The Paula Principle

Author: TomSchuller

Women’s colleges/colleges for women

It's International Women's Day tomorrow, but there'll be no Paula post as I'll be under the surgeon's knife (nothing dramatic).  In the run-up I notice particularly a major report from Warwick University analysing the salaries of 17000 recent graduates in full-time work (part-timers again slide out of the picture...).  It notes how persistent the gender pay gap is, but also how it varies, from 28% in law to 4% in education.   This is at the outset of their careers, remember - things will only get wider. However I thought I'd write on something a bit different.  I've just finished Rosemary Ashton's story of Victorian Bloomsbury.  I'm lucky enough to be a Bloomsbury…
Read More

Korea: a case study

Korea's first female president, Park Geun-hye, takes up office today.  This is a big step forward for the country, and for the wider political scene.   I've never been to Korea, but I've been thinking of using it as a case study for the Paula Principle, for the folllowing reasons. Koreans have made extraordinarily rapid educational progress over the past two decades.   15-20 years ago they were near the foot of the OECD league table on achievement at secondary school;  now they are at or around the top. It is a truly remarkable transformation. Their tertiary system has expanded in consequence, very rapidly, so that there are now large numbers of…
Read More

The Odd Women – and a possible mirror today

I'm just reading George Gissing's The Odd Women, a curious novel centred on women's prospects in the late 19th century.  These were pretty dismal on  the whole.  The novel focusses on three sisters caught in a kind of genteel poverty.  Two of them are past marriageable age, and also have hardly any chance of a decent occupation but must live on the tiny income bequeathed by their father. The third is still pretty and eligible, but works 14-hour days in a draper's, with very little scope for meeting a suitable husband. The title refers to something which I find hard to explain:  the apparent existence then of half a million more women than men…
Read More

Paula as philosopher

Men still outperform women in a small number of subject areas.   It's common knowledge that these include maths and physics (I'm still looking for someone who will explain why this should be so).  But it was a surprise to me to find that philosophy is much closer to these subjects than to the humanities subjects with which it is most commonly grouped. I learnt this from a pamphlet published by the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy in the UK. At undergraduate level 45% of philosophy students are female. This is much closer to Maths' 40% than it is to History's 58%, let alone English Studies'…
Read More

Makula

This post is a little different.  I want to introduce my cleaner - and friend - Makula. Makula went to school in Uganda, up to O levels at S4 (16 years).  She was unusual in that as a girl in a poor family, with 3 brothers, she would have been expected to leave school at the end of primary school, get married and go to work.  In Uganda school costs money, and she would normally have gone to earn money as early as possible.  But she was visibly a bright student, and her brothers said that they wished to leave school themselves, so the family agreed she should stay on. She…
Read More

The Double X Economy and measuring things

Professor Linda Scott from Oxford University has coined the term the Double X economy to refer to the need to look at global economic issues through different eyes.   Now the competition is strong for catchy concepts which might waft their author to fame and fortune.  But this one has a very down-to-earth application.  I'd urge you to listen to the part in Scott's inaugural lecture where she talks about what it means for girls in many Afircan countries to have to use cloth rags as sanitary towels. Scott is an economist who has plenty to say about the failings of neo-liberal approaches, but also about the irrelevance of some radical critiques.  She reminds…
Read More

The invisible woman

I've been reading Claire Tomalin's book on Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.  For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about this side of the Dickens story, in 1858 the author left his wife Catherine, taking nine of his ten children, including quite young ones. (His household was managed by Catherine's sister Georgina.) Tomalin traces out the extraordinary story of Dickens' involvement with a woman 25 years younger than he, Nelly Ternan. Nelly came from an acting family, and Dickens had produced and taken part in some theatrical events with her, her sisters and her mother. But he did not set up with her - although several of…
Read More

Segregation complications

A powerful recent paper in Sociology by Jarman, Blackburn and Racko (for ref see below) raises some tough issues when it comes to thinking through the implications of gender segregation in occupations. (I'm grateful to Athene Donald's blog for drawing it to my attention.)  Covering 30 countries, the authors show (I'm summarising, obviously) that the position of women is more favourable where segregation is high. In the first place, men's advantage on pay is less in countries where occupational segregation is high.  I knew that Scandinavian countries have low inequality but high segregation, as women work largely in personal services such as health and education. But the pattern extends beyond these countries.…
Read More

Adult learning in Europe – pretty gloomy; but women do better

I've just looked at the EU Monitor on education and training 2012.   The EU target is for 15% of adults to take part in adult learning by 2015.    There's no chance this will be reached;  in fact the participation rate is going down.  In 2011 it was 8.9%, for formal and informal learning combined. 'Adults' are defined as 25-64. At some point countries are going to have to adjust their statistical categories to reflect demography, and push up the upper age boundary. As you can guess, I looked for the gender split. It's 8.2% for men, and 9.6% for women - nearly 20% higher. Only in Turkey and Rumania do more men…
Read More

Women’s colleges/colleges for women

It's International Women's Day tomorrow, but there'll be no Paula post as I'll be under the surgeon's knife (nothing dramatic).  In the run-up I notice particularly a major report from Warwick University analysing the salaries of 17000 recent graduates in full-time work (part-timers again slide out of the picture...).  It notes how persistent the gender pay gap is, but also how it varies, from 28% in law to 4% in education.   This is at the outset of their careers, remember - things will only get wider. However I thought I'd write on something a bit different.  I've just finished Rosemary Ashton's story of Victorian Bloomsbury.  I'm lucky enough to be a Bloomsbury…
Read More

Korea: a case study

Korea's first female president, Park Geun-hye, takes up office today.  This is a big step forward for the country, and for the wider political scene.   I've never been to Korea, but I've been thinking of using it as a case study for the Paula Principle, for the folllowing reasons. Koreans have made extraordinarily rapid educational progress over the past two decades.   15-20 years ago they were near the foot of the OECD league table on achievement at secondary school;  now they are at or around the top. It is a truly remarkable transformation. Their tertiary system has expanded in consequence, very rapidly, so that there are now large numbers of…
Read More

