The Paula Principle

Requiring companies to report on their gender pay gaps is becoming more common around the world. A 6-country analysis from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London draws on 80 interviews with people well placed to judge what impact this is having, and what the main challenges are. The countries' scorecards are below. The report's conclusions are to some extent predictable (though none the less valid for all that): a need for greater transparency and accountability; stronger sanctions; measurable targets; and integration of policies to deal with GPGs at all levels. But the insights from the launch's widely experienced panel discussion were particularly valuable. More than one…

"A man does not learn very well, Mr Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter what the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down, Mr Robbins. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose." This is Fern Elston speaking, in Edward P. Jones' wonderfully original and informative novel about slavery, The Known World. Fern Elston is a free black woman, a teacher, and she is…

The latest World Economic Forum report on the Gender Pay Gap is depressing for two reasons. I applaud the WEF for its attention to the issue, but I find its 'solution' simplistic. First, it shows that worldwide the cause of greater equality has been put into reverse. The latest trends means that it will take "a staggering 257 years to close the gap on economic participation for women – compared to 202 years in last year’s report." We know that the pandemic has added to women's unpaid work burdens; caused many women to drop out of the employment; and hit the occupations in which women tend to work harder than…

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…

The Fawcett Society and the Kings' College Global Institute for Women's Leadership have just published an interesting report comparing the UK to nine other countries in the practice of gender pay gap reporting. My impression has been that the legislation requiring companies with over 250 employees to produce a range of data on GPG was a big step forwards. I still think that; for one thing it's enabled people like ShareAction's AGM activists to ask probing questions of corporate behaviour - and their intentions for the future. Pushing the Paula Principle I've been able to put questions about career trajectories, as well as just pay gaps. There are some quite…

Covid has meant that almost all of us are having to use more technological skills - and in many cases to learn them. Communication IT is the most obvious form, with Zoom, MicrosoftTeams and so on to the fore in helping us stay in touch, personally as well as professionally. But international analyses are increasingly showing how in the short term at least there is a shift in the labour market which favours digital skills - and therefore risks accentuating the gender divide. A recent Financial Times piece on this led me to a broad-ranging presentation by OECD's Mariagrazia Squilliardici, covering issues such as digital literacy, careers advice, workplace climate,…

Covid seems to have diverted me from posting on PP issues for quite a while - no excuse. But a recent report on graduate earnings from the Higher Education Policy Institute brought me back to the case. The HEPI staff have painstaking pulled together data from a whole range of sources, from official longitudinal surveys to Linkedin. The headline-grabber funding was that the graduate gender pay gap (GGPG to its friends) is biggest for Russell Group universities, at 17%, but the analysis covered many other angles. It's worth noting first that the female/male educational gap continues to increase. In 2017 the F/M split at undergraduate level was 57/43, and this…

Requiring companies to report on their gender pay gaps is becoming more common around the world. A 6-country analysis from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London draws on 80 interviews with people well placed to judge what impact this is having, and what the main challenges are. The countries' scorecards are below. The report's conclusions are to some extent predictable (though none the less valid for all that): a need for greater transparency and accountability; stronger sanctions; measurable targets; and integration of policies to deal with GPGs at all levels. But the insights from the launch's widely experienced panel discussion were particularly valuable. More than one…

"A man does not learn very well, Mr Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter what the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down, Mr Robbins. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose." This is Fern Elston speaking, in Edward P. Jones' wonderfully original and informative novel about slavery, The Known World. Fern Elston is a free black woman, a teacher, and she is…

The latest World Economic Forum report on the Gender Pay Gap is depressing for two reasons. I applaud the WEF for its attention to the issue, but I find its 'solution' simplistic. First, it shows that worldwide the cause of greater equality has been put into reverse. The latest trends means that it will take "a staggering 257 years to close the gap on economic participation for women – compared to 202 years in last year’s report." We know that the pandemic has added to women's unpaid work burdens; caused many women to drop out of the employment; and hit the occupations in which women tend to work harder than…

