The tangibility of part-time work

"Between 1990 and 2011, the value of intangible assets in the UK grew from £50.2 billion to £137.5 billion, while at the same time the value of tangible, physical assets has increased much more slowly from £72.1 billion to £89.8 billion. In 2015, intangible investment will be 50% higher than investment in tangibles."   CIPD Human Capital Reporting: Investing for Sustainable Growth 2014, quoting a NESTA report by Goodrich et al Technology and the Arts. I'm always a bit suspicious of these kinds of calculation, but the overall message is pretty clear: we should be looking at how the money we spend (publicly and privately) on things like education and training (prime examples of intangibles) is effectively put to use, and not…
Read More

Flexitime

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

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

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

Politicians, Peter and Paula

I was chatting recently to a friend who lives in France.  We were musing sadly over the state of a country which we both love - she as a long-term resident, me as a sometime resident and frequent visitor.  The French economy is in poor shape, they have major social fractures, French culture seems to have lost its cutting edge;  and the political situation is dire, from almost every angle. There was an interesting recent piece by a political journalist (I'm afraid I can't remember who it was) which argued that the French presidency was designed by de Gaulle for himself; more or less worked for him for most of…
Read More

Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
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

Balancing the balance argument

The chief executive of UCAS, Mary Curnock Cook, recently made a really important point on gender 'balance', reported in the last issue of the Times Higher Education.  Speaking to the Association of University Administrators she observed that whilst it would take an additional 15000 female students to 'balance out' the current male dominance in engineering, it would take getting on for double that to do the same for the current female dominance of subjects allied to medicine, which includes nursing.   So, she argued, we should maybe be paying at least as much attention to getting more men into subjects where they are underrepresented as we do in respect of…
Read More

Confidence, convergence and caretakers

An interesting recent post from Jessica Valenti on 'why the female confidence gap is a sham' has made me rethink PP Factor 3.    PP Factor 3 refers to women's greater reluctance to put themselves forward for jobs, or for promotions, as one of the explanations for flatter careers and lower pay.  I've been in the habit of labelling this as 'lack of self-confidence'  but it needs a broader and more nuanced description. Valenti's piece is a guffaw at a new book The Confidence Code, which argues that American women need more confidence.  "It's true," she says, "that there's a gendered disparity in confidence..but the 'confidence gap' is not a personal defect…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

The tangibility of part-time work

"Between 1990 and 2011, the value of intangible assets in the UK grew from £50.2 billion to £137.5 billion, while at the same time the value of tangible, physical assets has increased much more slowly from £72.1 billion to £89.8 billion. In 2015, intangible investment will be 50% higher than investment in tangibles."   CIPD Human Capital Reporting: Investing for Sustainable Growth 2014, quoting a NESTA report by Goodrich et al Technology and the Arts. I'm always a bit suspicious of these kinds of calculation, but the overall message is pretty clear: we should be looking at how the money we spend (publicly and privately) on things like education and training (prime examples of intangibles) is effectively put to use, and not…
Read More

Flexitime

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

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

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

Politicians, Peter and Paula

I was chatting recently to a friend who lives in France.  We were musing sadly over the state of a country which we both love - she as a long-term resident, me as a sometime resident and frequent visitor.  The French economy is in poor shape, they have major social fractures, French culture seems to have lost its cutting edge;  and the political situation is dire, from almost every angle. There was an interesting recent piece by a political journalist (I'm afraid I can't remember who it was) which argued that the French presidency was designed by de Gaulle for himself; more or less worked for him for most of…
Read More

Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
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

Balancing the balance argument

The chief executive of UCAS, Mary Curnock Cook, recently made a really important point on gender 'balance', reported in the last issue of the Times Higher Education.  Speaking to the Association of University Administrators she observed that whilst it would take an additional 15000 female students to 'balance out' the current male dominance in engineering, it would take getting on for double that to do the same for the current female dominance of subjects allied to medicine, which includes nursing.   So, she argued, we should maybe be paying at least as much attention to getting more men into subjects where they are underrepresented as we do in respect of…
Read More