The Odd Women – and a possible mirror today

I'm just reading George Gissing's The Odd Women, a curious novel centred on women's prospects in the late 19th century.  These were pretty dismal on  the whole.  The novel focusses on three sisters caught in a kind of genteel poverty.  Two of them are past marriageable age, and also have hardly any chance of a decent occupation but must live on the tiny income bequeathed by their father. The third is still pretty and eligible, but works 14-hour days in a draper's, with very little scope for meeting a suitable husband. The title refers to something which I find hard to explain:  the apparent existence then of half a million more women than men…
Read More

Paula as philosopher

Men still outperform women in a small number of subject areas.   It's common knowledge that these include maths and physics (I'm still looking for someone who will explain why this should be so).  But it was a surprise to me to find that philosophy is much closer to these subjects than to the humanities subjects with which it is most commonly grouped. I learnt this from a pamphlet published by the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy in the UK. At undergraduate level 45% of philosophy students are female. This is much closer to Maths' 40% than it is to History's 58%, let alone English Studies'…
Read More

Makula

This post is a little different.  I want to introduce my cleaner - and friend - Makula. Makula went to school in Uganda, up to O levels at S4 (16 years).  She was unusual in that as a girl in a poor family, with 3 brothers, she would have been expected to leave school at the end of primary school, get married and go to work.  In Uganda school costs money, and she would normally have gone to earn money as early as possible.  But she was visibly a bright student, and her brothers said that they wished to leave school themselves, so the family agreed she should stay on. She…
Read More

The Double X Economy and measuring things

Professor Linda Scott from Oxford University has coined the term the Double X economy to refer to the need to look at global economic issues through different eyes.   Now the competition is strong for catchy concepts which might waft their author to fame and fortune.  But this one has a very down-to-earth application.  I'd urge you to listen to the part in Scott's inaugural lecture where she talks about what it means for girls in many Afircan countries to have to use cloth rags as sanitary towels. Scott is an economist who has plenty to say about the failings of neo-liberal approaches, but also about the irrelevance of some radical critiques.  She reminds…
Read More

The invisible woman

I've been reading Claire Tomalin's book on Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.  For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about this side of the Dickens story, in 1858 the author left his wife Catherine, taking nine of his ten children, including quite young ones. (His household was managed by Catherine's sister Georgina.) Tomalin traces out the extraordinary story of Dickens' involvement with a woman 25 years younger than he, Nelly Ternan. Nelly came from an acting family, and Dickens had produced and taken part in some theatrical events with her, her sisters and her mother. But he did not set up with her - although several of…
Read More

Segregation complications

A powerful recent paper in Sociology by Jarman, Blackburn and Racko (for ref see below) raises some tough issues when it comes to thinking through the implications of gender segregation in occupations. (I'm grateful to Athene Donald's blog for drawing it to my attention.)  Covering 30 countries, the authors show (I'm summarising, obviously) that the position of women is more favourable where segregation is high. In the first place, men's advantage on pay is less in countries where occupational segregation is high.  I knew that Scandinavian countries have low inequality but high segregation, as women work largely in personal services such as health and education. But the pattern extends beyond these countries.…
Read More

Adult learning in Europe – pretty gloomy; but women do better

I've just looked at the EU Monitor on education and training 2012.   The EU target is for 15% of adults to take part in adult learning by 2015.    There's no chance this will be reached;  in fact the participation rate is going down.  In 2011 it was 8.9%, for formal and informal learning combined. 'Adults' are defined as 25-64. At some point countries are going to have to adjust their statistical categories to reflect demography, and push up the upper age boundary. As you can guess, I looked for the gender split. It's 8.2% for men, and 9.6% for women - nearly 20% higher. Only in Turkey and Rumania do more men…
Read More

Women’s colleges/colleges for women

It's International Women's Day tomorrow, but there'll be no Paula post as I'll be under the surgeon's knife (nothing dramatic).  In the run-up I notice particularly a major report from Warwick University analysing the salaries of 17000 recent graduates in full-time work (part-timers again slide out of the picture...).  It notes how persistent the gender pay gap is, but also how it varies, from 28% in law to 4% in education.   This is at the outset of their careers, remember - things will only get wider. However I thought I'd write on something a bit different.  I've just finished Rosemary Ashton's story of Victorian Bloomsbury.  I'm lucky enough to be a Bloomsbury…
Read More

Korea: a case study

Korea's first female president, Park Geun-hye, takes up office today.  This is a big step forward for the country, and for the wider political scene.   I've never been to Korea, but I've been thinking of using it as a case study for the Paula Principle, for the folllowing reasons. Koreans have made extraordinarily rapid educational progress over the past two decades.   15-20 years ago they were near the foot of the OECD league table on achievement at secondary school;  now they are at or around the top. It is a truly remarkable transformation. Their tertiary system has expanded in consequence, very rapidly, so that there are now large numbers of…
Read More

The Odd Women – and a possible mirror today

I'm just reading George Gissing's The Odd Women, a curious novel centred on women's prospects in the late 19th century.  These were pretty dismal on  the whole.  The novel focusses on three sisters caught in a kind of genteel poverty.  Two of them are past marriageable age, and also have hardly any chance of a decent occupation but must live on the tiny income bequeathed by their father. The third is still pretty and eligible, but works 14-hour days in a draper's, with very little scope for meeting a suitable husband. The title refers to something which I find hard to explain:  the apparent existence then of half a million more women than men…
Read More

Paula as philosopher

Men still outperform women in a small number of subject areas.   It's common knowledge that these include maths and physics (I'm still looking for someone who will explain why this should be so).  But it was a surprise to me to find that philosophy is much closer to these subjects than to the humanities subjects with which it is most commonly grouped. I learnt this from a pamphlet published by the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy in the UK. At undergraduate level 45% of philosophy students are female. This is much closer to Maths' 40% than it is to History's 58%, let alone English Studies'…
Read More