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…

The Fawcett Society and the Kings' College Global Institute for Women's Leadership have just published an interesting report comparing the UK to nine other countries in the practice of gender pay gap reporting. My impression has been that the legislation requiring companies with over 250 employees to produce a range of data on GPG was a big step forwards. I still think that; for one thing it's enabled people like ShareAction's AGM activists to ask probing questions of corporate behaviour - and their intentions for the future. Pushing the Paula Principle I've been able to put questions about career trajectories, as well as just pay gaps. There are some quite…

Covid has meant that almost all of us are having to use more technological skills - and in many cases to learn them. Communication IT is the most obvious form, with Zoom, MicrosoftTeams and so on to the fore in helping us stay in touch, personally as well as professionally. But international analyses are increasingly showing how in the short term at least there is a shift in the labour market which favours digital skills - and therefore risks accentuating the gender divide. A recent Financial Times piece on this led me to a broad-ranging presentation by OECD's Mariagrazia Squilliardici, covering issues such as digital literacy, careers advice, workplace climate,…

Covid seems to have diverted me from posting on PP issues for quite a while - no excuse. But a recent report on graduate earnings from the Higher Education Policy Institute brought me back to the case. The HEPI staff have painstaking pulled together data from a whole range of sources, from official longitudinal surveys to Linkedin. The headline-grabber funding was that the graduate gender pay gap (GGPG to its friends) is biggest for Russell Group universities, at 17%, but the analysis covered many other angles. It's worth noting first that the female/male educational gap continues to increase. In 2017 the F/M split at undergraduate level was 57/43, and this…

Requiring companies to report on their gender pay gaps is becoming more common around the world. A 6-country analysis from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London draws on 80 interviews with people well placed to judge what impact this is having, and what the main challenges are. The countries' scorecards are below. The report's conclusions are to some extent predictable (though none the less valid for all that): a need for greater transparency and accountability; stronger sanctions; measurable targets; and integration of policies to deal with GPGs at all levels. But the insights from the launch's widely experienced panel discussion were particularly valuable. More than one…

"A man does not learn very well, Mr Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter what the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down, Mr Robbins. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose." This is Fern Elston speaking, in Edward P. Jones' wonderfully original and informative novel about slavery, The Known World. Fern Elston is a free black woman, a teacher, and she is…

The latest World Economic Forum report on the Gender Pay Gap is depressing for two reasons. I applaud the WEF for its attention to the issue, but I find its 'solution' simplistic. First, it shows that worldwide the cause of greater equality has been put into reverse. The latest trends means that it will take "a staggering 257 years to close the gap on economic participation for women – compared to 202 years in last year’s report." We know that the pandemic has added to women's unpaid work burdens; caused many women to drop out of the employment; and hit the occupations in which women tend to work harder than…

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…

The Fawcett Society and the Kings' College Global Institute for Women's Leadership have just published an interesting report comparing the UK to nine other countries in the practice of gender pay gap reporting. My impression has been that the legislation requiring companies with over 250 employees to produce a range of data on GPG was a big step forwards. I still think that; for one thing it's enabled people like ShareAction's AGM activists to ask probing questions of corporate behaviour - and their intentions for the future. Pushing the Paula Principle I've been able to put questions about career trajectories, as well as just pay gaps. There are some quite…

Covid has meant that almost all of us are having to use more technological skills - and in many cases to learn them. Communication IT is the most obvious form, with Zoom, MicrosoftTeams and so on to the fore in helping us stay in touch, personally as well as professionally. But international analyses are increasingly showing how in the short term at least there is a shift in the labour market which favours digital skills - and therefore risks accentuating the gender divide. A recent Financial Times piece on this led me to a broad-ranging presentation by OECD's Mariagrazia Squilliardici, covering issues such as digital literacy, careers advice, workplace climate,…

Covid seems to have diverted me from posting on PP issues for quite a while - no excuse. But a recent report on graduate earnings from the Higher Education Policy Institute brought me back to the case. The HEPI staff have painstaking pulled together data from a whole range of sources, from official longitudinal surveys to Linkedin. The headline-grabber funding was that the graduate gender pay gap (GGPG to its friends) is biggest for Russell Group universities, at 17%, but the analysis covered many other angles. It's worth noting first that the female/male educational gap continues to increase. In 2017 the F/M split at undergraduate level was 57/43, and this…

