An update on the PP

New Year's Day, and the chance to take stock on the Paula Principle.  I finished the book a year ago but still haven't managed to find a publisher.  I'll have in any case to update it (once I finish what I'm currently doing, a report for Unesco on the state of play on adult learning across the world), partly because some of the statistics need it but also because some of the debate on gender issues has moved on.  I still don't claim to be a gender specialist, but writing the book has meant that my eye is caught by gender items in the media, and this has prompted some…
Read More

Theatrical chaos

Beautiful Chaos is the arresting title of a book by Carey Perloff, on her life and times as director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.   I have a partner with 30 years' experience as an actor but I have no professional understanding of the theatre; yet the book engrossed me with its insights into the dynamics of the world backstage.  (Declaration of interest:  Carey is a second cousin of mine, though we've never met.) Two themes in the book struck me particularly.  The first is the emphasis put on theatre as a vehicle for lifelong learning.  At a technical level Carey describes the changes she made to…
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

Choosing not to go on upwards, by men

Paula Factor 5, you may remember, is positive choice:  where women make the decision not to go for a job which is above their current level because they actively prefer to stay doing what they are doing, or to move in a horizontal direction.  They don't need the money or the status that a promotion would bring;  they feel they are exercising their competences already and/or learning new ones; and they do not want to rise to a level where they might perhaps become examples of the Peter Principle. I've been discussing this with a male friend.  He sent me the following: "I know clearly in my own career I…
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

Wikipedia and (self-)promotion

I watched Jimmy Wales being interviewed on Newsnight last night.    They are aiming to increase the diversity of their contributors, on gender and other dimensions.  He said that only 9-14% of the contributors to Wikipedia are women.I found this figure surprisingly low, and wondered what the reasons for it might be.  The most likely seems to me to be to do with self-confidence:  women are less likely to consider themselves authoritative enough to provide an entry, or to correct others' entries - even though there is no entry barrier to contributing, as far as I know.           A few days ago I interviewed Ann Oakley.…
Read More

Grey trainees

Lucy Kellaway's column in today's Financial Times puts forward the idea of middle-aged trainees, with her usual reflexive wit.  (Sorry, I can't give you the link - no FT online sub…)  She contrasts her own early traineeship as a 'sneering waster' with the knowledgeable commitment likely to be shown by anyone who is taken on in their early 50s.    Older trainees might be quite willing to work at trainee rates, at least initially, if they had paid off mortgage , kids were off their hands etc. The key behind this, of course, is the increased duration of our working lives, from 40-odd to 50-odd years.  That makes an investment…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
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

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

An update on the PP

New Year's Day, and the chance to take stock on the Paula Principle.  I finished the book a year ago but still haven't managed to find a publisher.  I'll have in any case to update it (once I finish what I'm currently doing, a report for Unesco on the state of play on adult learning across the world), partly because some of the statistics need it but also because some of the debate on gender issues has moved on.  I still don't claim to be a gender specialist, but writing the book has meant that my eye is caught by gender items in the media, and this has prompted some…
Read More

Theatrical chaos

Beautiful Chaos is the arresting title of a book by Carey Perloff, on her life and times as director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.   I have a partner with 30 years' experience as an actor but I have no professional understanding of the theatre; yet the book engrossed me with its insights into the dynamics of the world backstage.  (Declaration of interest:  Carey is a second cousin of mine, though we've never met.) Two themes in the book struck me particularly.  The first is the emphasis put on theatre as a vehicle for lifelong learning.  At a technical level Carey describes the changes she made to…
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

Choosing not to go on upwards, by men

Paula Factor 5, you may remember, is positive choice:  where women make the decision not to go for a job which is above their current level because they actively prefer to stay doing what they are doing, or to move in a horizontal direction.  They don't need the money or the status that a promotion would bring;  they feel they are exercising their competences already and/or learning new ones; and they do not want to rise to a level where they might perhaps become examples of the Peter Principle. I've been discussing this with a male friend.  He sent me the following: "I know clearly in my own career I…
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

Wikipedia and (self-)promotion

I watched Jimmy Wales being interviewed on Newsnight last night.    They are aiming to increase the diversity of their contributors, on gender and other dimensions.  He said that only 9-14% of the contributors to Wikipedia are women.I found this figure surprisingly low, and wondered what the reasons for it might be.  The most likely seems to me to be to do with self-confidence:  women are less likely to consider themselves authoritative enough to provide an entry, or to correct others' entries - even though there is no entry barrier to contributing, as far as I know.           A few days ago I interviewed Ann Oakley.…
Read More