Makula

This post is a little different.  I want to introduce my cleaner - and friend - Makula. Makula went to school in Uganda, up to O levels at S4 (16 years).  She was unusual in that as a girl in a poor family, with 3 brothers, she would have been expected to leave school at the end of primary school, get married and go to work.  In Uganda school costs money, and she would normally have gone to earn money as early as possible.  But she was visibly a bright student, and her brothers said that they wished to leave school themselves, so the family agreed she should stay on. She…
Read More

The Double X Economy and measuring things

Professor Linda Scott from Oxford University has coined the term the Double X economy to refer to the need to look at global economic issues through different eyes.   Now the competition is strong for catchy concepts which might waft their author to fame and fortune.  But this one has a very down-to-earth application.  I'd urge you to listen to the part in Scott's inaugural lecture where she talks about what it means for girls in many Afircan countries to have to use cloth rags as sanitary towels. Scott is an economist who has plenty to say about the failings of neo-liberal approaches, but also about the irrelevance of some radical critiques.  She reminds…
Read More

The invisible woman

I've been reading Claire Tomalin's book on Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.  For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about this side of the Dickens story, in 1858 the author left his wife Catherine, taking nine of his ten children, including quite young ones. (His household was managed by Catherine's sister Georgina.) Tomalin traces out the extraordinary story of Dickens' involvement with a woman 25 years younger than he, Nelly Ternan. Nelly came from an acting family, and Dickens had produced and taken part in some theatrical events with her, her sisters and her mother. But he did not set up with her - although several of…
Read More

Segregation complications

A powerful recent paper in Sociology by Jarman, Blackburn and Racko (for ref see below) raises some tough issues when it comes to thinking through the implications of gender segregation in occupations. (I'm grateful to Athene Donald's blog for drawing it to my attention.)  Covering 30 countries, the authors show (I'm summarising, obviously) that the position of women is more favourable where segregation is high. In the first place, men's advantage on pay is less in countries where occupational segregation is high.  I knew that Scandinavian countries have low inequality but high segregation, as women work largely in personal services such as health and education. But the pattern extends beyond these countries.…
Read More

Adult learning in Europe – pretty gloomy; but women do better

I've just looked at the EU Monitor on education and training 2012.   The EU target is for 15% of adults to take part in adult learning by 2015.    There's no chance this will be reached;  in fact the participation rate is going down.  In 2011 it was 8.9%, for formal and informal learning combined. 'Adults' are defined as 25-64. At some point countries are going to have to adjust their statistical categories to reflect demography, and push up the upper age boundary. As you can guess, I looked for the gender split. It's 8.2% for men, and 9.6% for women - nearly 20% higher. Only in Turkey and Rumania do more men…
Read More

Women’s colleges/colleges for women

It's International Women's Day tomorrow, but there'll be no Paula post as I'll be under the surgeon's knife (nothing dramatic).  In the run-up I notice particularly a major report from Warwick University analysing the salaries of 17000 recent graduates in full-time work (part-timers again slide out of the picture...).  It notes how persistent the gender pay gap is, but also how it varies, from 28% in law to 4% in education.   This is at the outset of their careers, remember - things will only get wider. However I thought I'd write on something a bit different.  I've just finished Rosemary Ashton's story of Victorian Bloomsbury.  I'm lucky enough to be a Bloomsbury…
Read More

Korea: a case study

Korea's first female president, Park Geun-hye, takes up office today.  This is a big step forward for the country, and for the wider political scene.   I've never been to Korea, but I've been thinking of using it as a case study for the Paula Principle, for the folllowing reasons. Koreans have made extraordinarily rapid educational progress over the past two decades.   15-20 years ago they were near the foot of the OECD league table on achievement at secondary school;  now they are at or around the top. It is a truly remarkable transformation. Their tertiary system has expanded in consequence, very rapidly, so that there are now large numbers of…
Read More

The Odd Women – and a possible mirror today

I'm just reading George Gissing's The Odd Women, a curious novel centred on women's prospects in the late 19th century.  These were pretty dismal on  the whole.  The novel focusses on three sisters caught in a kind of genteel poverty.  Two of them are past marriageable age, and also have hardly any chance of a decent occupation but must live on the tiny income bequeathed by their father. The third is still pretty and eligible, but works 14-hour days in a draper's, with very little scope for meeting a suitable husband. The title refers to something which I find hard to explain:  the apparent existence then of half a million more women than men…
Read More

Paula as philosopher

Men still outperform women in a small number of subject areas.   It's common knowledge that these include maths and physics (I'm still looking for someone who will explain why this should be so).  But it was a surprise to me to find that philosophy is much closer to these subjects than to the humanities subjects with which it is most commonly grouped. I learnt this from a pamphlet published by the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy in the UK. At undergraduate level 45% of philosophy students are female. This is much closer to Maths' 40% than it is to History's 58%, let alone English Studies'…
Read More

Makula

This post is a little different.  I want to introduce my cleaner - and friend - Makula. Makula went to school in Uganda, up to O levels at S4 (16 years).  She was unusual in that as a girl in a poor family, with 3 brothers, she would have been expected to leave school at the end of primary school, get married and go to work.  In Uganda school costs money, and she would normally have gone to earn money as early as possible.  But she was visibly a bright student, and her brothers said that they wished to leave school themselves, so the family agreed she should stay on. She…
Read More

The Double X Economy and measuring things

Professor Linda Scott from Oxford University has coined the term the Double X economy to refer to the need to look at global economic issues through different eyes.   Now the competition is strong for catchy concepts which might waft their author to fame and fortune.  But this one has a very down-to-earth application.  I'd urge you to listen to the part in Scott's inaugural lecture where she talks about what it means for girls in many Afircan countries to have to use cloth rags as sanitary towels. Scott is an economist who has plenty to say about the failings of neo-liberal approaches, but also about the irrelevance of some radical critiques.  She reminds…
Read More

The invisible woman

I've been reading Claire Tomalin's book on Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.  For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about this side of the Dickens story, in 1858 the author left his wife Catherine, taking nine of his ten children, including quite young ones. (His household was managed by Catherine's sister Georgina.) Tomalin traces out the extraordinary story of Dickens' involvement with a woman 25 years younger than he, Nelly Ternan. Nelly came from an acting family, and Dickens had produced and taken part in some theatrical events with her, her sisters and her mother. But he did not set up with her - although several of…
Read More