Confidence, convergence and caretakers

An interesting recent post from Jessica Valenti on 'why the female confidence gap is a sham' has made me rethink PP Factor 3.    PP Factor 3 refers to women's greater reluctance to put themselves forward for jobs, or for promotions, as one of the explanations for flatter careers and lower pay.  I've been in the habit of labelling this as 'lack of self-confidence'  but it needs a broader and more nuanced description. Valenti's piece is a guffaw at a new book The Confidence Code, which argues that American women need more confidence.  "It's true," she says, "that there's a gendered disparity in confidence..but the 'confidence gap' is not a personal defect…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

The tangibility of part-time work

"Between 1990 and 2011, the value of intangible assets in the UK grew from £50.2 billion to £137.5 billion, while at the same time the value of tangible, physical assets has increased much more slowly from £72.1 billion to £89.8 billion. In 2015, intangible investment will be 50% higher than investment in tangibles."   CIPD Human Capital Reporting: Investing for Sustainable Growth 2014, quoting a NESTA report by Goodrich et al Technology and the Arts. I'm always a bit suspicious of these kinds of calculation, but the overall message is pretty clear: we should be looking at how the money we spend (publicly and privately) on things like education and training (prime examples of intangibles) is effectively put to use, and not…
Read More

Flexitime

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

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

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

Politicians, Peter and Paula

I was chatting recently to a friend who lives in France.  We were musing sadly over the state of a country which we both love - she as a long-term resident, me as a sometime resident and frequent visitor.  The French economy is in poor shape, they have major social fractures, French culture seems to have lost its cutting edge;  and the political situation is dire, from almost every angle. There was an interesting recent piece by a political journalist (I'm afraid I can't remember who it was) which argued that the French presidency was designed by de Gaulle for himself; more or less worked for him for most of…
Read More

Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
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

Balancing the balance argument

The chief executive of UCAS, Mary Curnock Cook, recently made a really important point on gender 'balance', reported in the last issue of the Times Higher Education.  Speaking to the Association of University Administrators she observed that whilst it would take an additional 15000 female students to 'balance out' the current male dominance in engineering, it would take getting on for double that to do the same for the current female dominance of subjects allied to medicine, which includes nursing.   So, she argued, we should maybe be paying at least as much attention to getting more men into subjects where they are underrepresented as we do in respect of…
Read More

Confidence, convergence and caretakers

An interesting recent post from Jessica Valenti on 'why the female confidence gap is a sham' has made me rethink PP Factor 3.    PP Factor 3 refers to women's greater reluctance to put themselves forward for jobs, or for promotions, as one of the explanations for flatter careers and lower pay.  I've been in the habit of labelling this as 'lack of self-confidence'  but it needs a broader and more nuanced description. Valenti's piece is a guffaw at a new book The Confidence Code, which argues that American women need more confidence.  "It's true," she says, "that there's a gendered disparity in confidence..but the 'confidence gap' is not a personal defect…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

The tangibility of part-time work

"Between 1990 and 2011, the value of intangible assets in the UK grew from £50.2 billion to £137.5 billion, while at the same time the value of tangible, physical assets has increased much more slowly from £72.1 billion to £89.8 billion. In 2015, intangible investment will be 50% higher than investment in tangibles."   CIPD Human Capital Reporting: Investing for Sustainable Growth 2014, quoting a NESTA report by Goodrich et al Technology and the Arts. I'm always a bit suspicious of these kinds of calculation, but the overall message is pretty clear: we should be looking at how the money we spend (publicly and privately) on things like education and training (prime examples of intangibles) is effectively put to use, and not…
Read More

Flexitime

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

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

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

Politicians, Peter and Paula

I was chatting recently to a friend who lives in France.  We were musing sadly over the state of a country which we both love - she as a long-term resident, me as a sometime resident and frequent visitor.  The French economy is in poor shape, they have major social fractures, French culture seems to have lost its cutting edge;  and the political situation is dire, from almost every angle. There was an interesting recent piece by a political journalist (I'm afraid I can't remember who it was) which argued that the French presidency was designed by de Gaulle for himself; more or less worked for him for most of…
Read More

Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
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

Balancing the balance argument

The chief executive of UCAS, Mary Curnock Cook, recently made a really important point on gender 'balance', reported in the last issue of the Times Higher Education.  Speaking to the Association of University Administrators she observed that whilst it would take an additional 15000 female students to 'balance out' the current male dominance in engineering, it would take getting on for double that to do the same for the current female dominance of subjects allied to medicine, which includes nursing.   So, she argued, we should maybe be paying at least as much attention to getting more men into subjects where they are underrepresented as we do in respect of…
Read More

Confidence, convergence and caretakers

An interesting recent post from Jessica Valenti on 'why the female confidence gap is a sham' has made me rethink PP Factor 3.    PP Factor 3 refers to women's greater reluctance to put themselves forward for jobs, or for promotions, as one of the explanations for flatter careers and lower pay.  I've been in the habit of labelling this as 'lack of self-confidence'  but it needs a broader and more nuanced description. Valenti's piece is a guffaw at a new book The Confidence Code, which argues that American women need more confidence.  "It's true," she says, "that there's a gendered disparity in confidence..but the 'confidence gap' is not a personal defect…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

The tangibility of part-time work

"Between 1990 and 2011, the value of intangible assets in the UK grew from £50.2 billion to £137.5 billion, while at the same time the value of tangible, physical assets has increased much more slowly from £72.1 billion to £89.8 billion. In 2015, intangible investment will be 50% higher than investment in tangibles."   CIPD Human Capital Reporting: Investing for Sustainable Growth 2014, quoting a NESTA report by Goodrich et al Technology and the Arts. I'm always a bit suspicious of these kinds of calculation, but the overall message is pretty clear: we should be looking at how the money we spend (publicly and privately) on things like education and training (prime examples of intangibles) is effectively put to use, and not…
Read More

Flexitime

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

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

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

Politicians, Peter and Paula

I was chatting recently to a friend who lives in France.  We were musing sadly over the state of a country which we both love - she as a long-term resident, me as a sometime resident and frequent visitor.  The French economy is in poor shape, they have major social fractures, French culture seems to have lost its cutting edge;  and the political situation is dire, from almost every angle. There was an interesting recent piece by a political journalist (I'm afraid I can't remember who it was) which argued that the French presidency was designed by de Gaulle for himself; more or less worked for him for most of…
Read More

Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
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

Balancing the balance argument

The chief executive of UCAS, Mary Curnock Cook, recently made a really important point on gender 'balance', reported in the last issue of the Times Higher Education.  Speaking to the Association of University Administrators she observed that whilst it would take an additional 15000 female students to 'balance out' the current male dominance in engineering, it would take getting on for double that to do the same for the current female dominance of subjects allied to medicine, which includes nursing.   So, she argued, we should maybe be paying at least as much attention to getting more men into subjects where they are underrepresented as we do in respect of…
Read More

Confidence, convergence and caretakers

An interesting recent post from Jessica Valenti on 'why the female confidence gap is a sham' has made me rethink PP Factor 3.    PP Factor 3 refers to women's greater reluctance to put themselves forward for jobs, or for promotions, as one of the explanations for flatter careers and lower pay.  I've been in the habit of labelling this as 'lack of self-confidence'  but it needs a broader and more nuanced description. Valenti's piece is a guffaw at a new book The Confidence Code, which argues that American women need more confidence.  "It's true," she says, "that there's a gendered disparity in confidence..but the 'confidence gap' is not a personal defect…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

The tangibility of part-time work

"Between 1990 and 2011, the value of intangible assets in the UK grew from £50.2 billion to £137.5 billion, while at the same time the value of tangible, physical assets has increased much more slowly from £72.1 billion to £89.8 billion. In 2015, intangible investment will be 50% higher than investment in tangibles."   CIPD Human Capital Reporting: Investing for Sustainable Growth 2014, quoting a NESTA report by Goodrich et al Technology and the Arts. I'm always a bit suspicious of these kinds of calculation, but the overall message is pretty clear: we should be looking at how the money we spend (publicly and privately) on things like education and training (prime examples of intangibles) is effectively put to use, and not…
Read More

