The Paula Principle

International

The PP applies across many countries. It’s a sign of developepd status when women outperform men educationally.

Basic incomes surface in Davos – no longer marginal

Back in Aug 2014 I wrote a post on the idea of a citizen's income.  The idea of guaranteeing a basic income is PP-relevant because it would help people - especially women -  move in and out of formal employment without looking like deviant marginals. I said: The CI has been around for a long time. It has generally been dismissed as either cranky or ok in theory but unworkable. But when it was first being discussed 20 or so years ago, the labour market was very different..... As a political sell, it’s a tough one. Many will have an instinctive reaction against the unconditional something-for-nothing proposal....But as Iain Duncan…
Read More

Reduced working hours: linking the PP to inequality and to climate change

The primary conclusion of The Paula Principle  is that women's competences stand a chance of being fully recognised only if men's work and career patterns change to a more 'mosaic' model.  Central to this is the need for us to recognise that careers, at whatever level, should not require people to work full time or continuously (hence the mosaic image of different pieces put together in a variety of patterns, rather than a vertical career ladder). In this post I want to make the link between this and two items: a. new analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which shows how inequalities in incomes have been increased because lower-wage men increasingly…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne

I just came across the blog below, which I wrote over a year ago, and for some reason failed to post.  The first part reads so sadly in the light of what eventually happened - though I doubt even the perspicacious Dejevsky foresaw how her prediction would be fulfilled....   Readers may know that the fifth 'PP' factor is positive choice:  women actively choosing not to go on up the career ladder, even though they (probably/possibly) could.  By 'positive' I mean that the choice is, to any reasonable eye, not constrained, e.g. by grumpy partner's unwillingness to do more childcare, but is the product of 'free will'.  I argue that this…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

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

Working hours again: UK and US

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

Womenomics

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

Mustang

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

Why any skills assessment can’t ignore older women

Older women are habitually treated as marginal figures in the labour force .   I've just come across some figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that really drive home why this should no longer be the case. Here are the key points: 1.  The participation rate for women aged 55+  is already over one-third.  That, if I've understood the figures correctly, is of all women aged 55+, i.e. including centenarians and beyond. 2.  Nearly one third (32.8%) of F aged 65-69 will be in work by 2024.  So much for conventional ways of giving us the labour force figures, stopping at 65. 3.   Nearly one quarter  (22.4%) of…
Read More

OECD says it: rebalance the system in favour of FE

My former colleagues at OECD have just produced an excellent report which should disturb, and which deserves really wide discussion - especially as I agree wholeheartedly with one of their major, and radical, recommendations. Building Skills for All: A Review of England looks at the problem of low skills.  A familiar issue, you may see - haven't we heard it all before.  Well,  try this: "Around one in five young English university graduates can manage to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin, and understand a petrol gauge, but will struggle to undertake more challenging literacy and numeracy tasks." This is based on PIAAC evidence - an international survey based on…
Read More

Malala working for free(dom), and negotiations

I went with my daughter yesterday to see the film He Named Me Malala.  It's an extraordinary mix: the unique, improbable story of Malala's path to the Nobel Prize (with detail of the titanium plate they had to insert into her head after the shooting, and all the efforts to recover the use of her muscles), and the her apparent capacity to maintain the life of an ordinary schoolgirl with two brothers, in a Birmingham home.  I found it moving, and for once inspirational is an appropriate description. The film is founded on the way her father encouraged her, and other girls, to carry on with their schooling.  He poses the…
Read More

Basic incomes surface in Davos – no longer marginal

Back in Aug 2014 I wrote a post on the idea of a citizen's income.  The idea of guaranteeing a basic income is PP-relevant because it would help people - especially women -  move in and out of formal employment without looking like deviant marginals. I said: The CI has been around for a long time. It has generally been dismissed as either cranky or ok in theory but unworkable. But when it was first being discussed 20 or so years ago, the labour market was very different..... As a political sell, it’s a tough one. Many will have an instinctive reaction against the unconditional something-for-nothing proposal....But as Iain Duncan…
Read More