Grey trainees

Lucy Kellaway's column in today's Financial Times puts forward the idea of middle-aged trainees, with her usual reflexive wit.  (Sorry, I can't give you the link - no FT online sub…)  She contrasts her own early traineeship as a 'sneering waster' with the knowledgeable commitment likely to be shown by anyone who is taken on in their early 50s.    Older trainees might be quite willing to work at trainee rates, at least initially, if they had paid off mortgage , kids were off their hands etc. The key behind this, of course, is the increased duration of our working lives, from 40-odd to 50-odd years.  That makes an investment…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
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

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

An update on the PP

New Year's Day, and the chance to take stock on the Paula Principle.  I finished the book a year ago but still haven't managed to find a publisher.  I'll have in any case to update it (once I finish what I'm currently doing, a report for Unesco on the state of play on adult learning across the world), partly because some of the statistics need it but also because some of the debate on gender issues has moved on.  I still don't claim to be a gender specialist, but writing the book has meant that my eye is caught by gender items in the media, and this has prompted some…
Read More

Theatrical chaos

Beautiful Chaos is the arresting title of a book by Carey Perloff, on her life and times as director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.   I have a partner with 30 years' experience as an actor but I have no professional understanding of the theatre; yet the book engrossed me with its insights into the dynamics of the world backstage.  (Declaration of interest:  Carey is a second cousin of mine, though we've never met.) Two themes in the book struck me particularly.  The first is the emphasis put on theatre as a vehicle for lifelong learning.  At a technical level Carey describes the changes she made to…
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

Choosing not to go on upwards, by men

Paula Factor 5, you may remember, is positive choice:  where women make the decision not to go for a job which is above their current level because they actively prefer to stay doing what they are doing, or to move in a horizontal direction.  They don't need the money or the status that a promotion would bring;  they feel they are exercising their competences already and/or learning new ones; and they do not want to rise to a level where they might perhaps become examples of the Peter Principle. I've been discussing this with a male friend.  He sent me the following: "I know clearly in my own career I…
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

Wikipedia and (self-)promotion

I watched Jimmy Wales being interviewed on Newsnight last night.    They are aiming to increase the diversity of their contributors, on gender and other dimensions.  He said that only 9-14% of the contributors to Wikipedia are women.I found this figure surprisingly low, and wondered what the reasons for it might be.  The most likely seems to me to be to do with self-confidence:  women are less likely to consider themselves authoritative enough to provide an entry, or to correct others' entries - even though there is no entry barrier to contributing, as far as I know.           A few days ago I interviewed Ann Oakley.…
Read More

Grey trainees

Lucy Kellaway's column in today's Financial Times puts forward the idea of middle-aged trainees, with her usual reflexive wit.  (Sorry, I can't give you the link - no FT online sub…)  She contrasts her own early traineeship as a 'sneering waster' with the knowledgeable commitment likely to be shown by anyone who is taken on in their early 50s.    Older trainees might be quite willing to work at trainee rates, at least initially, if they had paid off mortgage , kids were off their hands etc. The key behind this, of course, is the increased duration of our working lives, from 40-odd to 50-odd years.  That makes an investment…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
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

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

An update on the PP

New Year's Day, and the chance to take stock on the Paula Principle.  I finished the book a year ago but still haven't managed to find a publisher.  I'll have in any case to update it (once I finish what I'm currently doing, a report for Unesco on the state of play on adult learning across the world), partly because some of the statistics need it but also because some of the debate on gender issues has moved on.  I still don't claim to be a gender specialist, but writing the book has meant that my eye is caught by gender items in the media, and this has prompted some…
Read More

Theatrical chaos

Beautiful Chaos is the arresting title of a book by Carey Perloff, on her life and times as director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.   I have a partner with 30 years' experience as an actor but I have no professional understanding of the theatre; yet the book engrossed me with its insights into the dynamics of the world backstage.  (Declaration of interest:  Carey is a second cousin of mine, though we've never met.) Two themes in the book struck me particularly.  The first is the emphasis put on theatre as a vehicle for lifelong learning.  At a technical level Carey describes the changes she made to…
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

Choosing not to go on upwards, by men

Paula Factor 5, you may remember, is positive choice:  where women make the decision not to go for a job which is above their current level because they actively prefer to stay doing what they are doing, or to move in a horizontal direction.  They don't need the money or the status that a promotion would bring;  they feel they are exercising their competences already and/or learning new ones; and they do not want to rise to a level where they might perhaps become examples of the Peter Principle. I've been discussing this with a male friend.  He sent me the following: "I know clearly in my own career I…
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

