yes, I know, behind the times).  Its principal character, Birgitte Nyborg, is leader of the Moderate party going into the Danish elections.   She is married to an economics lecturer, with two school-age children, and one recurrent theme is her struggle to get home in time to see the children (and her husband). One episode illustrates in a fleeting moment the imposter syndrome - the tendency of women (more than men) to think that they are not qualified to have got to where they are.  On the eve of the…
Read More

Low pay, part-time and job satisfaction

We seem to be getting a flurry of useful reports just now.  Last week it was the turn of the CIPD to publish very solid one on Pay progression, focussing on the barriers for the low-paid to moving up the ladder.  It has a very strong Foreword from Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman (sic) of the John Lewis Partnership.  He argues that our low pay reflects a productivity problem, and notes how many low-paid people have no clear paths to show them how they might progress. The CIPD use the three  categories of low-pid worker which were developed originally by the Resolution Foundation, and which have proved themselves sound: - Stuck are those who…
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Ageing and skills: how and why we are losing out

A powerful new report, The Missing Million, has just been published by PRIME, the Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise.  It makes the case for enabling far more older people to stay in work.  Many elements of the case are quite familiar:  the challenge  to us all of an ageing population; the need for individuals to assure themselves of a decent income in old age;  the intrinsic value of work, e.g. in the social contacts it brings;  and so on.  But there is a wealth of factual analysis and insights to back it up, some of them quite surprising (to me at least).  Apparently people in the UK on average believe that…
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Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
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