Reduced working hours: linking the PP to inequality and to climate change

The primary conclusion of The Paula Principle  is that women's competences stand a chance of being fully recognised only if men's work and career patterns change to a more 'mosaic' model.  Central to this is the need for us to recognise that careers, at whatever level, should not require people to work full time or continuously (hence the mosaic image of different pieces put together in a variety of patterns, rather than a vertical career ladder). In this post I want to make the link between this and two items: a. new analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which shows how inequalities in incomes have been increased because lower-wage men increasingly…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne

I just came across the blog below, which I wrote over a year ago, and for some reason failed to post.  The first part reads so sadly in the light of what eventually happened - though I doubt even the perspicacious Dejevsky foresaw how her prediction would be fulfilled....   Readers may know that the fifth 'PP' factor is positive choice:  women actively choosing not to go on up the career ladder, even though they (probably/possibly) could.  By 'positive' I mean that the choice is, to any reasonable eye, not constrained, e.g. by grumpy partner's unwillingness to do more childcare, but is the product of 'free will'.  I argue that this…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

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

Working hours again: UK and US

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

Womenomics

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

Mustang

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

Why any skills assessment can’t ignore older women

Older women are habitually treated as marginal figures in the labour force .   I've just come across some figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that really drive home why this should no longer be the case. Here are the key points: 1.  The participation rate for women aged 55+  is already over one-third.  That, if I've understood the figures correctly, is of all women aged 55+, i.e. including centenarians and beyond. 2.  Nearly one third (32.8%) of F aged 65-69 will be in work by 2024.  So much for conventional ways of giving us the labour force figures, stopping at 65. 3.   Nearly one quarter  (22.4%) of…
Read More

OECD says it: rebalance the system in favour of FE

My former colleagues at OECD have just produced an excellent report which should disturb, and which deserves really wide discussion - especially as I agree wholeheartedly with one of their major, and radical, recommendations. Building Skills for All: A Review of England looks at the problem of low skills.  A familiar issue, you may see - haven't we heard it all before.  Well,  try this: "Around one in five young English university graduates can manage to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin, and understand a petrol gauge, but will struggle to undertake more challenging literacy and numeracy tasks." This is based on PIAAC evidence - an international survey based on…
Read More

Malala working for free(dom), and negotiations

I went with my daughter yesterday to see the film He Named Me Malala.  It's an extraordinary mix: the unique, improbable story of Malala's path to the Nobel Prize (with detail of the titanium plate they had to insert into her head after the shooting, and all the efforts to recover the use of her muscles), and the her apparent capacity to maintain the life of an ordinary schoolgirl with two brothers, in a Birmingham home.  I found it moving, and for once inspirational is an appropriate description. The film is founded on the way her father encouraged her, and other girls, to carry on with their schooling.  He poses the…
Read More

Basic incomes surface in Davos – no longer marginal

Back in Aug 2014 I wrote a post on the idea of a citizen's income.  The idea of guaranteeing a basic income is PP-relevant because it would help people - especially women -  move in and out of formal employment without looking like deviant marginals. I said: The CI has been around for a long time. It has generally been dismissed as either cranky or ok in theory but unworkable. But when it was first being discussed 20 or so years ago, the labour market was very different..... As a political sell, it’s a tough one. Many will have an instinctive reaction against the unconditional something-for-nothing proposal....But as Iain Duncan…
Read More

Reduced working hours: linking the PP to inequality and to climate change

The primary conclusion of The Paula Principle  is that women's competences stand a chance of being fully recognised only if men's work and career patterns change to a more 'mosaic' model.  Central to this is the need for us to recognise that careers, at whatever level, should not require people to work full time or continuously (hence the mosaic image of different pieces put together in a variety of patterns, rather than a vertical career ladder). In this post I want to make the link between this and two items: a. new analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which shows how inequalities in incomes have been increased because lower-wage men increasingly…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne

I just came across the blog below, which I wrote over a year ago, and for some reason failed to post.  The first part reads so sadly in the light of what eventually happened - though I doubt even the perspicacious Dejevsky foresaw how her prediction would be fulfilled....   Readers may know that the fifth 'PP' factor is positive choice:  women actively choosing not to go on up the career ladder, even though they (probably/possibly) could.  By 'positive' I mean that the choice is, to any reasonable eye, not constrained, e.g. by grumpy partner's unwillingness to do more childcare, but is the product of 'free will'.  I argue that this…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