Wikipedia and (self-)promotion

I watched Jimmy Wales being interviewed on Newsnight last night.    They are aiming to increase the diversity of their contributors, on gender and other dimensions.  He said that only 9-14% of the contributors to Wikipedia are women.I found this figure surprisingly low, and wondered what the reasons for it might be.  The most likely seems to me to be to do with self-confidence:  women are less likely to consider themselves authoritative enough to provide an entry, or to correct others' entries - even though there is no entry barrier to contributing, as far as I know.           A few days ago I interviewed Ann Oakley.…
Read More

Grey trainees

Lucy Kellaway's column in today's Financial Times puts forward the idea of middle-aged trainees, with her usual reflexive wit.  (Sorry, I can't give you the link - no FT online sub…)  She contrasts her own early traineeship as a 'sneering waster' with the knowledgeable commitment likely to be shown by anyone who is taken on in their early 50s.    Older trainees might be quite willing to work at trainee rates, at least initially, if they had paid off mortgage , kids were off their hands etc. The key behind this, of course, is the increased duration of our working lives, from 40-odd to 50-odd years.  That makes an investment…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
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

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

An update on the PP

New Year's Day, and the chance to take stock on the Paula Principle.  I finished the book a year ago but still haven't managed to find a publisher.  I'll have in any case to update it (once I finish what I'm currently doing, a report for Unesco on the state of play on adult learning across the world), partly because some of the statistics need it but also because some of the debate on gender issues has moved on.  I still don't claim to be a gender specialist, but writing the book has meant that my eye is caught by gender items in the media, and this has prompted some…
Read More

Theatrical chaos

Beautiful Chaos is the arresting title of a book by Carey Perloff, on her life and times as director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.   I have a partner with 30 years' experience as an actor but I have no professional understanding of the theatre; yet the book engrossed me with its insights into the dynamics of the world backstage.  (Declaration of interest:  Carey is a second cousin of mine, though we've never met.) Two themes in the book struck me particularly.  The first is the emphasis put on theatre as a vehicle for lifelong learning.  At a technical level Carey describes the changes she made to…
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

Choosing not to go on upwards, by men

Paula Factor 5, you may remember, is positive choice:  where women make the decision not to go for a job which is above their current level because they actively prefer to stay doing what they are doing, or to move in a horizontal direction.  They don't need the money or the status that a promotion would bring;  they feel they are exercising their competences already and/or learning new ones; and they do not want to rise to a level where they might perhaps become examples of the Peter Principle. I've been discussing this with a male friend.  He sent me the following: "I know clearly in my own career I…
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

Wikipedia and (self-)promotion

I watched Jimmy Wales being interviewed on Newsnight last night.    They are aiming to increase the diversity of their contributors, on gender and other dimensions.  He said that only 9-14% of the contributors to Wikipedia are women.I found this figure surprisingly low, and wondered what the reasons for it might be.  The most likely seems to me to be to do with self-confidence:  women are less likely to consider themselves authoritative enough to provide an entry, or to correct others' entries - even though there is no entry barrier to contributing, as far as I know.           A few days ago I interviewed Ann Oakley.…
Read More

Grey trainees

Lucy Kellaway's column in today's Financial Times puts forward the idea of middle-aged trainees, with her usual reflexive wit.  (Sorry, I can't give you the link - no FT online sub…)  She contrasts her own early traineeship as a 'sneering waster' with the knowledgeable commitment likely to be shown by anyone who is taken on in their early 50s.    Older trainees might be quite willing to work at trainee rates, at least initially, if they had paid off mortgage , kids were off their hands etc. The key behind this, of course, is the increased duration of our working lives, from 40-odd to 50-odd years.  That makes an investment…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
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

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

An update on the PP

New Year's Day, and the chance to take stock on the Paula Principle.  I finished the book a year ago but still haven't managed to find a publisher.  I'll have in any case to update it (once I finish what I'm currently doing, a report for Unesco on the state of play on adult learning across the world), partly because some of the statistics need it but also because some of the debate on gender issues has moved on.  I still don't claim to be a gender specialist, but writing the book has meant that my eye is caught by gender items in the media, and this has prompted some…
Read More