Flexitime

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

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

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

Politicians, Peter and Paula

I was chatting recently to a friend who lives in France.  We were musing sadly over the state of a country which we both love - she as a long-term resident, me as a sometime resident and frequent visitor.  The French economy is in poor shape, they have major social fractures, French culture seems to have lost its cutting edge;  and the political situation is dire, from almost every angle. There was an interesting recent piece by a political journalist (I'm afraid I can't remember who it was) which argued that the French presidency was designed by de Gaulle for himself; more or less worked for him for most of…
Read More

Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
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

Balancing the balance argument

The chief executive of UCAS, Mary Curnock Cook, recently made a really important point on gender 'balance', reported in the last issue of the Times Higher Education.  Speaking to the Association of University Administrators she observed that whilst it would take an additional 15000 female students to 'balance out' the current male dominance in engineering, it would take getting on for double that to do the same for the current female dominance of subjects allied to medicine, which includes nursing.   So, she argued, we should maybe be paying at least as much attention to getting more men into subjects where they are underrepresented as we do in respect of…
Read More

Confidence, convergence and caretakers

An interesting recent post from Jessica Valenti on 'why the female confidence gap is a sham' has made me rethink PP Factor 3.    PP Factor 3 refers to women's greater reluctance to put themselves forward for jobs, or for promotions, as one of the explanations for flatter careers and lower pay.  I've been in the habit of labelling this as 'lack of self-confidence'  but it needs a broader and more nuanced description. Valenti's piece is a guffaw at a new book The Confidence Code, which argues that American women need more confidence.  "It's true," she says, "that there's a gendered disparity in confidence..but the 'confidence gap' is not a personal defect…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

The tangibility of part-time work

"Between 1990 and 2011, the value of intangible assets in the UK grew from £50.2 billion to £137.5 billion, while at the same time the value of tangible, physical assets has increased much more slowly from £72.1 billion to £89.8 billion. In 2015, intangible investment will be 50% higher than investment in tangibles."   CIPD Human Capital Reporting: Investing for Sustainable Growth 2014, quoting a NESTA report by Goodrich et al Technology and the Arts. I'm always a bit suspicious of these kinds of calculation, but the overall message is pretty clear: we should be looking at how the money we spend (publicly and privately) on things like education and training (prime examples of intangibles) is effectively put to use, and not…
Read More

Flexitime

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

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

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

Politicians, Peter and Paula

I was chatting recently to a friend who lives in France.  We were musing sadly over the state of a country which we both love - she as a long-term resident, me as a sometime resident and frequent visitor.  The French economy is in poor shape, they have major social fractures, French culture seems to have lost its cutting edge;  and the political situation is dire, from almost every angle. There was an interesting recent piece by a political journalist (I'm afraid I can't remember who it was) which argued that the French presidency was designed by de Gaulle for himself; more or less worked for him for most of…
Read More

Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
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

Balancing the balance argument

The chief executive of UCAS, Mary Curnock Cook, recently made a really important point on gender 'balance', reported in the last issue of the Times Higher Education.  Speaking to the Association of University Administrators she observed that whilst it would take an additional 15000 female students to 'balance out' the current male dominance in engineering, it would take getting on for double that to do the same for the current female dominance of subjects allied to medicine, which includes nursing.   So, she argued, we should maybe be paying at least as much attention to getting more men into subjects where they are underrepresented as we do in respect of…
Read More

Confidence, convergence and caretakers

An interesting recent post from Jessica Valenti on 'why the female confidence gap is a sham' has made me rethink PP Factor 3.    PP Factor 3 refers to women's greater reluctance to put themselves forward for jobs, or for promotions, as one of the explanations for flatter careers and lower pay.  I've been in the habit of labelling this as 'lack of self-confidence'  but it needs a broader and more nuanced description. Valenti's piece is a guffaw at a new book The Confidence Code, which argues that American women need more confidence.  "It's true," she says, "that there's a gendered disparity in confidence..but the 'confidence gap' is not a personal defect…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