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

Working hours again: UK and US

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

Womenomics

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

Mustang

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

Why any skills assessment can’t ignore older women

Older women are habitually treated as marginal figures in the labour force .   I've just come across some figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that really drive home why this should no longer be the case. Here are the key points: 1.  The participation rate for women aged 55+  is already over one-third.  That, if I've understood the figures correctly, is of all women aged 55+, i.e. including centenarians and beyond. 2.  Nearly one third (32.8%) of F aged 65-69 will be in work by 2024.  So much for conventional ways of giving us the labour force figures, stopping at 65. 3.   Nearly one quarter  (22.4%) of…
Read More

OECD says it: rebalance the system in favour of FE

My former colleagues at OECD have just produced an excellent report which should disturb, and which deserves really wide discussion - especially as I agree wholeheartedly with one of their major, and radical, recommendations. Building Skills for All: A Review of England looks at the problem of low skills.  A familiar issue, you may see - haven't we heard it all before.  Well,  try this: "Around one in five young English university graduates can manage to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin, and understand a petrol gauge, but will struggle to undertake more challenging literacy and numeracy tasks." This is based on PIAAC evidence - an international survey based on…
Read More

Malala working for free(dom), and negotiations

I went with my daughter yesterday to see the film He Named Me Malala.  It's an extraordinary mix: the unique, improbable story of Malala's path to the Nobel Prize (with detail of the titanium plate they had to insert into her head after the shooting, and all the efforts to recover the use of her muscles), and the her apparent capacity to maintain the life of an ordinary schoolgirl with two brothers, in a Birmingham home.  I found it moving, and for once inspirational is an appropriate description. The film is founded on the way her father encouraged her, and other girls, to carry on with their schooling.  He poses the…
Read More

Basic incomes surface in Davos – no longer marginal

Back in Aug 2014 I wrote a post on the idea of a citizen's income.  The idea of guaranteeing a basic income is PP-relevant because it would help people - especially women -  move in and out of formal employment without looking like deviant marginals. I said: The CI has been around for a long time. It has generally been dismissed as either cranky or ok in theory but unworkable. But when it was first being discussed 20 or so years ago, the labour market was very different..... As a political sell, it’s a tough one. Many will have an instinctive reaction against the unconditional something-for-nothing proposal....But as Iain Duncan…
Read More

Reduced working hours: linking the PP to inequality and to climate change

The primary conclusion of The Paula Principle  is that women's competences stand a chance of being fully recognised only if men's work and career patterns change to a more 'mosaic' model.  Central to this is the need for us to recognise that careers, at whatever level, should not require people to work full time or continuously (hence the mosaic image of different pieces put together in a variety of patterns, rather than a vertical career ladder). In this post I want to make the link between this and two items: a. new analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which shows how inequalities in incomes have been increased because lower-wage men increasingly…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne

I just came across the blog below, which I wrote over a year ago, and for some reason failed to post.  The first part reads so sadly in the light of what eventually happened - though I doubt even the perspicacious Dejevsky foresaw how her prediction would be fulfilled....   Readers may know that the fifth 'PP' factor is positive choice:  women actively choosing not to go on up the career ladder, even though they (probably/possibly) could.  By 'positive' I mean that the choice is, to any reasonable eye, not constrained, e.g. by grumpy partner's unwillingness to do more childcare, but is the product of 'free will'.  I argue that this…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

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

Working hours again: UK and US

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

Womenomics

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

Mustang

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

Why any skills assessment can’t ignore older women

Older women are habitually treated as marginal figures in the labour force .   I've just come across some figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that really drive home why this should no longer be the case. Here are the key points: 1.  The participation rate for women aged 55+  is already over one-third.  That, if I've understood the figures correctly, is of all women aged 55+, i.e. including centenarians and beyond. 2.  Nearly one third (32.8%) of F aged 65-69 will be in work by 2024.  So much for conventional ways of giving us the labour force figures, stopping at 65. 3.   Nearly one quarter  (22.4%) of…
Read More