Theatrical chaos

Beautiful Chaos is the arresting title of a book by Carey Perloff, on her life and times as director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.   I have a partner with 30 years' experience as an actor but I have no professional understanding of the theatre; yet the book engrossed me with its insights into the dynamics of the world backstage.  (Declaration of interest:  Carey is a second cousin of mine, though we've never met.) Two themes in the book struck me particularly.  The first is the emphasis put on theatre as a vehicle for lifelong learning.  At a technical level Carey describes the changes she made to…
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

Choosing not to go on upwards, by men

Paula Factor 5, you may remember, is positive choice:  where women make the decision not to go for a job which is above their current level because they actively prefer to stay doing what they are doing, or to move in a horizontal direction.  They don't need the money or the status that a promotion would bring;  they feel they are exercising their competences already and/or learning new ones; and they do not want to rise to a level where they might perhaps become examples of the Peter Principle. I've been discussing this with a male friend.  He sent me the following: "I know clearly in my own career I…
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

Wikipedia and (self-)promotion

I watched Jimmy Wales being interviewed on Newsnight last night.    They are aiming to increase the diversity of their contributors, on gender and other dimensions.  He said that only 9-14% of the contributors to Wikipedia are women.I found this figure surprisingly low, and wondered what the reasons for it might be.  The most likely seems to me to be to do with self-confidence:  women are less likely to consider themselves authoritative enough to provide an entry, or to correct others' entries - even though there is no entry barrier to contributing, as far as I know.           A few days ago I interviewed Ann Oakley.…
Read More

Grey trainees

Lucy Kellaway's column in today's Financial Times puts forward the idea of middle-aged trainees, with her usual reflexive wit.  (Sorry, I can't give you the link - no FT online sub…)  She contrasts her own early traineeship as a 'sneering waster' with the knowledgeable commitment likely to be shown by anyone who is taken on in their early 50s.    Older trainees might be quite willing to work at trainee rates, at least initially, if they had paid off mortgage , kids were off their hands etc. The key behind this, of course, is the increased duration of our working lives, from 40-odd to 50-odd years.  That makes an investment…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
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

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

An update on the PP

New Year's Day, and the chance to take stock on the Paula Principle.  I finished the book a year ago but still haven't managed to find a publisher.  I'll have in any case to update it (once I finish what I'm currently doing, a report for Unesco on the state of play on adult learning across the world), partly because some of the statistics need it but also because some of the debate on gender issues has moved on.  I still don't claim to be a gender specialist, but writing the book has meant that my eye is caught by gender items in the media, and this has prompted some…
Read More

Theatrical chaos

Beautiful Chaos is the arresting title of a book by Carey Perloff, on her life and times as director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.   I have a partner with 30 years' experience as an actor but I have no professional understanding of the theatre; yet the book engrossed me with its insights into the dynamics of the world backstage.  (Declaration of interest:  Carey is a second cousin of mine, though we've never met.) Two themes in the book struck me particularly.  The first is the emphasis put on theatre as a vehicle for lifelong learning.  At a technical level Carey describes the changes she made to…
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

Choosing not to go on upwards, by men

Paula Factor 5, you may remember, is positive choice:  where women make the decision not to go for a job which is above their current level because they actively prefer to stay doing what they are doing, or to move in a horizontal direction.  They don't need the money or the status that a promotion would bring;  they feel they are exercising their competences already and/or learning new ones; and they do not want to rise to a level where they might perhaps become examples of the Peter Principle. I've been discussing this with a male friend.  He sent me the following: "I know clearly in my own career I…
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

Wikipedia and (self-)promotion

I watched Jimmy Wales being interviewed on Newsnight last night.    They are aiming to increase the diversity of their contributors, on gender and other dimensions.  He said that only 9-14% of the contributors to Wikipedia are women.I found this figure surprisingly low, and wondered what the reasons for it might be.  The most likely seems to me to be to do with self-confidence:  women are less likely to consider themselves authoritative enough to provide an entry, or to correct others' entries - even though there is no entry barrier to contributing, as far as I know.           A few days ago I interviewed Ann Oakley.…
Read More

Grey trainees

Lucy Kellaway's column in today's Financial Times puts forward the idea of middle-aged trainees, with her usual reflexive wit.  (Sorry, I can't give you the link - no FT online sub…)  She contrasts her own early traineeship as a 'sneering waster' with the knowledgeable commitment likely to be shown by anyone who is taken on in their early 50s.    Older trainees might be quite willing to work at trainee rates, at least initially, if they had paid off mortgage , kids were off their hands etc. The key behind this, of course, is the increased duration of our working lives, from 40-odd to 50-odd years.  That makes an investment…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
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

