The Paula Principle

It's that time of year again - when the World Economic Forum publishes its annual assessment of progress towards gender equality. This is a treasure trove of data and comparative rankings on four dimensions of equality: education, health, politics and economics. The headline news for the UK has been simple: the country went down 6 places in the overall ranking, dropping out of the top 20. I suppose you could take this as a timely signal of the slide into mediocrity - but I'm always one to avoid cynical pessimism. Here's how the UK's overall picture looks: Let me get my methodological beef out of the way. On education, WEF…

I don't often see the New York Review of Books, but I was trekking high up with a group of friends recently, with no access to papers, so we swapped our reading around. As a result I got to see a fascinating review by Elaine Blair of Kate Kirkpatrick's biography of de Beauvoir (accompanied by an elegant cartoon by Karl Stevens of deB at a cafe table, fag hanging from lower lip). I have always admired not just deB's brilliance, but the fact that she opened up not just gender but old age as fields for politics as well as philosophy. That's two pretty major strikes. The review argues that…

Just a couple of items, before I disappear for a couple of weeks, trekking in the Himalayas (yes, lucky me). First, here's a chart from the Learning & Work Institute's useful data on adult learning. LWI monitors what's going on every year or two; as well as measuring participation levels by all kinds of factor (age, class etc), they ask about the benefits of learning: to the person's job; to their health and wellbeing, and to gaining qualifications. The chart below shows the results on this last one: whether the learning that men and women engage in leads to qualifications, or to more learning. The final column shows a big…

I went last week to a packed meeting of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at Kings College London, to hear Carrie Gracie talking about her book Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money. Carrie was in conversation with Julia Gillard, ex-PM of Australia and leader of the GIWL. As Carrie pointed out, Julia was impressively well-prepared, with a postit-festooned copy of the book, and the two women's dialogue flowed along very well. The story is that of Carrie's discovery that as BBC's China Editor she was not being paid the same as her male BBC equivalents, in spite of explicit assurances that this would be the case, made…

It's that time of year again. OECD has just published its annual Education at a Glance. I was actually working at the OECD in the 1970s (yes, I know...) when EAG was first developed, though I had no hand in it. In those days the title was descriptively accurate - EAG was a slim document you could flip through quickly. Today the title is richly ironic. Anyway, forsaking nostalgia for my youthful time in Paris I turned to the figures for female and male achievement. They confirm the basic trend: women continue to increase their educational lead over men, at every level and in almost every subject. The situation is…

I’ve been having several discussions recently about reverse convergence.  This is the rather unwieldy term I used in the PP to refer to the need for more men to follow working/career patterns that have traditionally been seen as female, in order to balance the convergence that women are increasingly showing on male patterns–full-time employment, with assumptions that a ‘career’ must involve continuous upward movement. In another life I was secretary of the Association for the Social Study of Time, yet another of the myriad organisations set up by the prolific Michael Young.  Michael and I were interested in the ‘rhythms of society’ – what forms the daily, weekly, termly and annual cycles…

John Lanchester has written an interesting piece in the latest London Review of Books on what he calls a Good New Idea - an unconditional payment to every citizen, usually called Universal Basic Income.  Lanchester is an excellent exponent of economic issues, and does a good job with UBI (though he fails to mention a more recent report from Guy Standing, and that the Labour Party has recently said it would include in its next manifesto a commitment to piloting UBI in some form). UBI, as Lanchester observes, appeals to both left and right on the political spectrum.  Its universality appeals to the form, with the power to raise poorer people's…

It's that time of year again - when the World Economic Forum publishes its annual assessment of progress towards gender equality. This is a treasure trove of data and comparative rankings on four dimensions of equality: education, health, politics and economics. The headline news for the UK has been simple: the country went down 6 places in the overall ranking, dropping out of the top 20. I suppose you could take this as a timely signal of the slide into mediocrity - but I'm always one to avoid cynical pessimism. Here's how the UK's overall picture looks: Let me get my methodological beef out of the way. On education, WEF…

I don't often see the New York Review of Books, but I was trekking high up with a group of friends recently, with no access to papers, so we swapped our reading around. As a result I got to see a fascinating review by Elaine Blair of Kate Kirkpatrick's biography of de Beauvoir (accompanied by an elegant cartoon by Karl Stevens of deB at a cafe table, fag hanging from lower lip). I have always admired not just deB's brilliance, but the fact that she opened up not just gender but old age as fields for politics as well as philosophy. That's two pretty major strikes. The review argues that…

Just a couple of items, before I disappear for a couple of weeks, trekking in the Himalayas (yes, lucky me). First, here's a chart from the Learning & Work Institute's useful data on adult learning. LWI monitors what's going on every year or two; as well as measuring participation levels by all kinds of factor (age, class etc), they ask about the benefits of learning: to the person's job; to their health and wellbeing, and to gaining qualifications. The chart below shows the results on this last one: whether the learning that men and women engage in leads to qualifications, or to more learning. The final column shows a big…

I went last week to a packed meeting of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at Kings College London, to hear Carrie Gracie talking about her book Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money. Carrie was in conversation with Julia Gillard, ex-PM of Australia and leader of the GIWL. As Carrie pointed out, Julia was impressively well-prepared, with a postit-festooned copy of the book, and the two women's dialogue flowed along very well. The story is that of Carrie's discovery that as BBC's China Editor she was not being paid the same as her male BBC equivalents, in spite of explicit assurances that this would be the case, made…

