The Paula Principle

International

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

Hillary and Montaigne: knowing when to stop

Readers of this blog may know that PP factor 5 is 'positive choice'.  That is, one of the five factors that explain why women work below their competence level is their capacity/willingness to choose not to go up one further rung on whatever career ladder they are on, even though they could (probably/possibly) do so. By 'positive' choice, I mean a decision that is, as far as we can tell, a free one, not driven by  the prospect of grumpy partner unwilling to increase their share of the childcare.  It would be good, incidentally, if more men made such choices; for one thing it would reduce the instances of the…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Happiness, happiness….

A 'World Happiness Report' sounds rather implausible;  or Orwellian.  But it exists, and has been put together by some top-flight authors - John Helliwell from Canada, Richard Layard from the UK and Jeffrey Sachs of the US.  Even if I disagree with the 'happiness' title, it's a big step towards measuring things that are important for our quality of life. (The authors admit the label is there for marketing purposes - 'wellbeing' would be far preferable in my view.) The WHR focuses on six determinants of happiness/wellbeing:  income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, absence of corruption and generosity/giving.  Much of the report is unsurprising in itself…
Read More

Rejections, and more important things

It's the day after International Women's Day, and I just thought I'd share two responses I've had to the PP book manuscript.  The first is from a publisher: "There are two problems.  First they feel that some of the material is not wholly unfamiliar – my colleagues who read many more business books than me tell me that they have read books which cover the subject and they are not sure this breaks enough new ground.  And second – and I am not sure how one resolves this problem– they feel it would be a sales obstacle for us to publish a book on this subject by a man.  It probably…
Read More

Men learning – in sheds or not

    I've been reading a collection which focusses on how and why men do or don't learn as adults.    It's a basic component of the Paula Principle picture that men appear more reluctant to engage in learning, formal and informal, across most OECD countries.   The PP looks at the consequences  of this (or lack of them) for women ;   Men Learning Through Life  asks what this reluctance means for men.   It is not an exhibition of 'moral panic' about male disadvantage, but a good research-based look at a distinctive issue and what might be done about it.   The book draws its inspiration from pioneering studies…
Read More

Higher education: UCAS shows more push behind the PP

What gives the Paula Principle its current salience is the difference levels of achievement between women and men in education of all kinds.   I've just been looking at the latest UCAS report on applications and entry to higher education.  It confirms the seemingly inexorable growth in the gap between female and male educational paths. First, the overall picture: - For 18 year olds in 2014 the entry rate increased (3.2 per cent proportionally for men, 3.7 per cent for women) to the highest recorded levels for both men (25.8 per cent) and women (34.1 per cent). As with application rates, 18 year old women were around a third (32…
Read More

Crossing cultures: flexibility and drug habits

I've argued several times in this blog for more attention to part-time work as the key to women being able to work to their level of competence (and men too…).  A report on Women and Flexible Working from the ippr (published,a tad puzzlingly, on Boxing Day) compares practices across 7 EU countries. The basic premiss is clear:  better practice on enabling women to work flexibly will be good for the economy, as well as for them personally.  Sweden, Netherlands and Germany are the leaders on both female employment levels and flexible working. The first two show particularly strong levels of employee choice over working time, with around 40% of women…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Needed: a new vocabulary of time

  I've just read Guy Standing's The Precariat, which came out a couple of years ago.  Standing, a former ILO official, documents the global growth in the numbers  of people working in insecure conditions, with few or no contractual rights.    He builds a very powerful argument, though to my mind he throws slightly too many babies into the bathwater, and it becomes difficult to see where the boundaries are that divide the precariat from the rest.  Women, of course, form the bulk of those who work in these conditions, especially in poorer countries but also in wealthier ones.  They have always been part of what used to be called the…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne: knowing when to stop

Readers of this blog may know that PP factor 5 is 'positive choice'.  That is, one of the five factors that explain why women work below their competence level is their capacity/willingness to choose not to go up one further rung on whatever career ladder they are on, even though they could (probably/possibly) do so. By 'positive' choice, I mean a decision that is, as far as we can tell, a free one, not driven by  the prospect of grumpy partner unwilling to increase their share of the childcare.  It would be good, incidentally, if more men made such choices; for one thing it would reduce the instances of the…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Happiness, happiness….