Requiring companies to report on their gender pay gaps is becoming more common around the world. A 6-country analysis from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London draws on 80 interviews with people well placed to judge what impact this is having, and what the main challenges are. The countries' scorecards are below. The report's conclusions are to some extent predictable (though none the less valid for all that): a need for greater transparency and accountability; stronger sanctions; measurable targets; and integration of policies to deal with GPGs at all levels. But the insights from the launch's widely experienced panel discussion were particularly valuable. More than one…

"A man does not learn very well, Mr Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter what the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down, Mr Robbins. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose." This is Fern Elston speaking, in Edward P. Jones' wonderfully original and informative novel about slavery, The Known World. Fern Elston is a free black woman, a teacher, and she is…

The latest World Economic Forum report on the Gender Pay Gap is depressing for two reasons. I applaud the WEF for its attention to the issue, but I find its 'solution' simplistic. First, it shows that worldwide the cause of greater equality has been put into reverse. The latest trends means that it will take "a staggering 257 years to close the gap on economic participation for women – compared to 202 years in last year’s report." We know that the pandemic has added to women's unpaid work burdens; caused many women to drop out of the employment; and hit the occupations in which women tend to work harder than…

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…

The Fawcett Society and the Kings' College Global Institute for Women's Leadership have just published an interesting report comparing the UK to nine other countries in the practice of gender pay gap reporting. My impression has been that the legislation requiring companies with over 250 employees to produce a range of data on GPG was a big step forwards. I still think that; for one thing it's enabled people like ShareAction's AGM activists to ask probing questions of corporate behaviour - and their intentions for the future. Pushing the Paula Principle I've been able to put questions about career trajectories, as well as just pay gaps. There are some quite…

Covid has meant that almost all of us are having to use more technological skills - and in many cases to learn them. Communication IT is the most obvious form, with Zoom, MicrosoftTeams and so on to the fore in helping us stay in touch, personally as well as professionally. But international analyses are increasingly showing how in the short term at least there is a shift in the labour market which favours digital skills - and therefore risks accentuating the gender divide. A recent Financial Times piece on this led me to a broad-ranging presentation by OECD's Mariagrazia Squilliardici, covering issues such as digital literacy, careers advice, workplace climate,…

Covid seems to have diverted me from posting on PP issues for quite a while - no excuse. But a recent report on graduate earnings from the Higher Education Policy Institute brought me back to the case. The HEPI staff have painstaking pulled together data from a whole range of sources, from official longitudinal surveys to Linkedin. The headline-grabber funding was that the graduate gender pay gap (GGPG to its friends) is biggest for Russell Group universities, at 17%, but the analysis covered many other angles. It's worth noting first that the female/male educational gap continues to increase. In 2017 the F/M split at undergraduate level was 57/43, and this…

Requiring companies to report on their gender pay gaps is becoming more common around the world. A 6-country analysis from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London draws on 80 interviews with people well placed to judge what impact this is having, and what the main challenges are. The countries' scorecards are below. The report's conclusions are to some extent predictable (though none the less valid for all that): a need for greater transparency and accountability; stronger sanctions; measurable targets; and integration of policies to deal with GPGs at all levels. But the insights from the launch's widely experienced panel discussion were particularly valuable. More than one…

"A man does not learn very well, Mr Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter what the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down, Mr Robbins. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose." This is Fern Elston speaking, in Edward P. Jones' wonderfully original and informative novel about slavery, The Known World. Fern Elston is a free black woman, a teacher, and she is…

The latest World Economic Forum report on the Gender Pay Gap is depressing for two reasons. I applaud the WEF for its attention to the issue, but I find its 'solution' simplistic. First, it shows that worldwide the cause of greater equality has been put into reverse. The latest trends means that it will take "a staggering 257 years to close the gap on economic participation for women – compared to 202 years in last year’s report." We know that the pandemic has added to women's unpaid work burdens; caused many women to drop out of the employment; and hit the occupations in which women tend to work harder than…

