The Paula Principle

Paula at work

I’m aiming to build up examples of the PP in operation at the workplace – at all levels.

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

Plumbing, quotas, piloting

  I've just  spent most of the day at the Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre.  It started with Jude Kelly interviewing Annie Lennox (yes!!), with scrolling stats on the global position of women;  the most startling of these is that gender-based violence notches up more deaths and disablement than wars, malaria, cancer and crashes.   It's worth also remembering that 41 million girls don't even get primary education.   Kirsty Wark then chaired a discussion on whether things had gone backwards as far as (violent) misogyny is concerned; it led me to her film on Blurred Lines, which deals with the fissile and contentious boundaries between…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
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

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

Work like a man….

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

Flexitime

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plumbing, quotas, piloting

  I've just  spent most of the day at the Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre.  It started with Jude Kelly interviewing Annie Lennox (yes!!), with scrolling stats on the global position of women;  the most startling of these is that gender-based violence notches up more deaths and disablement than wars, malaria, cancer and crashes.   It's worth also remembering that 41 million girls don't even get primary education.   Kirsty Wark then chaired a discussion on whether things had gone backwards as far as (violent) misogyny is concerned; it led me to her film on Blurred Lines, which deals with the fissile and contentious boundaries between…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
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

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

Work like a man….

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

Flexitime

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plumbing, quotas, piloting

  I've just  spent most of the day at the Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre.  It started with Jude Kelly interviewing Annie Lennox (yes!!), with scrolling stats on the global position of women;  the most startling of these is that gender-based violence notches up more deaths and disablement than wars, malaria, cancer and crashes.   It's worth also remembering that 41 million girls don't even get primary education.   Kirsty Wark then chaired a discussion on whether things had gone backwards as far as (violent) misogyny is concerned; it led me to her film on Blurred Lines, which deals with the fissile and contentious boundaries between…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
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

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

Work like a man….

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

Flexitime

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plumbing, quotas, piloting

  I've just  spent most of the day at the Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre.  It started with Jude Kelly interviewing Annie Lennox (yes!!), with scrolling stats on the global position of women;  the most startling of these is that gender-based violence notches up more deaths and disablement than wars, malaria, cancer and crashes.   It's worth also remembering that 41 million girls don't even get primary education.   Kirsty Wark then chaired a discussion on whether things had gone backwards as far as (violent) misogyny is concerned; it led me to her film on Blurred Lines, which deals with the fissile and contentious boundaries between…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
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

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

Work like a man….

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

Flexitime

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plumbing, quotas, piloting

  I've just  spent most of the day at the Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre.  It started with Jude Kelly interviewing Annie Lennox (yes!!), with scrolling stats on the global position of women;  the most startling of these is that gender-based violence notches up more deaths and disablement than wars, malaria, cancer and crashes.   It's worth also remembering that 41 million girls don't even get primary education.   Kirsty Wark then chaired a discussion on whether things had gone backwards as far as (violent) misogyny is concerned; it led me to her film on Blurred Lines, which deals with the fissile and contentious boundaries between…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
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

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

Work like a man….

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

Flexitime

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plumbing, quotas, piloting

  I've just  spent most of the day at the Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre.  It started with Jude Kelly interviewing Annie Lennox (yes!!), with scrolling stats on the global position of women;  the most startling of these is that gender-based violence notches up more deaths and disablement than wars, malaria, cancer and crashes.   It's worth also remembering that 41 million girls don't even get primary education.   Kirsty Wark then chaired a discussion on whether things had gone backwards as far as (violent) misogyny is concerned; it led me to her film on Blurred Lines, which deals with the fissile and contentious boundaries between…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
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

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

Work like a man….

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

Flexitime

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plumbing, quotas, piloting

  I've just  spent most of the day at the Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre.  It started with Jude Kelly interviewing Annie Lennox (yes!!), with scrolling stats on the global position of women;  the most startling of these is that gender-based violence notches up more deaths and disablement than wars, malaria, cancer and crashes.   It's worth also remembering that 41 million girls don't even get primary education.   Kirsty Wark then chaired a discussion on whether things had gone backwards as far as (violent) misogyny is concerned; it led me to her film on Blurred Lines, which deals with the fissile and contentious boundaries between…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
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

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

Work like a man….

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

Flexitime

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plumbing, quotas, piloting

  I've just  spent most of the day at the Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre.  It started with Jude Kelly interviewing Annie Lennox (yes!!), with scrolling stats on the global position of women;  the most startling of these is that gender-based violence notches up more deaths and disablement than wars, malaria, cancer and crashes.   It's worth also remembering that 41 million girls don't even get primary education.   Kirsty Wark then chaired a discussion on whether things had gone backwards as far as (violent) misogyny is concerned; it led me to her film on Blurred Lines, which deals with the fissile and contentious boundaries between…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
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

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

Work like a man….

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

Flexitime

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plumbing, quotas, piloting

  I've just  spent most of the day at the Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre.  It started with Jude Kelly interviewing Annie Lennox (yes!!), with scrolling stats on the global position of women;  the most startling of these is that gender-based violence notches up more deaths and disablement than wars, malaria, cancer and crashes.   It's worth also remembering that 41 million girls don't even get primary education.   Kirsty Wark then chaired a discussion on whether things had gone backwards as far as (violent) misogyny is concerned; it led me to her film on Blurred Lines, which deals with the fissile and contentious boundaries between…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
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

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

Work like a man….

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

Flexitime

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plumbing, quotas, piloting

  I've just  spent most of the day at the Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre.  It started with Jude Kelly interviewing Annie Lennox (yes!!), with scrolling stats on the global position of women;  the most startling of these is that gender-based violence notches up more deaths and disablement than wars, malaria, cancer and crashes.   It's worth also remembering that 41 million girls don't even get primary education.   Kirsty Wark then chaired a discussion on whether things had gone backwards as far as (violent) misogyny is concerned; it led me to her film on Blurred Lines, which deals with the fissile and contentious boundaries between…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
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

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…
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Work like a man….

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

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