A 'World Happiness Report' sounds rather implausible;  or Orwellian.  But it exists, and has been put together by some top-flight authors - John Helliwell from Canada, Richard Layard from the UK and Jeffrey Sachs of the US.  Even if I disagree with the 'happiness' title, it's a big step towards measuring things that are important for our quality of life. (The authors admit the label is there for marketing purposes - 'wellbeing' would be far preferable in my view.) The WHR focuses on six determinants of happiness/wellbeing:  income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, absence of corruption and generosity/giving.  Much of the report is unsurprising in itself…
Read More

Rejections, and more important things

It's the day after International Women's Day, and I just thought I'd share two responses I've had to the PP book manuscript.  The first is from a publisher: "There are two problems.  First they feel that some of the material is not wholly unfamiliar – my colleagues who read many more business books than me tell me that they have read books which cover the subject and they are not sure this breaks enough new ground.  And second – and I am not sure how one resolves this problem– they feel it would be a sales obstacle for us to publish a book on this subject by a man.  It probably…
Read More

Men learning – in sheds or not

    I've been reading a collection which focusses on how and why men do or don't learn as adults.    It's a basic component of the Paula Principle picture that men appear more reluctant to engage in learning, formal and informal, across most OECD countries.   The PP looks at the consequences  of this (or lack of them) for women ;   Men Learning Through Life  asks what this reluctance means for men.   It is not an exhibition of 'moral panic' about male disadvantage, but a good research-based look at a distinctive issue and what might be done about it.   The book draws its inspiration from pioneering studies…
Read More

Higher education: UCAS shows more push behind the PP

What gives the Paula Principle its current salience is the difference levels of achievement between women and men in education of all kinds.   I've just been looking at the latest UCAS report on applications and entry to higher education.  It confirms the seemingly inexorable growth in the gap between female and male educational paths. First, the overall picture: - For 18 year olds in 2014 the entry rate increased (3.2 per cent proportionally for men, 3.7 per cent for women) to the highest recorded levels for both men (25.8 per cent) and women (34.1 per cent). As with application rates, 18 year old women were around a third (32…
Read More

Crossing cultures: flexibility and drug habits

I've argued several times in this blog for more attention to part-time work as the key to women being able to work to their level of competence (and men too…).  A report on Women and Flexible Working from the ippr (published,a tad puzzlingly, on Boxing Day) compares practices across 7 EU countries. The basic premiss is clear:  better practice on enabling women to work flexibly will be good for the economy, as well as for them personally.  Sweden, Netherlands and Germany are the leaders on both female employment levels and flexible working. The first two show particularly strong levels of employee choice over working time, with around 40% of women…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Needed: a new vocabulary of time

  I've just read Guy Standing's The Precariat, which came out a couple of years ago.  Standing, a former ILO official, documents the global growth in the numbers  of people working in insecure conditions, with few or no contractual rights.    He builds a very powerful argument, though to my mind he throws slightly too many babies into the bathwater, and it becomes difficult to see where the boundaries are that divide the precariat from the rest.  Women, of course, form the bulk of those who work in these conditions, especially in poorer countries but also in wealthier ones.  They have always been part of what used to be called the…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne: knowing when to stop

Readers of this blog may know that PP factor 5 is 'positive choice'.  That is, one of the five factors that explain why women work below their competence level is their capacity/willingness to choose not to go up one further rung on whatever career ladder they are on, even though they could (probably/possibly) do so. By 'positive' choice, I mean a decision that is, as far as we can tell, a free one, not driven by  the prospect of grumpy partner unwilling to increase their share of the childcare.  It would be good, incidentally, if more men made such choices; for one thing it would reduce the instances of the…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Happiness, happiness….

A 'World Happiness Report' sounds rather implausible;  or Orwellian.  But it exists, and has been put together by some top-flight authors - John Helliwell from Canada, Richard Layard from the UK and Jeffrey Sachs of the US.  Even if I disagree with the 'happiness' title, it's a big step towards measuring things that are important for our quality of life. (The authors admit the label is there for marketing purposes - 'wellbeing' would be far preferable in my view.) The WHR focuses on six determinants of happiness/wellbeing:  income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, absence of corruption and generosity/giving.  Much of the report is unsurprising in itself…
Read More

Rejections, and more important things

It's the day after International Women's Day, and I just thought I'd share two responses I've had to the PP book manuscript.  The first is from a publisher: "There are two problems.  First they feel that some of the material is not wholly unfamiliar – my colleagues who read many more business books than me tell me that they have read books which cover the subject and they are not sure this breaks enough new ground.  And second – and I am not sure how one resolves this problem– they feel it would be a sales obstacle for us to publish a book on this subject by a man.  It probably…
Read More

Men learning – in sheds or not

    I've been reading a collection which focusses on how and why men do or don't learn as adults.    It's a basic component of the Paula Principle picture that men appear more reluctant to engage in learning, formal and informal, across most OECD countries.   The PP looks at the consequences  of this (or lack of them) for women ;   Men Learning Through Life  asks what this reluctance means for men.   It is not an exhibition of 'moral panic' about male disadvantage, but a good research-based look at a distinctive issue and what might be done about it.   The book draws its inspiration from pioneering studies…
Read More