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…

The Fawcett Society and the Kings' College Global Institute for Women's Leadership have just published an interesting report comparing the UK to nine other countries in the practice of gender pay gap reporting. My impression has been that the legislation requiring companies with over 250 employees to produce a range of data on GPG was a big step forwards. I still think that; for one thing it's enabled people like ShareAction's AGM activists to ask probing questions of corporate behaviour - and their intentions for the future. Pushing the Paula Principle I've been able to put questions about career trajectories, as well as just pay gaps. There are some quite…

Covid has meant that almost all of us are having to use more technological skills - and in many cases to learn them. Communication IT is the most obvious form, with Zoom, MicrosoftTeams and so on to the fore in helping us stay in touch, personally as well as professionally. But international analyses are increasingly showing how in the short term at least there is a shift in the labour market which favours digital skills - and therefore risks accentuating the gender divide. A recent Financial Times piece on this led me to a broad-ranging presentation by OECD's Mariagrazia Squilliardici, covering issues such as digital literacy, careers advice, workplace climate,…

Covid seems to have diverted me from posting on PP issues for quite a while - no excuse. But a recent report on graduate earnings from the Higher Education Policy Institute brought me back to the case. The HEPI staff have painstaking pulled together data from a whole range of sources, from official longitudinal surveys to Linkedin. The headline-grabber funding was that the graduate gender pay gap (GGPG to its friends) is biggest for Russell Group universities, at 17%, but the analysis covered many other angles. It's worth noting first that the female/male educational gap continues to increase. In 2017 the F/M split at undergraduate level was 57/43, and this…

Requiring companies to report on their gender pay gaps is becoming more common around the world. A 6-country analysis from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London draws on 80 interviews with people well placed to judge what impact this is having, and what the main challenges are. The countries' scorecards are below. The report's conclusions are to some extent predictable (though none the less valid for all that): a need for greater transparency and accountability; stronger sanctions; measurable targets; and integration of policies to deal with GPGs at all levels. But the insights from the launch's widely experienced panel discussion were particularly valuable. More than one…

"A man does not learn very well, Mr Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter what the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down, Mr Robbins. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose." This is Fern Elston speaking, in Edward P. Jones' wonderfully original and informative novel about slavery, The Known World. Fern Elston is a free black woman, a teacher, and she is…

The latest World Economic Forum report on the Gender Pay Gap is depressing for two reasons. I applaud the WEF for its attention to the issue, but I find its 'solution' simplistic. First, it shows that worldwide the cause of greater equality has been put into reverse. The latest trends means that it will take "a staggering 257 years to close the gap on economic participation for women – compared to 202 years in last year’s report." We know that the pandemic has added to women's unpaid work burdens; caused many women to drop out of the employment; and hit the occupations in which women tend to work harder than…

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…

The Fawcett Society and the Kings' College Global Institute for Women's Leadership have just published an interesting report comparing the UK to nine other countries in the practice of gender pay gap reporting. My impression has been that the legislation requiring companies with over 250 employees to produce a range of data on GPG was a big step forwards. I still think that; for one thing it's enabled people like ShareAction's AGM activists to ask probing questions of corporate behaviour - and their intentions for the future. Pushing the Paula Principle I've been able to put questions about career trajectories, as well as just pay gaps. There are some quite…

Covid has meant that almost all of us are having to use more technological skills - and in many cases to learn them. Communication IT is the most obvious form, with Zoom, MicrosoftTeams and so on to the fore in helping us stay in touch, personally as well as professionally. But international analyses are increasingly showing how in the short term at least there is a shift in the labour market which favours digital skills - and therefore risks accentuating the gender divide. A recent Financial Times piece on this led me to a broad-ranging presentation by OECD's Mariagrazia Squilliardici, covering issues such as digital literacy, careers advice, workplace climate,…