OECD says it: rebalance the system in favour of FE

My former colleagues at OECD have just produced an excellent report which should disturb, and which deserves really wide discussion - especially as I agree wholeheartedly with one of their major, and radical, recommendations. Building Skills for All: A Review of England looks at the problem of low skills.  A familiar issue, you may see - haven't we heard it all before.  Well,  try this: "Around one in five young English university graduates can manage to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin, and understand a petrol gauge, but will struggle to undertake more challenging literacy and numeracy tasks." This is based on PIAAC evidence - an international survey based on…
Read More

Malala working for free(dom), and negotiations

I went with my daughter yesterday to see the film He Named Me Malala.  It's an extraordinary mix: the unique, improbable story of Malala's path to the Nobel Prize (with detail of the titanium plate they had to insert into her head after the shooting, and all the efforts to recover the use of her muscles), and the her apparent capacity to maintain the life of an ordinary schoolgirl with two brothers, in a Birmingham home.  I found it moving, and for once inspirational is an appropriate description. The film is founded on the way her father encouraged her, and other girls, to carry on with their schooling.  He poses the…
Read More

Basic incomes surface in Davos – no longer marginal

Back in Aug 2014 I wrote a post on the idea of a citizen's income.  The idea of guaranteeing a basic income is PP-relevant because it would help people - especially women -  move in and out of formal employment without looking like deviant marginals. I said: The CI has been around for a long time. It has generally been dismissed as either cranky or ok in theory but unworkable. But when it was first being discussed 20 or so years ago, the labour market was very different..... As a political sell, it’s a tough one. Many will have an instinctive reaction against the unconditional something-for-nothing proposal....But as Iain Duncan…
Read More

Reduced working hours: linking the PP to inequality and to climate change

The primary conclusion of The Paula Principle  is that women's competences stand a chance of being fully recognised only if men's work and career patterns change to a more 'mosaic' model.  Central to this is the need for us to recognise that careers, at whatever level, should not require people to work full time or continuously (hence the mosaic image of different pieces put together in a variety of patterns, rather than a vertical career ladder). In this post I want to make the link between this and two items: a. new analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which shows how inequalities in incomes have been increased because lower-wage men increasingly…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne

I just came across the blog below, which I wrote over a year ago, and for some reason failed to post.  The first part reads so sadly in the light of what eventually happened - though I doubt even the perspicacious Dejevsky foresaw how her prediction would be fulfilled....   Readers may know that the fifth 'PP' factor is positive choice:  women actively choosing not to go on up the career ladder, even though they (probably/possibly) could.  By 'positive' I mean that the choice is, to any reasonable eye, not constrained, e.g. by grumpy partner's unwillingness to do more childcare, but is the product of 'free will'.  I argue that this…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

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

Working hours again: UK and US

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

Womenomics

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

Mustang

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

Why any skills assessment can’t ignore older women

Older women are habitually treated as marginal figures in the labour force .   I've just come across some figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that really drive home why this should no longer be the case. Here are the key points: 1.  The participation rate for women aged 55+  is already over one-third.  That, if I've understood the figures correctly, is of all women aged 55+, i.e. including centenarians and beyond. 2.  Nearly one third (32.8%) of F aged 65-69 will be in work by 2024.  So much for conventional ways of giving us the labour force figures, stopping at 65. 3.   Nearly one quarter  (22.4%) of…
Read More

OECD says it: rebalance the system in favour of FE

My former colleagues at OECD have just produced an excellent report which should disturb, and which deserves really wide discussion - especially as I agree wholeheartedly with one of their major, and radical, recommendations. Building Skills for All: A Review of England looks at the problem of low skills.  A familiar issue, you may see - haven't we heard it all before.  Well,  try this: "Around one in five young English university graduates can manage to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin, and understand a petrol gauge, but will struggle to undertake more challenging literacy and numeracy tasks." This is based on PIAAC evidence - an international survey based on…
Read More

Malala working for free(dom), and negotiations

I went with my daughter yesterday to see the film He Named Me Malala.  It's an extraordinary mix: the unique, improbable story of Malala's path to the Nobel Prize (with detail of the titanium plate they had to insert into her head after the shooting, and all the efforts to recover the use of her muscles), and the her apparent capacity to maintain the life of an ordinary schoolgirl with two brothers, in a Birmingham home.  I found it moving, and for once inspirational is an appropriate description. The film is founded on the way her father encouraged her, and other girls, to carry on with their schooling.  He poses the…
Read More