Higher education: UCAS shows more push behind the PP

What gives the Paula Principle its current salience is the difference levels of achievement between women and men in education of all kinds.   I've just been looking at the latest UCAS report on applications and entry to higher education.  It confirms the seemingly inexorable growth in the gap between female and male educational paths. First, the overall picture: - For 18 year olds in 2014 the entry rate increased (3.2 per cent proportionally for men, 3.7 per cent for women) to the highest recorded levels for both men (25.8 per cent) and women (34.1 per cent). As with application rates, 18 year old women were around a third (32…
Read More

Crossing cultures: flexibility and drug habits

I've argued several times in this blog for more attention to part-time work as the key to women being able to work to their level of competence (and men too…).  A report on Women and Flexible Working from the ippr (published,a tad puzzlingly, on Boxing Day) compares practices across 7 EU countries. The basic premiss is clear:  better practice on enabling women to work flexibly will be good for the economy, as well as for them personally.  Sweden, Netherlands and Germany are the leaders on both female employment levels and flexible working. The first two show particularly strong levels of employee choice over working time, with around 40% of women…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Needed: a new vocabulary of time

  I've just read Guy Standing's The Precariat, which came out a couple of years ago.  Standing, a former ILO official, documents the global growth in the numbers  of people working in insecure conditions, with few or no contractual rights.    He builds a very powerful argument, though to my mind he throws slightly too many babies into the bathwater, and it becomes difficult to see where the boundaries are that divide the precariat from the rest.  Women, of course, form the bulk of those who work in these conditions, especially in poorer countries but also in wealthier ones.  They have always been part of what used to be called the…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne: knowing when to stop

Readers of this blog may know that PP factor 5 is 'positive choice'.  That is, one of the five factors that explain why women work below their competence level is their capacity/willingness to choose not to go up one further rung on whatever career ladder they are on, even though they could (probably/possibly) do so. By 'positive' choice, I mean a decision that is, as far as we can tell, a free one, not driven by  the prospect of grumpy partner unwilling to increase their share of the childcare.  It would be good, incidentally, if more men made such choices; for one thing it would reduce the instances of the…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Happiness, happiness….

A 'World Happiness Report' sounds rather implausible;  or Orwellian.  But it exists, and has been put together by some top-flight authors - John Helliwell from Canada, Richard Layard from the UK and Jeffrey Sachs of the US.  Even if I disagree with the 'happiness' title, it's a big step towards measuring things that are important for our quality of life. (The authors admit the label is there for marketing purposes - 'wellbeing' would be far preferable in my view.) The WHR focuses on six determinants of happiness/wellbeing:  income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, absence of corruption and generosity/giving.  Much of the report is unsurprising in itself…
Read More

Rejections, and more important things

It's the day after International Women's Day, and I just thought I'd share two responses I've had to the PP book manuscript.  The first is from a publisher: "There are two problems.  First they feel that some of the material is not wholly unfamiliar – my colleagues who read many more business books than me tell me that they have read books which cover the subject and they are not sure this breaks enough new ground.  And second – and I am not sure how one resolves this problem– they feel it would be a sales obstacle for us to publish a book on this subject by a man.  It probably…
Read More

Men learning – in sheds or not

    I've been reading a collection which focusses on how and why men do or don't learn as adults.    It's a basic component of the Paula Principle picture that men appear more reluctant to engage in learning, formal and informal, across most OECD countries.   The PP looks at the consequences  of this (or lack of them) for women ;   Men Learning Through Life  asks what this reluctance means for men.   It is not an exhibition of 'moral panic' about male disadvantage, but a good research-based look at a distinctive issue and what might be done about it.   The book draws its inspiration from pioneering studies…
Read More

Higher education: UCAS shows more push behind the PP

What gives the Paula Principle its current salience is the difference levels of achievement between women and men in education of all kinds.   I've just been looking at the latest UCAS report on applications and entry to higher education.  It confirms the seemingly inexorable growth in the gap between female and male educational paths. First, the overall picture: - For 18 year olds in 2014 the entry rate increased (3.2 per cent proportionally for men, 3.7 per cent for women) to the highest recorded levels for both men (25.8 per cent) and women (34.1 per cent). As with application rates, 18 year old women were around a third (32…
Read More

Crossing cultures: flexibility and drug habits

I've argued several times in this blog for more attention to part-time work as the key to women being able to work to their level of competence (and men too…).  A report on Women and Flexible Working from the ippr (published,a tad puzzlingly, on Boxing Day) compares practices across 7 EU countries. The basic premiss is clear:  better practice on enabling women to work flexibly will be good for the economy, as well as for them personally.  Sweden, Netherlands and Germany are the leaders on both female employment levels and flexible working. The first two show particularly strong levels of employee choice over working time, with around 40% of women…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Needed: a new vocabulary of time