Segregation complications

A powerful recent paper in Sociology by Jarman, Blackburn and Racko (for ref see below) raises some tough issues when it comes to thinking through the implications of gender segregation in occupations. (I'm grateful to Athene Donald's blog for drawing it to my attention.)  Covering 30 countries, the authors show (I'm summarising, obviously) that the position of women is more favourable where segregation is high. In the first place, men's advantage on pay is less in countries where occupational segregation is high.  I knew that Scandinavian countries have low inequality but high segregation, as women work largely in personal services such as health and education. But the pattern extends beyond these countries.…
Read More

Adult learning in Europe – pretty gloomy; but women do better

I've just looked at the EU Monitor on education and training 2012.   The EU target is for 15% of adults to take part in adult learning by 2015.    There's no chance this will be reached;  in fact the participation rate is going down.  In 2011 it was 8.9%, for formal and informal learning combined. 'Adults' are defined as 25-64. At some point countries are going to have to adjust their statistical categories to reflect demography, and push up the upper age boundary. As you can guess, I looked for the gender split. It's 8.2% for men, and 9.6% for women - nearly 20% higher. Only in Turkey and Rumania do more men…
Read More

Women’s colleges/colleges for women

It's International Women's Day tomorrow, but there'll be no Paula post as I'll be under the surgeon's knife (nothing dramatic).  In the run-up I notice particularly a major report from Warwick University analysing the salaries of 17000 recent graduates in full-time work (part-timers again slide out of the picture...).  It notes how persistent the gender pay gap is, but also how it varies, from 28% in law to 4% in education.   This is at the outset of their careers, remember - things will only get wider. However I thought I'd write on something a bit different.  I've just finished Rosemary Ashton's story of Victorian Bloomsbury.  I'm lucky enough to be a Bloomsbury…
Read More

Korea: a case study

Korea's first female president, Park Geun-hye, takes up office today.  This is a big step forward for the country, and for the wider political scene.   I've never been to Korea, but I've been thinking of using it as a case study for the Paula Principle, for the folllowing reasons. Koreans have made extraordinarily rapid educational progress over the past two decades.   15-20 years ago they were near the foot of the OECD league table on achievement at secondary school;  now they are at or around the top. It is a truly remarkable transformation. Their tertiary system has expanded in consequence, very rapidly, so that there are now large numbers of…
Read More

The Odd Women – and a possible mirror today

I'm just reading George Gissing's The Odd Women, a curious novel centred on women's prospects in the late 19th century.  These were pretty dismal on  the whole.  The novel focusses on three sisters caught in a kind of genteel poverty.  Two of them are past marriageable age, and also have hardly any chance of a decent occupation but must live on the tiny income bequeathed by their father. The third is still pretty and eligible, but works 14-hour days in a draper's, with very little scope for meeting a suitable husband. The title refers to something which I find hard to explain:  the apparent existence then of half a million more women than men…
Read More

Paula as philosopher

Men still outperform women in a small number of subject areas.   It's common knowledge that these include maths and physics (I'm still looking for someone who will explain why this should be so).  But it was a surprise to me to find that philosophy is much closer to these subjects than to the humanities subjects with which it is most commonly grouped. I learnt this from a pamphlet published by the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy in the UK. At undergraduate level 45% of philosophy students are female. This is much closer to Maths' 40% than it is to History's 58%, let alone English Studies'…
Read More

Makula

This post is a little different.  I want to introduce my cleaner - and friend - Makula. Makula went to school in Uganda, up to O levels at S4 (16 years).  She was unusual in that as a girl in a poor family, with 3 brothers, she would have been expected to leave school at the end of primary school, get married and go to work.  In Uganda school costs money, and she would normally have gone to earn money as early as possible.  But she was visibly a bright student, and her brothers said that they wished to leave school themselves, so the family agreed she should stay on. She…
Read More

The Double X Economy and measuring things

Professor Linda Scott from Oxford University has coined the term the Double X economy to refer to the need to look at global economic issues through different eyes.   Now the competition is strong for catchy concepts which might waft their author to fame and fortune.  But this one has a very down-to-earth application.  I'd urge you to listen to the part in Scott's inaugural lecture where she talks about what it means for girls in many Afircan countries to have to use cloth rags as sanitary towels. Scott is an economist who has plenty to say about the failings of neo-liberal approaches, but also about the irrelevance of some radical critiques.  She reminds…
Read More

The invisible woman

I've been reading Claire Tomalin's book on Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.  For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about this side of the Dickens story, in 1858 the author left his wife Catherine, taking nine of his ten children, including quite young ones. (His household was managed by Catherine's sister Georgina.) Tomalin traces out the extraordinary story of Dickens' involvement with a woman 25 years younger than he, Nelly Ternan. Nelly came from an acting family, and Dickens had produced and taken part in some theatrical events with her, her sisters and her mother. But he did not set up with her - although several of…
Read More

Segregation complications

A powerful recent paper in Sociology by Jarman, Blackburn and Racko (for ref see below) raises some tough issues when it comes to thinking through the implications of gender segregation in occupations. (I'm grateful to Athene Donald's blog for drawing it to my attention.)  Covering 30 countries, the authors show (I'm summarising, obviously) that the position of women is more favourable where segregation is high. In the first place, men's advantage on pay is less in countries where occupational segregation is high.  I knew that Scandinavian countries have low inequality but high segregation, as women work largely in personal services such as health and education. But the pattern extends beyond these countries.…
Read More

Adult learning in Europe – pretty gloomy; but women do better

I've just looked at the EU Monitor on education and training 2012.   The EU target is for 15% of adults to take part in adult learning by 2015.    There's no chance this will be reached;  in fact the participation rate is going down.  In 2011 it was 8.9%, for formal and informal learning combined. 'Adults' are defined as 25-64. At some point countries are going to have to adjust their statistical categories to reflect demography, and push up the upper age boundary. As you can guess, I looked for the gender split. It's 8.2% for men, and 9.6% for women - nearly 20% higher. Only in Turkey and Rumania do more men…
Read More