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

An update on the PP

New Year's Day, and the chance to take stock on the Paula Principle.  I finished the book a year ago but still haven't managed to find a publisher.  I'll have in any case to update it (once I finish what I'm currently doing, a report for Unesco on the state of play on adult learning across the world), partly because some of the statistics need it but also because some of the debate on gender issues has moved on.  I still don't claim to be a gender specialist, but writing the book has meant that my eye is caught by gender items in the media, and this has prompted some…
Read More

Theatrical chaos

Beautiful Chaos is the arresting title of a book by Carey Perloff, on her life and times as director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.   I have a partner with 30 years' experience as an actor but I have no professional understanding of the theatre; yet the book engrossed me with its insights into the dynamics of the world backstage.  (Declaration of interest:  Carey is a second cousin of mine, though we've never met.) Two themes in the book struck me particularly.  The first is the emphasis put on theatre as a vehicle for lifelong learning.  At a technical level Carey describes the changes she made to…
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

Choosing not to go on upwards, by men

Paula Factor 5, you may remember, is positive choice:  where women make the decision not to go for a job which is above their current level because they actively prefer to stay doing what they are doing, or to move in a horizontal direction.  They don't need the money or the status that a promotion would bring;  they feel they are exercising their competences already and/or learning new ones; and they do not want to rise to a level where they might perhaps become examples of the Peter Principle. I've been discussing this with a male friend.  He sent me the following: "I know clearly in my own career I…
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

Wikipedia and (self-)promotion

I watched Jimmy Wales being interviewed on Newsnight last night.    They are aiming to increase the diversity of their contributors, on gender and other dimensions.  He said that only 9-14% of the contributors to Wikipedia are women.I found this figure surprisingly low, and wondered what the reasons for it might be.  The most likely seems to me to be to do with self-confidence:  women are less likely to consider themselves authoritative enough to provide an entry, or to correct others' entries - even though there is no entry barrier to contributing, as far as I know.           A few days ago I interviewed Ann Oakley.…
Read More

Grey trainees

Lucy Kellaway's column in today's Financial Times puts forward the idea of middle-aged trainees, with her usual reflexive wit.  (Sorry, I can't give you the link - no FT online sub…)  She contrasts her own early traineeship as a 'sneering waster' with the knowledgeable commitment likely to be shown by anyone who is taken on in their early 50s.    Older trainees might be quite willing to work at trainee rates, at least initially, if they had paid off mortgage , kids were off their hands etc. The key behind this, of course, is the increased duration of our working lives, from 40-odd to 50-odd years.  That makes an investment…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
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

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

An update on the PP

New Year's Day, and the chance to take stock on the Paula Principle.  I finished the book a year ago but still haven't managed to find a publisher.  I'll have in any case to update it (once I finish what I'm currently doing, a report for Unesco on the state of play on adult learning across the world), partly because some of the statistics need it but also because some of the debate on gender issues has moved on.  I still don't claim to be a gender specialist, but writing the book has meant that my eye is caught by gender items in the media, and this has prompted some…
Read More

Theatrical chaos

Beautiful Chaos is the arresting title of a book by Carey Perloff, on her life and times as director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.   I have a partner with 30 years' experience as an actor but I have no professional understanding of the theatre; yet the book engrossed me with its insights into the dynamics of the world backstage.  (Declaration of interest:  Carey is a second cousin of mine, though we've never met.) Two themes in the book struck me particularly.  The first is the emphasis put on theatre as a vehicle for lifelong learning.  At a technical level Carey describes the changes she made to…
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

Choosing not to go on upwards, by men

Paula Factor 5, you may remember, is positive choice:  where women make the decision not to go for a job which is above their current level because they actively prefer to stay doing what they are doing, or to move in a horizontal direction.  They don't need the money or the status that a promotion would bring;  they feel they are exercising their competences already and/or learning new ones; and they do not want to rise to a level where they might perhaps become examples of the Peter Principle. I've been discussing this with a male friend.  He sent me the following: "I know clearly in my own career I…
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

Wikipedia and (self-)promotion

I watched Jimmy Wales being interviewed on Newsnight last night.    They are aiming to increase the diversity of their contributors, on gender and other dimensions.  He said that only 9-14% of the contributors to Wikipedia are women.I found this figure surprisingly low, and wondered what the reasons for it might be.  The most likely seems to me to be to do with self-confidence:  women are less likely to consider themselves authoritative enough to provide an entry, or to correct others' entries - even though there is no entry barrier to contributing, as far as I know.           A few days ago I interviewed Ann Oakley.…
Read More