  I've just read Guy Standing's The Precariat, which came out a couple of years ago.  Standing, a former ILO official, documents the global growth in the numbers  of people working in insecure conditions, with few or no contractual rights.    He builds a very powerful argument, though to my mind he throws slightly too many babies into the bathwater, and it becomes difficult to see where the boundaries are that divide the precariat from the rest.  Women, of course, form the bulk of those who work in these conditions, especially in poorer countries but also in wealthier ones.  They have always been part of what used to be called the…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne: knowing when to stop

Readers of this blog may know that PP factor 5 is 'positive choice'.  That is, one of the five factors that explain why women work below their competence level is their capacity/willingness to choose not to go up one further rung on whatever career ladder they are on, even though they could (probably/possibly) do so. By 'positive' choice, I mean a decision that is, as far as we can tell, a free one, not driven by  the prospect of grumpy partner unwilling to increase their share of the childcare.  It would be good, incidentally, if more men made such choices; for one thing it would reduce the instances of the…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Happiness, happiness….

A 'World Happiness Report' sounds rather implausible;  or Orwellian.  But it exists, and has been put together by some top-flight authors - John Helliwell from Canada, Richard Layard from the UK and Jeffrey Sachs of the US.  Even if I disagree with the 'happiness' title, it's a big step towards measuring things that are important for our quality of life. (The authors admit the label is there for marketing purposes - 'wellbeing' would be far preferable in my view.) The WHR focuses on six determinants of happiness/wellbeing:  income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, absence of corruption and generosity/giving.  Much of the report is unsurprising in itself…
Read More

Rejections, and more important things

It's the day after International Women's Day, and I just thought I'd share two responses I've had to the PP book manuscript.  The first is from a publisher: "There are two problems.  First they feel that some of the material is not wholly unfamiliar – my colleagues who read many more business books than me tell me that they have read books which cover the subject and they are not sure this breaks enough new ground.  And second – and I am not sure how one resolves this problem– they feel it would be a sales obstacle for us to publish a book on this subject by a man.  It probably…
Read More

Men learning – in sheds or not

    I've been reading a collection which focusses on how and why men do or don't learn as adults.    It's a basic component of the Paula Principle picture that men appear more reluctant to engage in learning, formal and informal, across most OECD countries.   The PP looks at the consequences  of this (or lack of them) for women ;   Men Learning Through Life  asks what this reluctance means for men.   It is not an exhibition of 'moral panic' about male disadvantage, but a good research-based look at a distinctive issue and what might be done about it.   The book draws its inspiration from pioneering studies…
Read More

Higher education: UCAS shows more push behind the PP

What gives the Paula Principle its current salience is the difference levels of achievement between women and men in education of all kinds.   I've just been looking at the latest UCAS report on applications and entry to higher education.  It confirms the seemingly inexorable growth in the gap between female and male educational paths. First, the overall picture: - For 18 year olds in 2014 the entry rate increased (3.2 per cent proportionally for men, 3.7 per cent for women) to the highest recorded levels for both men (25.8 per cent) and women (34.1 per cent). As with application rates, 18 year old women were around a third (32…
Read More

Crossing cultures: flexibility and drug habits

I've argued several times in this blog for more attention to part-time work as the key to women being able to work to their level of competence (and men too…).  A report on Women and Flexible Working from the ippr (published,a tad puzzlingly, on Boxing Day) compares practices across 7 EU countries. The basic premiss is clear:  better practice on enabling women to work flexibly will be good for the economy, as well as for them personally.  Sweden, Netherlands and Germany are the leaders on both female employment levels and flexible working. The first two show particularly strong levels of employee choice over working time, with around 40% of women…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Needed: a new vocabulary of time

  I've just read Guy Standing's The Precariat, which came out a couple of years ago.  Standing, a former ILO official, documents the global growth in the numbers  of people working in insecure conditions, with few or no contractual rights.    He builds a very powerful argument, though to my mind he throws slightly too many babies into the bathwater, and it becomes difficult to see where the boundaries are that divide the precariat from the rest.  Women, of course, form the bulk of those who work in these conditions, especially in poorer countries but also in wealthier ones.  They have always been part of what used to be called the…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne: knowing when to stop

Readers of this blog may know that PP factor 5 is 'positive choice'.  That is, one of the five factors that explain why women work below their competence level is their capacity/willingness to choose not to go up one further rung on whatever career ladder they are on, even though they could (probably/possibly) do so. By 'positive' choice, I mean a decision that is, as far as we can tell, a free one, not driven by  the prospect of grumpy partner unwilling to increase their share of the childcare.  It would be good, incidentally, if more men made such choices; for one thing it would reduce the instances of the…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Happiness, happiness….