Women’s colleges/colleges for women

It's International Women's Day tomorrow, but there'll be no Paula post as I'll be under the surgeon's knife (nothing dramatic).  In the run-up I notice particularly a major report from Warwick University analysing the salaries of 17000 recent graduates in full-time work (part-timers again slide out of the picture...).  It notes how persistent the gender pay gap is, but also how it varies, from 28% in law to 4% in education.   This is at the outset of their careers, remember - things will only get wider. However I thought I'd write on something a bit different.  I've just finished Rosemary Ashton's story of Victorian Bloomsbury.  I'm lucky enough to be a Bloomsbury…
Read More

Korea: a case study

Korea's first female president, Park Geun-hye, takes up office today.  This is a big step forward for the country, and for the wider political scene.   I've never been to Korea, but I've been thinking of using it as a case study for the Paula Principle, for the folllowing reasons. Koreans have made extraordinarily rapid educational progress over the past two decades.   15-20 years ago they were near the foot of the OECD league table on achievement at secondary school;  now they are at or around the top. It is a truly remarkable transformation. Their tertiary system has expanded in consequence, very rapidly, so that there are now large numbers of…
Read More

The Odd Women – and a possible mirror today

I'm just reading George Gissing's The Odd Women, a curious novel centred on women's prospects in the late 19th century.  These were pretty dismal on  the whole.  The novel focusses on three sisters caught in a kind of genteel poverty.  Two of them are past marriageable age, and also have hardly any chance of a decent occupation but must live on the tiny income bequeathed by their father. The third is still pretty and eligible, but works 14-hour days in a draper's, with very little scope for meeting a suitable husband. The title refers to something which I find hard to explain:  the apparent existence then of half a million more women than men…
Read More

Paula as philosopher

Men still outperform women in a small number of subject areas.   It's common knowledge that these include maths and physics (I'm still looking for someone who will explain why this should be so).  But it was a surprise to me to find that philosophy is much closer to these subjects than to the humanities subjects with which it is most commonly grouped. I learnt this from a pamphlet published by the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy in the UK. At undergraduate level 45% of philosophy students are female. This is much closer to Maths' 40% than it is to History's 58%, let alone English Studies'…
Read More

Makula

This post is a little different.  I want to introduce my cleaner - and friend - Makula. Makula went to school in Uganda, up to O levels at S4 (16 years).  She was unusual in that as a girl in a poor family, with 3 brothers, she would have been expected to leave school at the end of primary school, get married and go to work.  In Uganda school costs money, and she would normally have gone to earn money as early as possible.  But she was visibly a bright student, and her brothers said that they wished to leave school themselves, so the family agreed she should stay on. She…
Read More

The Double X Economy and measuring things

Professor Linda Scott from Oxford University has coined the term the Double X economy to refer to the need to look at global economic issues through different eyes.   Now the competition is strong for catchy concepts which might waft their author to fame and fortune.  But this one has a very down-to-earth application.  I'd urge you to listen to the part in Scott's inaugural lecture where she talks about what it means for girls in many Afircan countries to have to use cloth rags as sanitary towels. Scott is an economist who has plenty to say about the failings of neo-liberal approaches, but also about the irrelevance of some radical critiques.  She reminds…
Read More

The invisible woman

I've been reading Claire Tomalin's book on Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.  For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about this side of the Dickens story, in 1858 the author left his wife Catherine, taking nine of his ten children, including quite young ones. (His household was managed by Catherine's sister Georgina.) Tomalin traces out the extraordinary story of Dickens' involvement with a woman 25 years younger than he, Nelly Ternan. Nelly came from an acting family, and Dickens had produced and taken part in some theatrical events with her, her sisters and her mother. But he did not set up with her - although several of…
Read More

Segregation complications

A powerful recent paper in Sociology by Jarman, Blackburn and Racko (for ref see below) raises some tough issues when it comes to thinking through the implications of gender segregation in occupations. (I'm grateful to Athene Donald's blog for drawing it to my attention.)  Covering 30 countries, the authors show (I'm summarising, obviously) that the position of women is more favourable where segregation is high. In the first place, men's advantage on pay is less in countries where occupational segregation is high.  I knew that Scandinavian countries have low inequality but high segregation, as women work largely in personal services such as health and education. But the pattern extends beyond these countries.…
Read More

Adult learning in Europe – pretty gloomy; but women do better

I've just looked at the EU Monitor on education and training 2012.   The EU target is for 15% of adults to take part in adult learning by 2015.    There's no chance this will be reached;  in fact the participation rate is going down.  In 2011 it was 8.9%, for formal and informal learning combined. 'Adults' are defined as 25-64. At some point countries are going to have to adjust their statistical categories to reflect demography, and push up the upper age boundary. As you can guess, I looked for the gender split. It's 8.2% for men, and 9.6% for women - nearly 20% higher. Only in Turkey and Rumania do more men…
Read More

Women’s colleges/colleges for women

It's International Women's Day tomorrow, but there'll be no Paula post as I'll be under the surgeon's knife (nothing dramatic).  In the run-up I notice particularly a major report from Warwick University analysing the salaries of 17000 recent graduates in full-time work (part-timers again slide out of the picture...).  It notes how persistent the gender pay gap is, but also how it varies, from 28% in law to 4% in education.   This is at the outset of their careers, remember - things will only get wider. However I thought I'd write on something a bit different.  I've just finished Rosemary Ashton's story of Victorian Bloomsbury.  I'm lucky enough to be a Bloomsbury…
Read More

Korea: a case study

Korea's first female president, Park Geun-hye, takes up office today.  This is a big step forward for the country, and for the wider political scene.   I've never been to Korea, but I've been thinking of using it as a case study for the Paula Principle, for the folllowing reasons. Koreans have made extraordinarily rapid educational progress over the past two decades.   15-20 years ago they were near the foot of the OECD league table on achievement at secondary school;  now they are at or around the top. It is a truly remarkable transformation. Their tertiary system has expanded in consequence, very rapidly, so that there are now large numbers of…
Read More