Basic incomes surface in Davos – no longer marginal

Back in Aug 2014 I wrote a post on the idea of a citizen's income.  The idea of guaranteeing a basic income is PP-relevant because it would help people - especially women -  move in and out of formal employment without looking like deviant marginals. I said: The CI has been around for a long time. It has generally been dismissed as either cranky or ok in theory but unworkable. But when it was first being discussed 20 or so years ago, the labour market was very different..... As a political sell, it’s a tough one. Many will have an instinctive reaction against the unconditional something-for-nothing proposal....But as Iain Duncan…
Read More

Reduced working hours: linking the PP to inequality and to climate change

The primary conclusion of The Paula Principle  is that women's competences stand a chance of being fully recognised only if men's work and career patterns change to a more 'mosaic' model.  Central to this is the need for us to recognise that careers, at whatever level, should not require people to work full time or continuously (hence the mosaic image of different pieces put together in a variety of patterns, rather than a vertical career ladder). In this post I want to make the link between this and two items: a. new analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which shows how inequalities in incomes have been increased because lower-wage men increasingly…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne

I just came across the blog below, which I wrote over a year ago, and for some reason failed to post.  The first part reads so sadly in the light of what eventually happened - though I doubt even the perspicacious Dejevsky foresaw how her prediction would be fulfilled....   Readers may know that the fifth 'PP' factor is positive choice:  women actively choosing not to go on up the career ladder, even though they (probably/possibly) could.  By 'positive' I mean that the choice is, to any reasonable eye, not constrained, e.g. by grumpy partner's unwillingness to do more childcare, but is the product of 'free will'.  I argue that this…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

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

Working hours again: UK and US

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

Womenomics

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

Mustang

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

Why any skills assessment can’t ignore older women

Older women are habitually treated as marginal figures in the labour force .   I've just come across some figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that really drive home why this should no longer be the case. Here are the key points: 1.  The participation rate for women aged 55+  is already over one-third.  That, if I've understood the figures correctly, is of all women aged 55+, i.e. including centenarians and beyond. 2.  Nearly one third (32.8%) of F aged 65-69 will be in work by 2024.  So much for conventional ways of giving us the labour force figures, stopping at 65. 3.   Nearly one quarter  (22.4%) of…
Read More

OECD says it: rebalance the system in favour of FE

My former colleagues at OECD have just produced an excellent report which should disturb, and which deserves really wide discussion - especially as I agree wholeheartedly with one of their major, and radical, recommendations. Building Skills for All: A Review of England looks at the problem of low skills.  A familiar issue, you may see - haven't we heard it all before.  Well,  try this: "Around one in five young English university graduates can manage to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin, and understand a petrol gauge, but will struggle to undertake more challenging literacy and numeracy tasks." This is based on PIAAC evidence - an international survey based on…
Read More

Malala working for free(dom), and negotiations

I went with my daughter yesterday to see the film He Named Me Malala.  It's an extraordinary mix: the unique, improbable story of Malala's path to the Nobel Prize (with detail of the titanium plate they had to insert into her head after the shooting, and all the efforts to recover the use of her muscles), and the her apparent capacity to maintain the life of an ordinary schoolgirl with two brothers, in a Birmingham home.  I found it moving, and for once inspirational is an appropriate description. The film is founded on the way her father encouraged her, and other girls, to carry on with their schooling.  He poses the…
Read More

Basic incomes surface in Davos – no longer marginal

Back in Aug 2014 I wrote a post on the idea of a citizen's income.  The idea of guaranteeing a basic income is PP-relevant because it would help people - especially women -  move in and out of formal employment without looking like deviant marginals. I said: The CI has been around for a long time. It has generally been dismissed as either cranky or ok in theory but unworkable. But when it was first being discussed 20 or so years ago, the labour market was very different..... As a political sell, it’s a tough one. Many will have an instinctive reaction against the unconditional something-for-nothing proposal....But as Iain Duncan…
Read More