A 'World Happiness Report' sounds rather implausible;  or Orwellian.  But it exists, and has been put together by some top-flight authors - John Helliwell from Canada, Richard Layard from the UK and Jeffrey Sachs of the US.  Even if I disagree with the 'happiness' title, it's a big step towards measuring things that are important for our quality of life. (The authors admit the label is there for marketing purposes - 'wellbeing' would be far preferable in my view.) The WHR focuses on six determinants of happiness/wellbeing:  income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, absence of corruption and generosity/giving.  Much of the report is unsurprising in itself…
Read More

Rejections, and more important things

It's the day after International Women's Day, and I just thought I'd share two responses I've had to the PP book manuscript.  The first is from a publisher: "There are two problems.  First they feel that some of the material is not wholly unfamiliar – my colleagues who read many more business books than me tell me that they have read books which cover the subject and they are not sure this breaks enough new ground.  And second – and I am not sure how one resolves this problem– they feel it would be a sales obstacle for us to publish a book on this subject by a man.  It probably…
Read More

Men learning – in sheds or not

    I've been reading a collection which focusses on how and why men do or don't learn as adults.    It's a basic component of the Paula Principle picture that men appear more reluctant to engage in learning, formal and informal, across most OECD countries.   The PP looks at the consequences  of this (or lack of them) for women ;   Men Learning Through Life  asks what this reluctance means for men.   It is not an exhibition of 'moral panic' about male disadvantage, but a good research-based look at a distinctive issue and what might be done about it.   The book draws its inspiration from pioneering studies…
Read More

Higher education: UCAS shows more push behind the PP

What gives the Paula Principle its current salience is the difference levels of achievement between women and men in education of all kinds.   I've just been looking at the latest UCAS report on applications and entry to higher education.  It confirms the seemingly inexorable growth in the gap between female and male educational paths. First, the overall picture: - For 18 year olds in 2014 the entry rate increased (3.2 per cent proportionally for men, 3.7 per cent for women) to the highest recorded levels for both men (25.8 per cent) and women (34.1 per cent). As with application rates, 18 year old women were around a third (32…
Read More

Crossing cultures: flexibility and drug habits

I've argued several times in this blog for more attention to part-time work as the key to women being able to work to their level of competence (and men too…).  A report on Women and Flexible Working from the ippr (published,a tad puzzlingly, on Boxing Day) compares practices across 7 EU countries. The basic premiss is clear:  better practice on enabling women to work flexibly will be good for the economy, as well as for them personally.  Sweden, Netherlands and Germany are the leaders on both female employment levels and flexible working. The first two show particularly strong levels of employee choice over working time, with around 40% of women…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Needed: a new vocabulary of time

  I've just read Guy Standing's The Precariat, which came out a couple of years ago.  Standing, a former ILO official, documents the global growth in the numbers  of people working in insecure conditions, with few or no contractual rights.    He builds a very powerful argument, though to my mind he throws slightly too many babies into the bathwater, and it becomes difficult to see where the boundaries are that divide the precariat from the rest.  Women, of course, form the bulk of those who work in these conditions, especially in poorer countries but also in wealthier ones.  They have always been part of what used to be called the…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne: knowing when to stop

Readers of this blog may know that PP factor 5 is 'positive choice'.  That is, one of the five factors that explain why women work below their competence level is their capacity/willingness to choose not to go up one further rung on whatever career ladder they are on, even though they could (probably/possibly) do so. By 'positive' choice, I mean a decision that is, as far as we can tell, a free one, not driven by  the prospect of grumpy partner unwilling to increase their share of the childcare.  It would be good, incidentally, if more men made such choices; for one thing it would reduce the instances of the…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Happiness, happiness….

A 'World Happiness Report' sounds rather implausible;  or Orwellian.  But it exists, and has been put together by some top-flight authors - John Helliwell from Canada, Richard Layard from the UK and Jeffrey Sachs of the US.  Even if I disagree with the 'happiness' title, it's a big step towards measuring things that are important for our quality of life. (The authors admit the label is there for marketing purposes - 'wellbeing' would be far preferable in my view.) The WHR focuses on six determinants of happiness/wellbeing:  income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, absence of corruption and generosity/giving.  Much of the report is unsurprising in itself…
Read More