Covid seems to have diverted me from posting on PP issues for quite a while - no excuse. But a recent report on graduate earnings from the Higher Education Policy Institute brought me back to the case. The HEPI staff have painstaking pulled together data from a whole range of sources, from official longitudinal surveys to Linkedin. The headline-grabber funding was that the graduate gender pay gap (GGPG to its friends) is biggest for Russell Group universities, at 17%, but the analysis covered many other angles. It's worth noting first that the female/male educational gap continues to increase. In 2017 the F/M split at undergraduate level was 57/43, and this…

Requiring companies to report on their gender pay gaps is becoming more common around the world. A 6-country analysis from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London draws on 80 interviews with people well placed to judge what impact this is having, and what the main challenges are. The countries' scorecards are below. The report's conclusions are to some extent predictable (though none the less valid for all that): a need for greater transparency and accountability; stronger sanctions; measurable targets; and integration of policies to deal with GPGs at all levels. But the insights from the launch's widely experienced panel discussion were particularly valuable. More than one…

"A man does not learn very well, Mr Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter what the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down, Mr Robbins. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose." This is Fern Elston speaking, in Edward P. Jones' wonderfully original and informative novel about slavery, The Known World. Fern Elston is a free black woman, a teacher, and she is…

The latest World Economic Forum report on the Gender Pay Gap is depressing for two reasons. I applaud the WEF for its attention to the issue, but I find its 'solution' simplistic. First, it shows that worldwide the cause of greater equality has been put into reverse. The latest trends means that it will take "a staggering 257 years to close the gap on economic participation for women – compared to 202 years in last year’s report." We know that the pandemic has added to women's unpaid work burdens; caused many women to drop out of the employment; and hit the occupations in which women tend to work harder than…

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…

The Fawcett Society and the Kings' College Global Institute for Women's Leadership have just published an interesting report comparing the UK to nine other countries in the practice of gender pay gap reporting. My impression has been that the legislation requiring companies with over 250 employees to produce a range of data on GPG was a big step forwards. I still think that; for one thing it's enabled people like ShareAction's AGM activists to ask probing questions of corporate behaviour - and their intentions for the future. Pushing the Paula Principle I've been able to put questions about career trajectories, as well as just pay gaps. There are some quite…

Covid has meant that almost all of us are having to use more technological skills - and in many cases to learn them. Communication IT is the most obvious form, with Zoom, MicrosoftTeams and so on to the fore in helping us stay in touch, personally as well as professionally. But international analyses are increasingly showing how in the short term at least there is a shift in the labour market which favours digital skills - and therefore risks accentuating the gender divide. A recent Financial Times piece on this led me to a broad-ranging presentation by OECD's Mariagrazia Squilliardici, covering issues such as digital literacy, careers advice, workplace climate,…

Covid seems to have diverted me from posting on PP issues for quite a while - no excuse. But a recent report on graduate earnings from the Higher Education Policy Institute brought me back to the case. The HEPI staff have painstaking pulled together data from a whole range of sources, from official longitudinal surveys to Linkedin. The headline-grabber funding was that the graduate gender pay gap (GGPG to its friends) is biggest for Russell Group universities, at 17%, but the analysis covered many other angles. It's worth noting first that the female/male educational gap continues to increase. In 2017 the F/M split at undergraduate level was 57/43, and this…

Requiring companies to report on their gender pay gaps is becoming more common around the world. A 6-country analysis from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London draws on 80 interviews with people well placed to judge what impact this is having, and what the main challenges are. The countries' scorecards are below. The report's conclusions are to some extent predictable (though none the less valid for all that): a need for greater transparency and accountability; stronger sanctions; measurable targets; and integration of policies to deal with GPGs at all levels. But the insights from the launch's widely experienced panel discussion were particularly valuable. More than one…

"A man does not learn very well, Mr Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter what the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down, Mr Robbins. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose." This is Fern Elston speaking, in Edward P. Jones' wonderfully original and informative novel about slavery, The Known World. Fern Elston is a free black woman, a teacher, and she is…