Reduced working hours: linking the PP to inequality and to climate change

The primary conclusion of The Paula Principle  is that women's competences stand a chance of being fully recognised only if men's work and career patterns change to a more 'mosaic' model.  Central to this is the need for us to recognise that careers, at whatever level, should not require people to work full time or continuously (hence the mosaic image of different pieces put together in a variety of patterns, rather than a vertical career ladder). In this post I want to make the link between this and two items: a. new analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which shows how inequalities in incomes have been increased because lower-wage men increasingly…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne

I just came across the blog below, which I wrote over a year ago, and for some reason failed to post.  The first part reads so sadly in the light of what eventually happened - though I doubt even the perspicacious Dejevsky foresaw how her prediction would be fulfilled....   Readers may know that the fifth 'PP' factor is positive choice:  women actively choosing not to go on up the career ladder, even though they (probably/possibly) could.  By 'positive' I mean that the choice is, to any reasonable eye, not constrained, e.g. by grumpy partner's unwillingness to do more childcare, but is the product of 'free will'.  I argue that this…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

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

Working hours again: UK and US

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

Womenomics

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

Mustang

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

Why any skills assessment can’t ignore older women

Older women are habitually treated as marginal figures in the labour force .   I've just come across some figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that really drive home why this should no longer be the case. Here are the key points: 1.  The participation rate for women aged 55+  is already over one-third.  That, if I've understood the figures correctly, is of all women aged 55+, i.e. including centenarians and beyond. 2.  Nearly one third (32.8%) of F aged 65-69 will be in work by 2024.  So much for conventional ways of giving us the labour force figures, stopping at 65. 3.   Nearly one quarter  (22.4%) of…
Read More

OECD says it: rebalance the system in favour of FE

My former colleagues at OECD have just produced an excellent report which should disturb, and which deserves really wide discussion - especially as I agree wholeheartedly with one of their major, and radical, recommendations. Building Skills for All: A Review of England looks at the problem of low skills.  A familiar issue, you may see - haven't we heard it all before.  Well,  try this: "Around one in five young English university graduates can manage to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin, and understand a petrol gauge, but will struggle to undertake more challenging literacy and numeracy tasks." This is based on PIAAC evidence - an international survey based on…
Read More

Malala working for free(dom), and negotiations

I went with my daughter yesterday to see the film He Named Me Malala.  It's an extraordinary mix: the unique, improbable story of Malala's path to the Nobel Prize (with detail of the titanium plate they had to insert into her head after the shooting, and all the efforts to recover the use of her muscles), and the her apparent capacity to maintain the life of an ordinary schoolgirl with two brothers, in a Birmingham home.  I found it moving, and for once inspirational is an appropriate description. The film is founded on the way her father encouraged her, and other girls, to carry on with their schooling.  He poses the…
Read More

Basic incomes surface in Davos – no longer marginal

Back in Aug 2014 I wrote a post on the idea of a citizen's income.  The idea of guaranteeing a basic income is PP-relevant because it would help people - especially women -  move in and out of formal employment without looking like deviant marginals. I said: The CI has been around for a long time. It has generally been dismissed as either cranky or ok in theory but unworkable. But when it was first being discussed 20 or so years ago, the labour market was very different..... As a political sell, it’s a tough one. Many will have an instinctive reaction against the unconditional something-for-nothing proposal....But as Iain Duncan…
Read More

Reduced working hours: linking the PP to inequality and to climate change

The primary conclusion of The Paula Principle  is that women's competences stand a chance of being fully recognised only if men's work and career patterns change to a more 'mosaic' model.  Central to this is the need for us to recognise that careers, at whatever level, should not require people to work full time or continuously (hence the mosaic image of different pieces put together in a variety of patterns, rather than a vertical career ladder). In this post I want to make the link between this and two items: a. new analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which shows how inequalities in incomes have been increased because lower-wage men increasingly…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne

I just came across the blog below, which I wrote over a year ago, and for some reason failed to post.  The first part reads so sadly in the light of what eventually happened - though I doubt even the perspicacious Dejevsky foresaw how her prediction would be fulfilled....   Readers may know that the fifth 'PP' factor is positive choice:  women actively choosing not to go on up the career ladder, even though they (probably/possibly) could.  By 'positive' I mean that the choice is, to any reasonable eye, not constrained, e.g. by grumpy partner's unwillingness to do more childcare, but is the product of 'free will'.  I argue that this…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