Rejections, and more important things

It's the day after International Women's Day, and I just thought I'd share two responses I've had to the PP book manuscript.  The first is from a publisher: "There are two problems.  First they feel that some of the material is not wholly unfamiliar – my colleagues who read many more business books than me tell me that they have read books which cover the subject and they are not sure this breaks enough new ground.  And second – and I am not sure how one resolves this problem– they feel it would be a sales obstacle for us to publish a book on this subject by a man.  It probably…
Read More

Men learning – in sheds or not

    I've been reading a collection which focusses on how and why men do or don't learn as adults.    It's a basic component of the Paula Principle picture that men appear more reluctant to engage in learning, formal and informal, across most OECD countries.   The PP looks at the consequences  of this (or lack of them) for women ;   Men Learning Through Life  asks what this reluctance means for men.   It is not an exhibition of 'moral panic' about male disadvantage, but a good research-based look at a distinctive issue and what might be done about it.   The book draws its inspiration from pioneering studies…
Read More

Higher education: UCAS shows more push behind the PP

What gives the Paula Principle its current salience is the difference levels of achievement between women and men in education of all kinds.   I've just been looking at the latest UCAS report on applications and entry to higher education.  It confirms the seemingly inexorable growth in the gap between female and male educational paths. First, the overall picture: - For 18 year olds in 2014 the entry rate increased (3.2 per cent proportionally for men, 3.7 per cent for women) to the highest recorded levels for both men (25.8 per cent) and women (34.1 per cent). As with application rates, 18 year old women were around a third (32…
Read More

Crossing cultures: flexibility and drug habits

I've argued several times in this blog for more attention to part-time work as the key to women being able to work to their level of competence (and men too…).  A report on Women and Flexible Working from the ippr (published,a tad puzzlingly, on Boxing Day) compares practices across 7 EU countries. The basic premiss is clear:  better practice on enabling women to work flexibly will be good for the economy, as well as for them personally.  Sweden, Netherlands and Germany are the leaders on both female employment levels and flexible working. The first two show particularly strong levels of employee choice over working time, with around 40% of women…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Needed: a new vocabulary of time

  I've just read Guy Standing's The Precariat, which came out a couple of years ago.  Standing, a former ILO official, documents the global growth in the numbers  of people working in insecure conditions, with few or no contractual rights.    He builds a very powerful argument, though to my mind he throws slightly too many babies into the bathwater, and it becomes difficult to see where the boundaries are that divide the precariat from the rest.  Women, of course, form the bulk of those who work in these conditions, especially in poorer countries but also in wealthier ones.  They have always been part of what used to be called the…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne: knowing when to stop

Readers of this blog may know that PP factor 5 is 'positive choice'.  That is, one of the five factors that explain why women work below their competence level is their capacity/willingness to choose not to go up one further rung on whatever career ladder they are on, even though they could (probably/possibly) do so. By 'positive' choice, I mean a decision that is, as far as we can tell, a free one, not driven by  the prospect of grumpy partner unwilling to increase their share of the childcare.  It would be good, incidentally, if more men made such choices; for one thing it would reduce the instances of the…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Happiness, happiness….

A 'World Happiness Report' sounds rather implausible;  or Orwellian.  But it exists, and has been put together by some top-flight authors - John Helliwell from Canada, Richard Layard from the UK and Jeffrey Sachs of the US.  Even if I disagree with the 'happiness' title, it's a big step towards measuring things that are important for our quality of life. (The authors admit the label is there for marketing purposes - 'wellbeing' would be far preferable in my view.) The WHR focuses on six determinants of happiness/wellbeing:  income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, absence of corruption and generosity/giving.  Much of the report is unsurprising in itself…
Read More

Rejections, and more important things

It's the day after International Women's Day, and I just thought I'd share two responses I've had to the PP book manuscript.  The first is from a publisher: "There are two problems.  First they feel that some of the material is not wholly unfamiliar – my colleagues who read many more business books than me tell me that they have read books which cover the subject and they are not sure this breaks enough new ground.  And second – and I am not sure how one resolves this problem– they feel it would be a sales obstacle for us to publish a book on this subject by a man.  It probably…
Read More

Men learning – in sheds or not

    I've been reading a collection which focusses on how and why men do or don't learn as adults.    It's a basic component of the Paula Principle picture that men appear more reluctant to engage in learning, formal and informal, across most OECD countries.   The PP looks at the consequences  of this (or lack of them) for women ;   Men Learning Through Life  asks what this reluctance means for men.   It is not an exhibition of 'moral panic' about male disadvantage, but a good research-based look at a distinctive issue and what might be done about it.   The book draws its inspiration from pioneering studies…
Read More