The tangibility of part-time work

"Between 1990 and 2011, the value of intangible assets in the UK grew from £50.2 billion to £137.5 billion, while at the same time the value of tangible, physical assets has increased much more slowly from £72.1 billion to £89.8 billion. In 2015, intangible investment will be 50% higher than investment in tangibles."   CIPD Human Capital Reporting: Investing for Sustainable Growth 2014, quoting a NESTA report by Goodrich et al Technology and the Arts. I'm always a bit suspicious of these kinds of calculation, but the overall message is pretty clear: we should be looking at how the money we spend (publicly and privately) on things like education and training (prime examples of intangibles) is effectively put to use, and not…
Read More

Flexitime

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

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

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

Politicians, Peter and Paula

I was chatting recently to a friend who lives in France.  We were musing sadly over the state of a country which we both love - she as a long-term resident, me as a sometime resident and frequent visitor.  The French economy is in poor shape, they have major social fractures, French culture seems to have lost its cutting edge;  and the political situation is dire, from almost every angle. There was an interesting recent piece by a political journalist (I'm afraid I can't remember who it was) which argued that the French presidency was designed by de Gaulle for himself; more or less worked for him for most of…
Read More

Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
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

Balancing the balance argument

The chief executive of UCAS, Mary Curnock Cook, recently made a really important point on gender 'balance', reported in the last issue of the Times Higher Education.  Speaking to the Association of University Administrators she observed that whilst it would take an additional 15000 female students to 'balance out' the current male dominance in engineering, it would take getting on for double that to do the same for the current female dominance of subjects allied to medicine, which includes nursing.   So, she argued, we should maybe be paying at least as much attention to getting more men into subjects where they are underrepresented as we do in respect of…
Read More

Confidence, convergence and caretakers

An interesting recent post from Jessica Valenti on 'why the female confidence gap is a sham' has made me rethink PP Factor 3.    PP Factor 3 refers to women's greater reluctance to put themselves forward for jobs, or for promotions, as one of the explanations for flatter careers and lower pay.  I've been in the habit of labelling this as 'lack of self-confidence'  but it needs a broader and more nuanced description. Valenti's piece is a guffaw at a new book The Confidence Code, which argues that American women need more confidence.  "It's true," she says, "that there's a gendered disparity in confidence..but the 'confidence gap' is not a personal defect…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

The tangibility of part-time work

"Between 1990 and 2011, the value of intangible assets in the UK grew from £50.2 billion to £137.5 billion, while at the same time the value of tangible, physical assets has increased much more slowly from £72.1 billion to £89.8 billion. In 2015, intangible investment will be 50% higher than investment in tangibles."   CIPD Human Capital Reporting: Investing for Sustainable Growth 2014, quoting a NESTA report by Goodrich et al Technology and the Arts. I'm always a bit suspicious of these kinds of calculation, but the overall message is pretty clear: we should be looking at how the money we spend (publicly and privately) on things like education and training (prime examples of intangibles) is effectively put to use, and not…
Read More

Flexitime

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

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

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

Politicians, Peter and Paula

I was chatting recently to a friend who lives in France.  We were musing sadly over the state of a country which we both love - she as a long-term resident, me as a sometime resident and frequent visitor.  The French economy is in poor shape, they have major social fractures, French culture seems to have lost its cutting edge;  and the political situation is dire, from almost every angle. There was an interesting recent piece by a political journalist (I'm afraid I can't remember who it was) which argued that the French presidency was designed by de Gaulle for himself; more or less worked for him for most of…
Read More

Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
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

Balancing the balance argument

The chief executive of UCAS, Mary Curnock Cook, recently made a really important point on gender 'balance', reported in the last issue of the Times Higher Education.  Speaking to the Association of University Administrators she observed that whilst it would take an additional 15000 female students to 'balance out' the current male dominance in engineering, it would take getting on for double that to do the same for the current female dominance of subjects allied to medicine, which includes nursing.   So, she argued, we should maybe be paying at least as much attention to getting more men into subjects where they are underrepresented as we do in respect of…
Read More