The latest World Economic Forum report on the Gender Pay Gap is depressing for two reasons. I applaud the WEF for its attention to the issue, but I find its 'solution' simplistic. First, it shows that worldwide the cause of greater equality has been put into reverse. The latest trends means that it will take "a staggering 257 years to close the gap on economic participation for women – compared to 202 years in last year’s report." We know that the pandemic has added to women's unpaid work burdens; caused many women to drop out of the employment; and hit the occupations in which women tend to work harder than…

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…

The Fawcett Society and the Kings' College Global Institute for Women's Leadership have just published an interesting report comparing the UK to nine other countries in the practice of gender pay gap reporting. My impression has been that the legislation requiring companies with over 250 employees to produce a range of data on GPG was a big step forwards. I still think that; for one thing it's enabled people like ShareAction's AGM activists to ask probing questions of corporate behaviour - and their intentions for the future. Pushing the Paula Principle I've been able to put questions about career trajectories, as well as just pay gaps. There are some quite…

Covid has meant that almost all of us are having to use more technological skills - and in many cases to learn them. Communication IT is the most obvious form, with Zoom, MicrosoftTeams and so on to the fore in helping us stay in touch, personally as well as professionally. But international analyses are increasingly showing how in the short term at least there is a shift in the labour market which favours digital skills - and therefore risks accentuating the gender divide. A recent Financial Times piece on this led me to a broad-ranging presentation by OECD's Mariagrazia Squilliardici, covering issues such as digital literacy, careers advice, workplace climate,…

Covid seems to have diverted me from posting on PP issues for quite a while - no excuse. But a recent report on graduate earnings from the Higher Education Policy Institute brought me back to the case. The HEPI staff have painstaking pulled together data from a whole range of sources, from official longitudinal surveys to Linkedin. The headline-grabber funding was that the graduate gender pay gap (GGPG to its friends) is biggest for Russell Group universities, at 17%, but the analysis covered many other angles. It's worth noting first that the female/male educational gap continues to increase. In 2017 the F/M split at undergraduate level was 57/43, and this…

Requiring companies to report on their gender pay gaps is becoming more common around the world. A 6-country analysis from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London draws on 80 interviews with people well placed to judge what impact this is having, and what the main challenges are. The countries' scorecards are below. The report's conclusions are to some extent predictable (though none the less valid for all that): a need for greater transparency and accountability; stronger sanctions; measurable targets; and integration of policies to deal with GPGs at all levels. But the insights from the launch's widely experienced panel discussion were particularly valuable. More than one…

"A man does not learn very well, Mr Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter what the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down, Mr Robbins. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose." This is Fern Elston speaking, in Edward P. Jones' wonderfully original and informative novel about slavery, The Known World. Fern Elston is a free black woman, a teacher, and she is…

The latest World Economic Forum report on the Gender Pay Gap is depressing for two reasons. I applaud the WEF for its attention to the issue, but I find its 'solution' simplistic. First, it shows that worldwide the cause of greater equality has been put into reverse. The latest trends means that it will take "a staggering 257 years to close the gap on economic participation for women – compared to 202 years in last year’s report." We know that the pandemic has added to women's unpaid work burdens; caused many women to drop out of the employment; and hit the occupations in which women tend to work harder than…

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…

The Fawcett Society and the Kings' College Global Institute for Women's Leadership have just published an interesting report comparing the UK to nine other countries in the practice of gender pay gap reporting. My impression has been that the legislation requiring companies with over 250 employees to produce a range of data on GPG was a big step forwards. I still think that; for one thing it's enabled people like ShareAction's AGM activists to ask probing questions of corporate behaviour - and their intentions for the future. Pushing the Paula Principle I've been able to put questions about career trajectories, as well as just pay gaps. There are some quite…

Covid has meant that almost all of us are having to use more technological skills - and in many cases to learn them. Communication IT is the most obvious form, with Zoom, MicrosoftTeams and so on to the fore in helping us stay in touch, personally as well as professionally. But international analyses are increasingly showing how in the short term at least there is a shift in the labour market which favours digital skills - and therefore risks accentuating the gender divide. A recent Financial Times piece on this led me to a broad-ranging presentation by OECD's Mariagrazia Squilliardici, covering issues such as digital literacy, careers advice, workplace climate,…