Higher education: UCAS shows more push behind the PP

What gives the Paula Principle its current salience is the difference levels of achievement between women and men in education of all kinds.   I've just been looking at the latest UCAS report on applications and entry to higher education.  It confirms the seemingly inexorable growth in the gap between female and male educational paths. First, the overall picture: - For 18 year olds in 2014 the entry rate increased (3.2 per cent proportionally for men, 3.7 per cent for women) to the highest recorded levels for both men (25.8 per cent) and women (34.1 per cent). As with application rates, 18 year old women were around a third (32…
Read More

Crossing cultures: flexibility and drug habits

I've argued several times in this blog for more attention to part-time work as the key to women being able to work to their level of competence (and men too…).  A report on Women and Flexible Working from the ippr (published,a tad puzzlingly, on Boxing Day) compares practices across 7 EU countries. The basic premiss is clear:  better practice on enabling women to work flexibly will be good for the economy, as well as for them personally.  Sweden, Netherlands and Germany are the leaders on both female employment levels and flexible working. The first two show particularly strong levels of employee choice over working time, with around 40% of women…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Needed: a new vocabulary of time

  I've just read Guy Standing's The Precariat, which came out a couple of years ago.  Standing, a former ILO official, documents the global growth in the numbers  of people working in insecure conditions, with few or no contractual rights.    He builds a very powerful argument, though to my mind he throws slightly too many babies into the bathwater, and it becomes difficult to see where the boundaries are that divide the precariat from the rest.  Women, of course, form the bulk of those who work in these conditions, especially in poorer countries but also in wealthier ones.  They have always been part of what used to be called the…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne: knowing when to stop

Readers of this blog may know that PP factor 5 is 'positive choice'.  That is, one of the five factors that explain why women work below their competence level is their capacity/willingness to choose not to go up one further rung on whatever career ladder they are on, even though they could (probably/possibly) do so. By 'positive' choice, I mean a decision that is, as far as we can tell, a free one, not driven by  the prospect of grumpy partner unwilling to increase their share of the childcare.  It would be good, incidentally, if more men made such choices; for one thing it would reduce the instances of the…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Happiness, happiness….

A 'World Happiness Report' sounds rather implausible;  or Orwellian.  But it exists, and has been put together by some top-flight authors - John Helliwell from Canada, Richard Layard from the UK and Jeffrey Sachs of the US.  Even if I disagree with the 'happiness' title, it's a big step towards measuring things that are important for our quality of life. (The authors admit the label is there for marketing purposes - 'wellbeing' would be far preferable in my view.) The WHR focuses on six determinants of happiness/wellbeing:  income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, absence of corruption and generosity/giving.  Much of the report is unsurprising in itself…
Read More

Rejections, and more important things

It's the day after International Women's Day, and I just thought I'd share two responses I've had to the PP book manuscript.  The first is from a publisher: "There are two problems.  First they feel that some of the material is not wholly unfamiliar – my colleagues who read many more business books than me tell me that they have read books which cover the subject and they are not sure this breaks enough new ground.  And second – and I am not sure how one resolves this problem– they feel it would be a sales obstacle for us to publish a book on this subject by a man.  It probably…
Read More

Men learning – in sheds or not

    I've been reading a collection which focusses on how and why men do or don't learn as adults.    It's a basic component of the Paula Principle picture that men appear more reluctant to engage in learning, formal and informal, across most OECD countries.   The PP looks at the consequences  of this (or lack of them) for women ;   Men Learning Through Life  asks what this reluctance means for men.   It is not an exhibition of 'moral panic' about male disadvantage, but a good research-based look at a distinctive issue and what might be done about it.   The book draws its inspiration from pioneering studies…
Read More

Higher education: UCAS shows more push behind the PP

What gives the Paula Principle its current salience is the difference levels of achievement between women and men in education of all kinds.   I've just been looking at the latest UCAS report on applications and entry to higher education.  It confirms the seemingly inexorable growth in the gap between female and male educational paths. First, the overall picture: - For 18 year olds in 2014 the entry rate increased (3.2 per cent proportionally for men, 3.7 per cent for women) to the highest recorded levels for both men (25.8 per cent) and women (34.1 per cent). As with application rates, 18 year old women were around a third (32…
Read More

Crossing cultures: flexibility and drug habits

I've argued several times in this blog for more attention to part-time work as the key to women being able to work to their level of competence (and men too…).  A report on Women and Flexible Working from the ippr (published,a tad puzzlingly, on Boxing Day) compares practices across 7 EU countries. The basic premiss is clear:  better practice on enabling women to work flexibly will be good for the economy, as well as for them personally.  Sweden, Netherlands and Germany are the leaders on both female employment levels and flexible working. The first two show particularly strong levels of employee choice over working time, with around 40% of women…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Needed: a new vocabulary of time