Grey trainees

Lucy Kellaway's column in today's Financial Times puts forward the idea of middle-aged trainees, with her usual reflexive wit.  (Sorry, I can't give you the link - no FT online sub…)  She contrasts her own early traineeship as a 'sneering waster' with the knowledgeable commitment likely to be shown by anyone who is taken on in their early 50s.    Older trainees might be quite willing to work at trainee rates, at least initially, if they had paid off mortgage , kids were off their hands etc. The key behind this, of course, is the increased duration of our working lives, from 40-odd to 50-odd years.  That makes an investment…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
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

Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
Read More

An update on the PP

New Year's Day, and the chance to take stock on the Paula Principle.  I finished the book a year ago but still haven't managed to find a publisher.  I'll have in any case to update it (once I finish what I'm currently doing, a report for Unesco on the state of play on adult learning across the world), partly because some of the statistics need it but also because some of the debate on gender issues has moved on.  I still don't claim to be a gender specialist, but writing the book has meant that my eye is caught by gender items in the media, and this has prompted some…
Read More

Theatrical chaos

Beautiful Chaos is the arresting title of a book by Carey Perloff, on her life and times as director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.   I have a partner with 30 years' experience as an actor but I have no professional understanding of the theatre; yet the book engrossed me with its insights into the dynamics of the world backstage.  (Declaration of interest:  Carey is a second cousin of mine, though we've never met.) Two themes in the book struck me particularly.  The first is the emphasis put on theatre as a vehicle for lifelong learning.  At a technical level Carey describes the changes she made to…
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

Choosing not to go on upwards, by men

Paula Factor 5, you may remember, is positive choice:  where women make the decision not to go for a job which is above their current level because they actively prefer to stay doing what they are doing, or to move in a horizontal direction.  They don't need the money or the status that a promotion would bring;  they feel they are exercising their competences already and/or learning new ones; and they do not want to rise to a level where they might perhaps become examples of the Peter Principle. I've been discussing this with a male friend.  He sent me the following: "I know clearly in my own career I…
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

Wikipedia and (self-)promotion

I watched Jimmy Wales being interviewed on Newsnight last night.    They are aiming to increase the diversity of their contributors, on gender and other dimensions.  He said that only 9-14% of the contributors to Wikipedia are women.I found this figure surprisingly low, and wondered what the reasons for it might be.  The most likely seems to me to be to do with self-confidence:  women are less likely to consider themselves authoritative enough to provide an entry, or to correct others' entries - even though there is no entry barrier to contributing, as far as I know.           A few days ago I interviewed Ann Oakley.…
Read More

Grey trainees

Lucy Kellaway's column in today's Financial Times puts forward the idea of middle-aged trainees, with her usual reflexive wit.  (Sorry, I can't give you the link - no FT online sub…)  She contrasts her own early traineeship as a 'sneering waster' with the knowledgeable commitment likely to be shown by anyone who is taken on in their early 50s.    Older trainees might be quite willing to work at trainee rates, at least initially, if they had paid off mortgage , kids were off their hands etc. The key behind this, of course, is the increased duration of our working lives, from 40-odd to 50-odd years.  That makes an investment…
Read More

The Good Life and productivity

I've been reading How Much is Enough?, a thought-provoking tract for modern times by Skidelsky pere et fils.  Robert Skidelsky is an economic historian who has written with massive authority on Keynes and his legacy;  Edward is a philosopher.    Robert is giving a public lecture tomorrow (25/3) at the Working Mens College, part of an excellent series which the College has been running over past months (declaration of interest:  I chair the WMC governing board.) The Skidelskys' challenge is to the dominance of GDP and income as dominant measures of how well we are doing, as individuals and as a society.  They make trenchant and, to my mind, effective criticisms…
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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 –…
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Valuing work – what measures?

Mrs Moneypenny, a Financial Times columnist, wrote this weekend about how depressing she finds it that Mary Barra, the new head of General Motors, is being paid a basic salary of $1.6 million.  This is 25% less than her male equivalent at Ford. The gap is a significant one, and not atypical, though I find it hard to get too worked up about discrimination at this level.  What I find depressing is Mrs M's subsequent argument.  Apparently Ms Barra's predecessor at GM is being rehired as a consultant, at $4m (we aren't told if this is an annual fee, but I assume so). Mrs M comments: "That is someone who…
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