The Odd Women – and a possible mirror today

I'm just reading George Gissing's The Odd Women, a curious novel centred on women's prospects in the late 19th century.  These were pretty dismal on  the whole.  The novel focusses on three sisters caught in a kind of genteel poverty.  Two of them are past marriageable age, and also have hardly any chance of a decent occupation but must live on the tiny income bequeathed by their father. The third is still pretty and eligible, but works 14-hour days in a draper's, with very little scope for meeting a suitable husband. The title refers to something which I find hard to explain:  the apparent existence then of half a million more women than men…
Read More

Paula as philosopher

Men still outperform women in a small number of subject areas.   It's common knowledge that these include maths and physics (I'm still looking for someone who will explain why this should be so).  But it was a surprise to me to find that philosophy is much closer to these subjects than to the humanities subjects with which it is most commonly grouped. I learnt this from a pamphlet published by the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy in the UK. At undergraduate level 45% of philosophy students are female. This is much closer to Maths' 40% than it is to History's 58%, let alone English Studies'…
Read More

Makula

This post is a little different.  I want to introduce my cleaner - and friend - Makula. Makula went to school in Uganda, up to O levels at S4 (16 years).  She was unusual in that as a girl in a poor family, with 3 brothers, she would have been expected to leave school at the end of primary school, get married and go to work.  In Uganda school costs money, and she would normally have gone to earn money as early as possible.  But she was visibly a bright student, and her brothers said that they wished to leave school themselves, so the family agreed she should stay on. She…
Read More

The Double X Economy and measuring things

Professor Linda Scott from Oxford University has coined the term the Double X economy to refer to the need to look at global economic issues through different eyes.   Now the competition is strong for catchy concepts which might waft their author to fame and fortune.  But this one has a very down-to-earth application.  I'd urge you to listen to the part in Scott's inaugural lecture where she talks about what it means for girls in many Afircan countries to have to use cloth rags as sanitary towels. Scott is an economist who has plenty to say about the failings of neo-liberal approaches, but also about the irrelevance of some radical critiques.  She reminds…
Read More

The invisible woman

I've been reading Claire Tomalin's book on Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.  For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about this side of the Dickens story, in 1858 the author left his wife Catherine, taking nine of his ten children, including quite young ones. (His household was managed by Catherine's sister Georgina.) Tomalin traces out the extraordinary story of Dickens' involvement with a woman 25 years younger than he, Nelly Ternan. Nelly came from an acting family, and Dickens had produced and taken part in some theatrical events with her, her sisters and her mother. But he did not set up with her - although several of…
Read More

Segregation complications

A powerful recent paper in Sociology by Jarman, Blackburn and Racko (for ref see below) raises some tough issues when it comes to thinking through the implications of gender segregation in occupations. (I'm grateful to Athene Donald's blog for drawing it to my attention.)  Covering 30 countries, the authors show (I'm summarising, obviously) that the position of women is more favourable where segregation is high. In the first place, men's advantage on pay is less in countries where occupational segregation is high.  I knew that Scandinavian countries have low inequality but high segregation, as women work largely in personal services such as health and education. But the pattern extends beyond these countries.…
Read More

Adult learning in Europe – pretty gloomy; but women do better

I've just looked at the EU Monitor on education and training 2012.   The EU target is for 15% of adults to take part in adult learning by 2015.    There's no chance this will be reached;  in fact the participation rate is going down.  In 2011 it was 8.9%, for formal and informal learning combined. 'Adults' are defined as 25-64. At some point countries are going to have to adjust their statistical categories to reflect demography, and push up the upper age boundary. As you can guess, I looked for the gender split. It's 8.2% for men, and 9.6% for women - nearly 20% higher. Only in Turkey and Rumania do more men…
Read More

Women’s colleges/colleges for women

It's International Women's Day tomorrow, but there'll be no Paula post as I'll be under the surgeon's knife (nothing dramatic).  In the run-up I notice particularly a major report from Warwick University analysing the salaries of 17000 recent graduates in full-time work (part-timers again slide out of the picture...).  It notes how persistent the gender pay gap is, but also how it varies, from 28% in law to 4% in education.   This is at the outset of their careers, remember - things will only get wider. However I thought I'd write on something a bit different.  I've just finished Rosemary Ashton's story of Victorian Bloomsbury.  I'm lucky enough to be a Bloomsbury…
Read More

Korea: a case study

Korea's first female president, Park Geun-hye, takes up office today.  This is a big step forward for the country, and for the wider political scene.   I've never been to Korea, but I've been thinking of using it as a case study for the Paula Principle, for the folllowing reasons. Koreans have made extraordinarily rapid educational progress over the past two decades.   15-20 years ago they were near the foot of the OECD league table on achievement at secondary school;  now they are at or around the top. It is a truly remarkable transformation. Their tertiary system has expanded in consequence, very rapidly, so that there are now large numbers of…
Read More

The Odd Women – and a possible mirror today

I'm just reading George Gissing's The Odd Women, a curious novel centred on women's prospects in the late 19th century.  These were pretty dismal on  the whole.  The novel focusses on three sisters caught in a kind of genteel poverty.  Two of them are past marriageable age, and also have hardly any chance of a decent occupation but must live on the tiny income bequeathed by their father. The third is still pretty and eligible, but works 14-hour days in a draper's, with very little scope for meeting a suitable husband. The title refers to something which I find hard to explain:  the apparent existence then of half a million more women than men…
Read More

Paula as philosopher

Men still outperform women in a small number of subject areas.   It's common knowledge that these include maths and physics (I'm still looking for someone who will explain why this should be so).  But it was a surprise to me to find that philosophy is much closer to these subjects than to the humanities subjects with which it is most commonly grouped. I learnt this from a pamphlet published by the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy in the UK. At undergraduate level 45% of philosophy students are female. This is much closer to Maths' 40% than it is to History's 58%, let alone English Studies'…
Read More

Makula

This post is a little different.  I want to introduce my cleaner - and friend - Makula. Makula went to school in Uganda, up to O levels at S4 (16 years).  She was unusual in that as a girl in a poor family, with 3 brothers, she would have been expected to leave school at the end of primary school, get married and go to work.  In Uganda school costs money, and she would normally have gone to earn money as early as possible.  But she was visibly a bright student, and her brothers said that they wished to leave school themselves, so the family agreed she should stay on. She…
Read More