  I've just read Guy Standing's The Precariat, which came out a couple of years ago.  Standing, a former ILO official, documents the global growth in the numbers  of people working in insecure conditions, with few or no contractual rights.    He builds a very powerful argument, though to my mind he throws slightly too many babies into the bathwater, and it becomes difficult to see where the boundaries are that divide the precariat from the rest.  Women, of course, form the bulk of those who work in these conditions, especially in poorer countries but also in wealthier ones.  They have always been part of what used to be called the…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More

Hillary and Montaigne: knowing when to stop

Readers of this blog may know that PP factor 5 is 'positive choice'.  That is, one of the five factors that explain why women work below their competence level is their capacity/willingness to choose not to go up one further rung on whatever career ladder they are on, even though they could (probably/possibly) do so. By 'positive' choice, I mean a decision that is, as far as we can tell, a free one, not driven by  the prospect of grumpy partner unwilling to increase their share of the childcare.  It would be good, incidentally, if more men made such choices; for one thing it would reduce the instances of the…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Happiness, happiness….

A 'World Happiness Report' sounds rather implausible;  or Orwellian.  But it exists, and has been put together by some top-flight authors - John Helliwell from Canada, Richard Layard from the UK and Jeffrey Sachs of the US.  Even if I disagree with the 'happiness' title, it's a big step towards measuring things that are important for our quality of life. (The authors admit the label is there for marketing purposes - 'wellbeing' would be far preferable in my view.) The WHR focuses on six determinants of happiness/wellbeing:  income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, absence of corruption and generosity/giving.  Much of the report is unsurprising in itself…
Read More

Rejections, and more important things

It's the day after International Women's Day, and I just thought I'd share two responses I've had to the PP book manuscript.  The first is from a publisher: "There are two problems.  First they feel that some of the material is not wholly unfamiliar – my colleagues who read many more business books than me tell me that they have read books which cover the subject and they are not sure this breaks enough new ground.  And second – and I am not sure how one resolves this problem– they feel it would be a sales obstacle for us to publish a book on this subject by a man.  It probably…
Read More

Men learning – in sheds or not

    I've been reading a collection which focusses on how and why men do or don't learn as adults.    It's a basic component of the Paula Principle picture that men appear more reluctant to engage in learning, formal and informal, across most OECD countries.   The PP looks at the consequences  of this (or lack of them) for women ;   Men Learning Through Life  asks what this reluctance means for men.   It is not an exhibition of 'moral panic' about male disadvantage, but a good research-based look at a distinctive issue and what might be done about it.   The book draws its inspiration from pioneering studies…
Read More

Higher education: UCAS shows more push behind the PP

What gives the Paula Principle its current salience is the difference levels of achievement between women and men in education of all kinds.   I've just been looking at the latest UCAS report on applications and entry to higher education.  It confirms the seemingly inexorable growth in the gap between female and male educational paths. First, the overall picture: - For 18 year olds in 2014 the entry rate increased (3.2 per cent proportionally for men, 3.7 per cent for women) to the highest recorded levels for both men (25.8 per cent) and women (34.1 per cent). As with application rates, 18 year old women were around a third (32…
Read More

Crossing cultures: flexibility and drug habits

I've argued several times in this blog for more attention to part-time work as the key to women being able to work to their level of competence (and men too…).  A report on Women and Flexible Working from the ippr (published,a tad puzzlingly, on Boxing Day) compares practices across 7 EU countries. The basic premiss is clear:  better practice on enabling women to work flexibly will be good for the economy, as well as for them personally.  Sweden, Netherlands and Germany are the leaders on both female employment levels and flexible working. The first two show particularly strong levels of employee choice over working time, with around 40% of women…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Needed: a new vocabulary of time

  I've just read Guy Standing's The Precariat, which came out a couple of years ago.  Standing, a former ILO official, documents the global growth in the numbers  of people working in insecure conditions, with few or no contractual rights.    He builds a very powerful argument, though to my mind he throws slightly too many babies into the bathwater, and it becomes difficult to see where the boundaries are that divide the precariat from the rest.  Women, of course, form the bulk of those who work in these conditions, especially in poorer countries but also in wealthier ones.  They have always been part of what used to be called the…
Read More

Claudia Goldin and ‘grand convergence’

Claudia Goldin's presidential address to the American Economic Association - don't go away - is a stunner. It really should help to shift the whole focus of two important debates: the role and use of skills; and questions of gender equality at work. So it's hugely PP-relevant. There are large chunks of sophisticated number-crunching which are well over my head, but Goldin does a great job of summarising the key points, and how they fit into the historical narrative of what she calls the 'grand convergence' of male and female roles. She traces out the previous chapters of this narrative, which include greater female participation at work and, especially, changes in…
Read More