Confidence, convergence and caretakers

An interesting recent post from Jessica Valenti on 'why the female confidence gap is a sham' has made me rethink PP Factor 3.    PP Factor 3 refers to women's greater reluctance to put themselves forward for jobs, or for promotions, as one of the explanations for flatter careers and lower pay.  I've been in the habit of labelling this as 'lack of self-confidence'  but it needs a broader and more nuanced description. Valenti's piece is a guffaw at a new book The Confidence Code, which argues that American women need more confidence.  "It's true," she says, "that there's a gendered disparity in confidence..but the 'confidence gap' is not a personal defect…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More

The tangibility of part-time work

"Between 1990 and 2011, the value of intangible assets in the UK grew from £50.2 billion to £137.5 billion, while at the same time the value of tangible, physical assets has increased much more slowly from £72.1 billion to £89.8 billion. In 2015, intangible investment will be 50% higher than investment in tangibles."   CIPD Human Capital Reporting: Investing for Sustainable Growth 2014, quoting a NESTA report by Goodrich et al Technology and the Arts. I'm always a bit suspicious of these kinds of calculation, but the overall message is pretty clear: we should be looking at how the money we spend (publicly and privately) on things like education and training (prime examples of intangibles) is effectively put to use, and not…
Read More

Flexitime

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

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

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

Politicians, Peter and Paula

I was chatting recently to a friend who lives in France.  We were musing sadly over the state of a country which we both love - she as a long-term resident, me as a sometime resident and frequent visitor.  The French economy is in poor shape, they have major social fractures, French culture seems to have lost its cutting edge;  and the political situation is dire, from almost every angle. There was an interesting recent piece by a political journalist (I'm afraid I can't remember who it was) which argued that the French presidency was designed by de Gaulle for himself; more or less worked for him for most of…
Read More

Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
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

Balancing the balance argument

The chief executive of UCAS, Mary Curnock Cook, recently made a really important point on gender 'balance', reported in the last issue of the Times Higher Education.  Speaking to the Association of University Administrators she observed that whilst it would take an additional 15000 female students to 'balance out' the current male dominance in engineering, it would take getting on for double that to do the same for the current female dominance of subjects allied to medicine, which includes nursing.   So, she argued, we should maybe be paying at least as much attention to getting more men into subjects where they are underrepresented as we do in respect of…
Read More

Confidence, convergence and caretakers

An interesting recent post from Jessica Valenti on 'why the female confidence gap is a sham' has made me rethink PP Factor 3.    PP Factor 3 refers to women's greater reluctance to put themselves forward for jobs, or for promotions, as one of the explanations for flatter careers and lower pay.  I've been in the habit of labelling this as 'lack of self-confidence'  but it needs a broader and more nuanced description. Valenti's piece is a guffaw at a new book The Confidence Code, which argues that American women need more confidence.  "It's true," she says, "that there's a gendered disparity in confidence..but the 'confidence gap' is not a personal defect…
Read More

A fertile post

Below is a comment submitted in response to a blog of mine challenging Mrs Moneypenny's sense of value. I've kept it anonymous at the request of the author  (let's call her K) but quote it in almost its entirety because it encapsulates so many PP issues.  In particular: 1.  Fairness is and should be central.  The driver is K's sense of injustice at her discovery, not her desire for more money.    People should not have to work to find these things out, nor happen on them by chance. 2.  Part-timers often give better value.  Another, rather different, example:  I was listening the other week to Brian Moore - the…
Read More

Aspirations and hurdles

I’ve just had a fascinating  discussion with David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medallist hurdler, and founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity devoted to raising children’s aspirations to greatness. The meeting was set up to explore our apparently opposing views of aspiration.  David is absolutely committed to getting children to find their spark of greatness and to pursue it.  Too many people say how ‘passionate’ they are about something when they don’t really mean it;  David didn’t use the word, but he evidently is, in a very unassuming way, passionate about linking aspiration to social justice.  So he’s for onwards and upwards. By contrast I’m  interested in people –…
Read More