The Double X Economy and measuring things

Professor Linda Scott from Oxford University has coined the term the Double X economy to refer to the need to look at global economic issues through different eyes.   Now the competition is strong for catchy concepts which might waft their author to fame and fortune.  But this one has a very down-to-earth application.  I'd urge you to listen to the part in Scott's inaugural lecture where she talks about what it means for girls in many Afircan countries to have to use cloth rags as sanitary towels. Scott is an economist who has plenty to say about the failings of neo-liberal approaches, but also about the irrelevance of some radical critiques.  She reminds…
Read More

The invisible woman

I've been reading Claire Tomalin's book on Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.  For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about this side of the Dickens story, in 1858 the author left his wife Catherine, taking nine of his ten children, including quite young ones. (His household was managed by Catherine's sister Georgina.) Tomalin traces out the extraordinary story of Dickens' involvement with a woman 25 years younger than he, Nelly Ternan. Nelly came from an acting family, and Dickens had produced and taken part in some theatrical events with her, her sisters and her mother. But he did not set up with her - although several of…
Read More

Segregation complications

A powerful recent paper in Sociology by Jarman, Blackburn and Racko (for ref see below) raises some tough issues when it comes to thinking through the implications of gender segregation in occupations. (I'm grateful to Athene Donald's blog for drawing it to my attention.)  Covering 30 countries, the authors show (I'm summarising, obviously) that the position of women is more favourable where segregation is high. In the first place, men's advantage on pay is less in countries where occupational segregation is high.  I knew that Scandinavian countries have low inequality but high segregation, as women work largely in personal services such as health and education. But the pattern extends beyond these countries.…
Read More

Adult learning in Europe – pretty gloomy; but women do better

I've just looked at the EU Monitor on education and training 2012.   The EU target is for 15% of adults to take part in adult learning by 2015.    There's no chance this will be reached;  in fact the participation rate is going down.  In 2011 it was 8.9%, for formal and informal learning combined. 'Adults' are defined as 25-64. At some point countries are going to have to adjust their statistical categories to reflect demography, and push up the upper age boundary. As you can guess, I looked for the gender split. It's 8.2% for men, and 9.6% for women - nearly 20% higher. Only in Turkey and Rumania do more men…
Read More

Women’s colleges/colleges for women

It's International Women's Day tomorrow, but there'll be no Paula post as I'll be under the surgeon's knife (nothing dramatic).  In the run-up I notice particularly a major report from Warwick University analysing the salaries of 17000 recent graduates in full-time work (part-timers again slide out of the picture...).  It notes how persistent the gender pay gap is, but also how it varies, from 28% in law to 4% in education.   This is at the outset of their careers, remember - things will only get wider. However I thought I'd write on something a bit different.  I've just finished Rosemary Ashton's story of Victorian Bloomsbury.  I'm lucky enough to be a Bloomsbury…
Read More

Korea: a case study

Korea's first female president, Park Geun-hye, takes up office today.  This is a big step forward for the country, and for the wider political scene.   I've never been to Korea, but I've been thinking of using it as a case study for the Paula Principle, for the folllowing reasons. Koreans have made extraordinarily rapid educational progress over the past two decades.   15-20 years ago they were near the foot of the OECD league table on achievement at secondary school;  now they are at or around the top. It is a truly remarkable transformation. Their tertiary system has expanded in consequence, very rapidly, so that there are now large numbers of…
Read More

The Odd Women – and a possible mirror today

I'm just reading George Gissing's The Odd Women, a curious novel centred on women's prospects in the late 19th century.  These were pretty dismal on  the whole.  The novel focusses on three sisters caught in a kind of genteel poverty.  Two of them are past marriageable age, and also have hardly any chance of a decent occupation but must live on the tiny income bequeathed by their father. The third is still pretty and eligible, but works 14-hour days in a draper's, with very little scope for meeting a suitable husband. The title refers to something which I find hard to explain:  the apparent existence then of half a million more women than men…
Read More

Paula as philosopher

Men still outperform women in a small number of subject areas.   It's common knowledge that these include maths and physics (I'm still looking for someone who will explain why this should be so).  But it was a surprise to me to find that philosophy is much closer to these subjects than to the humanities subjects with which it is most commonly grouped. I learnt this from a pamphlet published by the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy in the UK. At undergraduate level 45% of philosophy students are female. This is much closer to Maths' 40% than it is to History's 58%, let alone English Studies'…
Read More

Makula

This post is a little different.  I want to introduce my cleaner - and friend - Makula. Makula went to school in Uganda, up to O levels at S4 (16 years).  She was unusual in that as a girl in a poor family, with 3 brothers, she would have been expected to leave school at the end of primary school, get married and go to work.  In Uganda school costs money, and she would normally have gone to earn money as early as possible.  But she was visibly a bright student, and her brothers said that they wished to leave school themselves, so the family agreed she should stay on. She…
Read More

The Double X Economy and measuring things

Professor Linda Scott from Oxford University has coined the term the Double X economy to refer to the need to look at global economic issues through different eyes.   Now the competition is strong for catchy concepts which might waft their author to fame and fortune.  But this one has a very down-to-earth application.  I'd urge you to listen to the part in Scott's inaugural lecture where she talks about what it means for girls in many Afircan countries to have to use cloth rags as sanitary towels. Scott is an economist who has plenty to say about the failings of neo-liberal approaches, but also about the irrelevance of some radical critiques.  She reminds…
Read More

The invisible woman

I've been reading Claire Tomalin's book on Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.  For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about this side of the Dickens story, in 1858 the author left his wife Catherine, taking nine of his ten children, including quite young ones. (His household was managed by Catherine's sister Georgina.) Tomalin traces out the extraordinary story of Dickens' involvement with a woman 25 years younger than he, Nelly Ternan. Nelly came from an acting family, and Dickens had produced and taken part in some theatrical events with her, her sisters and her mother. But he did not set up with her - although several of…
Read More