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

Working hours again: UK and US

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

Womenomics

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

Mustang

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

Why any skills assessment can’t ignore older women

Older women are habitually treated as marginal figures in the labour force .   I've just come across some figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that really drive home why this should no longer be the case. Here are the key points: 1.  The participation rate for women aged 55+  is already over one-third.  That, if I've understood the figures correctly, is of all women aged 55+, i.e. including centenarians and beyond. 2.  Nearly one third (32.8%) of F aged 65-69 will be in work by 2024.  So much for conventional ways of giving us the labour force figures, stopping at 65. 3.   Nearly one quarter  (22.4%) of…
Read More

OECD says it: rebalance the system in favour of FE

My former colleagues at OECD have just produced an excellent report which should disturb, and which deserves really wide discussion - especially as I agree wholeheartedly with one of their major, and radical, recommendations. Building Skills for All: A Review of England looks at the problem of low skills.  A familiar issue, you may see - haven't we heard it all before.  Well,  try this: "Around one in five young English university graduates can manage to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin, and understand a petrol gauge, but will struggle to undertake more challenging literacy and numeracy tasks." This is based on PIAAC evidence - an international survey based on…
Read More

Malala working for free(dom), and negotiations

I went with my daughter yesterday to see the film He Named Me Malala.  It's an extraordinary mix: the unique, improbable story of Malala's path to the Nobel Prize (with detail of the titanium plate they had to insert into her head after the shooting, and all the efforts to recover the use of her muscles), and the her apparent capacity to maintain the life of an ordinary schoolgirl with two brothers, in a Birmingham home.  I found it moving, and for once inspirational is an appropriate description. The film is founded on the way her father encouraged her, and other girls, to carry on with their schooling.  He poses the…
Read More

Basic incomes surface in Davos – no longer marginal

Back in Aug 2014 I wrote a post on the idea of a citizen's income.  The idea of guaranteeing a basic income is PP-relevant because it would help people - especially women -  move in and out of formal employment without looking like deviant marginals. I said: The CI has been around for a long time. It has generally been dismissed as either cranky or ok in theory but unworkable. But when it was first being discussed 20 or so years ago, the labour market was very different..... As a political sell, it’s a tough one. Many will have an instinctive reaction against the unconditional something-for-nothing proposal....But as Iain Duncan…
Read More

Reduced working hours: linking the PP to inequality and to climate change

The primary conclusion of The Paula Principle  is that women's competences stand a chance of being fully recognised only if men's work and career patterns change to a more 'mosaic' model.  Central to this is the need for us to recognise that careers, at whatever level, should not require people to work full time or continuously (hence the mosaic image of different pieces put together in a variety of patterns, rather than a vertical career ladder). In this post I want to make the link between this and two items: a. new analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which shows how inequalities in incomes have been increased because lower-wage men increasingly…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne

I just came across the blog below, which I wrote over a year ago, and for some reason failed to post.  The first part reads so sadly in the light of what eventually happened - though I doubt even the perspicacious Dejevsky foresaw how her prediction would be fulfilled....   Readers may know that the fifth 'PP' factor is positive choice:  women actively choosing not to go on up the career ladder, even though they (probably/possibly) could.  By 'positive' I mean that the choice is, to any reasonable eye, not constrained, e.g. by grumpy partner's unwillingness to do more childcare, but is the product of 'free will'.  I argue that this…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

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

Working hours again: UK and US

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

Womenomics

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

Mustang

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

Why any skills assessment can’t ignore older women

Older women are habitually treated as marginal figures in the labour force .   I've just come across some figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that really drive home why this should no longer be the case. Here are the key points: 1.  The participation rate for women aged 55+  is already over one-third.  That, if I've understood the figures correctly, is of all women aged 55+, i.e. including centenarians and beyond. 2.  Nearly one third (32.8%) of F aged 65-69 will be in work by 2024.  So much for conventional ways of giving us the labour force figures, stopping at 65. 3.   Nearly one quarter  (22.4%) of…
Read More