Covid seems to have diverted me from posting on PP issues for quite a while - no excuse. But a recent report on graduate earnings from the Higher Education Policy Institute brought me back to the case. The HEPI staff have painstaking pulled together data from a whole range of sources, from official longitudinal surveys to Linkedin. The headline-grabber funding was that the graduate gender pay gap (GGPG to its friends) is biggest for Russell Group universities, at 17%, but the analysis covered many other angles. It's worth noting first that the female/male educational gap continues to increase. In 2017 the F/M split at undergraduate level was 57/43, and this…

Requiring companies to report on their gender pay gaps is becoming more common around the world. A 6-country analysis from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London draws on 80 interviews with people well placed to judge what impact this is having, and what the main challenges are. The countries' scorecards are below. The report's conclusions are to some extent predictable (though none the less valid for all that): a need for greater transparency and accountability; stronger sanctions; measurable targets; and integration of policies to deal with GPGs at all levels. But the insights from the launch's widely experienced panel discussion were particularly valuable. More than one…

"A man does not learn very well, Mr Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter what the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down, Mr Robbins. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose." This is Fern Elston speaking, in Edward P. Jones' wonderfully original and informative novel about slavery, The Known World. Fern Elston is a free black woman, a teacher, and she is…

The latest World Economic Forum report on the Gender Pay Gap is depressing for two reasons. I applaud the WEF for its attention to the issue, but I find its 'solution' simplistic. First, it shows that worldwide the cause of greater equality has been put into reverse. The latest trends means that it will take "a staggering 257 years to close the gap on economic participation for women – compared to 202 years in last year’s report." We know that the pandemic has added to women's unpaid work burdens; caused many women to drop out of the employment; and hit the occupations in which women tend to work harder than…

South Korea is probably the most extreme example of the Paula Principle. The undervaluing of Korean women's competences is having tragic consequences. A very simple three-step process shows this, illustrated by the OECD charts below. First, Koreans have made quite extraordinary educational progress, if you compare the educational levels of 55-64 year olds with those two generations later. Secondly, it is Korean women who have been propelling this stellar rise up the educational tables. From very low levels a generation ago, 59% of young Korean women now enter Bachelor programmes - a lead of 6% over their male counterparts. The graduation rates are unfortunately missing from current OECD data, but…

The Fawcett Society and the Kings' College Global Institute for Women's Leadership have just published an interesting report comparing the UK to nine other countries in the practice of gender pay gap reporting. My impression has been that the legislation requiring companies with over 250 employees to produce a range of data on GPG was a big step forwards. I still think that; for one thing it's enabled people like ShareAction's AGM activists to ask probing questions of corporate behaviour - and their intentions for the future. Pushing the Paula Principle I've been able to put questions about career trajectories, as well as just pay gaps. There are some quite…

Covid has meant that almost all of us are having to use more technological skills - and in many cases to learn them. Communication IT is the most obvious form, with Zoom, MicrosoftTeams and so on to the fore in helping us stay in touch, personally as well as professionally. But international analyses are increasingly showing how in the short term at least there is a shift in the labour market which favours digital skills - and therefore risks accentuating the gender divide. A recent Financial Times piece on this led me to a broad-ranging presentation by OECD's Mariagrazia Squilliardici, covering issues such as digital literacy, careers advice, workplace climate,…

Covid seems to have diverted me from posting on PP issues for quite a while - no excuse. But a recent report on graduate earnings from the Higher Education Policy Institute brought me back to the case. The HEPI staff have painstaking pulled together data from a whole range of sources, from official longitudinal surveys to Linkedin. The headline-grabber funding was that the graduate gender pay gap (GGPG to its friends) is biggest for Russell Group universities, at 17%, but the analysis covered many other angles. It's worth noting first that the female/male educational gap continues to increase. In 2017 the F/M split at undergraduate level was 57/43, and this…