Segregation complications

A powerful recent paper in Sociology by Jarman, Blackburn and Racko (for ref see below) raises some tough issues when it comes to thinking through the implications of gender segregation in occupations. (I'm grateful to Athene Donald's blog for drawing it to my attention.)  Covering 30 countries, the authors show (I'm summarising, obviously) that the position of women is more favourable where segregation is high. In the first place, men's advantage on pay is less in countries where occupational segregation is high.  I knew that Scandinavian countries have low inequality but high segregation, as women work largely in personal services such as health and education. But the pattern extends beyond these countries.…
Read More

Adult learning in Europe – pretty gloomy; but women do better

I've just looked at the EU Monitor on education and training 2012.   The EU target is for 15% of adults to take part in adult learning by 2015.    There's no chance this will be reached;  in fact the participation rate is going down.  In 2011 it was 8.9%, for formal and informal learning combined. 'Adults' are defined as 25-64. At some point countries are going to have to adjust their statistical categories to reflect demography, and push up the upper age boundary. As you can guess, I looked for the gender split. It's 8.2% for men, and 9.6% for women - nearly 20% higher. Only in Turkey and Rumania do more men…
Read More

Women’s colleges/colleges for women

It's International Women's Day tomorrow, but there'll be no Paula post as I'll be under the surgeon's knife (nothing dramatic).  In the run-up I notice particularly a major report from Warwick University analysing the salaries of 17000 recent graduates in full-time work (part-timers again slide out of the picture...).  It notes how persistent the gender pay gap is, but also how it varies, from 28% in law to 4% in education.   This is at the outset of their careers, remember - things will only get wider. However I thought I'd write on something a bit different.  I've just finished Rosemary Ashton's story of Victorian Bloomsbury.  I'm lucky enough to be a Bloomsbury…
Read More

Korea: a case study

Korea's first female president, Park Geun-hye, takes up office today.  This is a big step forward for the country, and for the wider political scene.   I've never been to Korea, but I've been thinking of using it as a case study for the Paula Principle, for the folllowing reasons. Koreans have made extraordinarily rapid educational progress over the past two decades.   15-20 years ago they were near the foot of the OECD league table on achievement at secondary school;  now they are at or around the top. It is a truly remarkable transformation. Their tertiary system has expanded in consequence, very rapidly, so that there are now large numbers of…
Read More

The Odd Women – and a possible mirror today

I'm just reading George Gissing's The Odd Women, a curious novel centred on women's prospects in the late 19th century.  These were pretty dismal on  the whole.  The novel focusses on three sisters caught in a kind of genteel poverty.  Two of them are past marriageable age, and also have hardly any chance of a decent occupation but must live on the tiny income bequeathed by their father. The third is still pretty and eligible, but works 14-hour days in a draper's, with very little scope for meeting a suitable husband. The title refers to something which I find hard to explain:  the apparent existence then of half a million more women than men…
Read More

Paula as philosopher

Men still outperform women in a small number of subject areas.   It's common knowledge that these include maths and physics (I'm still looking for someone who will explain why this should be so).  But it was a surprise to me to find that philosophy is much closer to these subjects than to the humanities subjects with which it is most commonly grouped. I learnt this from a pamphlet published by the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy in the UK. At undergraduate level 45% of philosophy students are female. This is much closer to Maths' 40% than it is to History's 58%, let alone English Studies'…
Read More

Makula

This post is a little different.  I want to introduce my cleaner - and friend - Makula. Makula went to school in Uganda, up to O levels at S4 (16 years).  She was unusual in that as a girl in a poor family, with 3 brothers, she would have been expected to leave school at the end of primary school, get married and go to work.  In Uganda school costs money, and she would normally have gone to earn money as early as possible.  But she was visibly a bright student, and her brothers said that they wished to leave school themselves, so the family agreed she should stay on. She…
Read More

The Double X Economy and measuring things

Professor Linda Scott from Oxford University has coined the term the Double X economy to refer to the need to look at global economic issues through different eyes.   Now the competition is strong for catchy concepts which might waft their author to fame and fortune.  But this one has a very down-to-earth application.  I'd urge you to listen to the part in Scott's inaugural lecture where she talks about what it means for girls in many Afircan countries to have to use cloth rags as sanitary towels. Scott is an economist who has plenty to say about the failings of neo-liberal approaches, but also about the irrelevance of some radical critiques.  She reminds…
Read More

The invisible woman

I've been reading Claire Tomalin's book on Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.  For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about this side of the Dickens story, in 1858 the author left his wife Catherine, taking nine of his ten children, including quite young ones. (His household was managed by Catherine's sister Georgina.) Tomalin traces out the extraordinary story of Dickens' involvement with a woman 25 years younger than he, Nelly Ternan. Nelly came from an acting family, and Dickens had produced and taken part in some theatrical events with her, her sisters and her mother. But he did not set up with her - although several of…
Read More

Segregation complications

A powerful recent paper in Sociology by Jarman, Blackburn and Racko (for ref see below) raises some tough issues when it comes to thinking through the implications of gender segregation in occupations. (I'm grateful to Athene Donald's blog for drawing it to my attention.)  Covering 30 countries, the authors show (I'm summarising, obviously) that the position of women is more favourable where segregation is high. In the first place, men's advantage on pay is less in countries where occupational segregation is high.  I knew that Scandinavian countries have low inequality but high segregation, as women work largely in personal services such as health and education. But the pattern extends beyond these countries.…
Read More

Adult learning in Europe – pretty gloomy; but women do better

I've just looked at the EU Monitor on education and training 2012.   The EU target is for 15% of adults to take part in adult learning by 2015.    There's no chance this will be reached;  in fact the participation rate is going down.  In 2011 it was 8.9%, for formal and informal learning combined. 'Adults' are defined as 25-64. At some point countries are going to have to adjust their statistical categories to reflect demography, and push up the upper age boundary. As you can guess, I looked for the gender split. It's 8.2% for men, and 9.6% for women - nearly 20% higher. Only in Turkey and Rumania do more men…
Read More