OECD says it: rebalance the system in favour of FE

My former colleagues at OECD have just produced an excellent report which should disturb, and which deserves really wide discussion - especially as I agree wholeheartedly with one of their major, and radical, recommendations. Building Skills for All: A Review of England looks at the problem of low skills.  A familiar issue, you may see - haven't we heard it all before.  Well,  try this: "Around one in five young English university graduates can manage to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin, and understand a petrol gauge, but will struggle to undertake more challenging literacy and numeracy tasks." This is based on PIAAC evidence - an international survey based on…
Read More

Malala working for free(dom), and negotiations

I went with my daughter yesterday to see the film He Named Me Malala.  It's an extraordinary mix: the unique, improbable story of Malala's path to the Nobel Prize (with detail of the titanium plate they had to insert into her head after the shooting, and all the efforts to recover the use of her muscles), and the her apparent capacity to maintain the life of an ordinary schoolgirl with two brothers, in a Birmingham home.  I found it moving, and for once inspirational is an appropriate description. The film is founded on the way her father encouraged her, and other girls, to carry on with their schooling.  He poses the…
Read More

Basic incomes surface in Davos – no longer marginal

Back in Aug 2014 I wrote a post on the idea of a citizen's income.  The idea of guaranteeing a basic income is PP-relevant because it would help people - especially women -  move in and out of formal employment without looking like deviant marginals. I said: The CI has been around for a long time. It has generally been dismissed as either cranky or ok in theory but unworkable. But when it was first being discussed 20 or so years ago, the labour market was very different..... As a political sell, it’s a tough one. Many will have an instinctive reaction against the unconditional something-for-nothing proposal....But as Iain Duncan…
Read More

Reduced working hours: linking the PP to inequality and to climate change

The primary conclusion of The Paula Principle  is that women's competences stand a chance of being fully recognised only if men's work and career patterns change to a more 'mosaic' model.  Central to this is the need for us to recognise that careers, at whatever level, should not require people to work full time or continuously (hence the mosaic image of different pieces put together in a variety of patterns, rather than a vertical career ladder). In this post I want to make the link between this and two items: a. new analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which shows how inequalities in incomes have been increased because lower-wage men increasingly…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne

I just came across the blog below, which I wrote over a year ago, and for some reason failed to post.  The first part reads so sadly in the light of what eventually happened - though I doubt even the perspicacious Dejevsky foresaw how her prediction would be fulfilled....   Readers may know that the fifth 'PP' factor is positive choice:  women actively choosing not to go on up the career ladder, even though they (probably/possibly) could.  By 'positive' I mean that the choice is, to any reasonable eye, not constrained, e.g. by grumpy partner's unwillingness to do more childcare, but is the product of 'free will'.  I argue that this…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

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

Working hours again: UK and US

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

Womenomics

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

Mustang

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

Why any skills assessment can’t ignore older women

Older women are habitually treated as marginal figures in the labour force .   I've just come across some figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that really drive home why this should no longer be the case. Here are the key points: 1.  The participation rate for women aged 55+  is already over one-third.  That, if I've understood the figures correctly, is of all women aged 55+, i.e. including centenarians and beyond. 2.  Nearly one third (32.8%) of F aged 65-69 will be in work by 2024.  So much for conventional ways of giving us the labour force figures, stopping at 65. 3.   Nearly one quarter  (22.4%) of…
Read More

OECD says it: rebalance the system in favour of FE

My former colleagues at OECD have just produced an excellent report which should disturb, and which deserves really wide discussion - especially as I agree wholeheartedly with one of their major, and radical, recommendations. Building Skills for All: A Review of England looks at the problem of low skills.  A familiar issue, you may see - haven't we heard it all before.  Well,  try this: "Around one in five young English university graduates can manage to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin, and understand a petrol gauge, but will struggle to undertake more challenging literacy and numeracy tasks." This is based on PIAAC evidence - an international survey based on…
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Malala working for free(dom), and negotiations

I went with my daughter yesterday to see the film He Named Me Malala.  It's an extraordinary mix: the unique, improbable story of Malala's path to the Nobel Prize (with detail of the titanium plate they had to insert into her head after the shooting, and all the efforts to recover the use of her muscles), and the her apparent capacity to maintain the life of an ordinary schoolgirl with two brothers, in a Birmingham home.  I found it moving, and for once inspirational is an appropriate description. The film is founded on the way her father encouraged her, and other girls, to carry on with their schooling.  He poses the…
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