It's that time of year again. OECD has just published its annual Education at a Glance. I was actually working at the OECD in the 1970s (yes, I know...) when EAG was first developed, though I had no hand in it. In those days the title was descriptively accurate - EAG was a slim document you could flip through quickly. Today the title is richly ironic. Anyway, forsaking nostalgia for my youthful time in Paris I turned to the figures for female and male achievement. They confirm the basic trend: women continue to increase their educational lead over men, at every level and in almost every subject. The situation is…

I’ve been having several discussions recently about reverse convergence.  This is the rather unwieldy term I used in the PP to refer to the need for more men to follow working/career patterns that have traditionally been seen as female, in order to balance the convergence that women are increasingly showing on male patterns–full-time employment, with assumptions that a ‘career’ must involve continuous upward movement. In another life I was secretary of the Association for the Social Study of Time, yet another of the myriad organisations set up by the prolific Michael Young.  Michael and I were interested in the ‘rhythms of society’ – what forms the daily, weekly, termly and annual cycles…

John Lanchester has written an interesting piece in the latest London Review of Books on what he calls a Good New Idea - an unconditional payment to every citizen, usually called Universal Basic Income.  Lanchester is an excellent exponent of economic issues, and does a good job with UBI (though he fails to mention a more recent report from Guy Standing, and that the Labour Party has recently said it would include in its next manifesto a commitment to piloting UBI in some form). UBI, as Lanchester observes, appeals to both left and right on the political spectrum.  Its universality appeals to the form, with the power to raise poorer people's…

It's that time of year again - when the World Economic Forum publishes its annual assessment of progress towards gender equality. This is a treasure trove of data and comparative rankings on four dimensions of equality: education, health, politics and economics. The headline news for the UK has been simple: the country went down 6 places in the overall ranking, dropping out of the top 20. I suppose you could take this as a timely signal of the slide into mediocrity - but I'm always one to avoid cynical pessimism. Here's how the UK's overall picture looks: Let me get my methodological beef out of the way. On education, WEF…

I don't often see the New York Review of Books, but I was trekking high up with a group of friends recently, with no access to papers, so we swapped our reading around. As a result I got to see a fascinating review by Elaine Blair of Kate Kirkpatrick's biography of de Beauvoir (accompanied by an elegant cartoon by Karl Stevens of deB at a cafe table, fag hanging from lower lip). I have always admired not just deB's brilliance, but the fact that she opened up not just gender but old age as fields for politics as well as philosophy. That's two pretty major strikes. The review argues that…

Just a couple of items, before I disappear for a couple of weeks, trekking in the Himalayas (yes, lucky me). First, here's a chart from the Learning & Work Institute's useful data on adult learning. LWI monitors what's going on every year or two; as well as measuring participation levels by all kinds of factor (age, class etc), they ask about the benefits of learning: to the person's job; to their health and wellbeing, and to gaining qualifications. The chart below shows the results on this last one: whether the learning that men and women engage in leads to qualifications, or to more learning. The final column shows a big…

I went last week to a packed meeting of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at Kings College London, to hear Carrie Gracie talking about her book Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money. Carrie was in conversation with Julia Gillard, ex-PM of Australia and leader of the GIWL. As Carrie pointed out, Julia was impressively well-prepared, with a postit-festooned copy of the book, and the two women's dialogue flowed along very well. The story is that of Carrie's discovery that as BBC's China Editor she was not being paid the same as her male BBC equivalents, in spite of explicit assurances that this would be the case, made…

It's that time of year again. OECD has just published its annual Education at a Glance. I was actually working at the OECD in the 1970s (yes, I know...) when EAG was first developed, though I had no hand in it. In those days the title was descriptively accurate - EAG was a slim document you could flip through quickly. Today the title is richly ironic. Anyway, forsaking nostalgia for my youthful time in Paris I turned to the figures for female and male achievement. They confirm the basic trend: women continue to increase their educational lead over men, at every level and in almost every subject. The situation is…

I’ve been having several discussions recently about reverse convergence.  This is the rather unwieldy term I used in the PP to refer to the need for more men to follow working/career patterns that have traditionally been seen as female, in order to balance the convergence that women are increasingly showing on male patterns–full-time employment, with assumptions that a ‘career’ must involve continuous upward movement. In another life I was secretary of the Association for the Social Study of Time, yet another of the myriad organisations set up by the prolific Michael Young.  Michael and I were interested in the ‘rhythms of society’ – what forms the daily, weekly, termly and annual cycles…

John Lanchester has written an interesting piece in the latest London Review of Books on what he calls a Good New Idea - an unconditional payment to every citizen, usually called Universal Basic Income.  Lanchester is an excellent exponent of economic issues, and does a good job with UBI (though he fails to mention a more recent report from Guy Standing, and that the Labour Party has recently said it would include in its next manifesto a commitment to piloting UBI in some form). UBI, as Lanchester observes, appeals to both left and right on the political spectrum.  Its universality appeals to the form, with the power to raise poorer people's…

It's that time of year again - when the World Economic Forum publishes its annual assessment of progress towards gender equality. This is a treasure trove of data and comparative rankings on four dimensions of equality: education, health, politics and economics. The headline news for the UK has been simple: the country went down 6 places in the overall ranking, dropping out of the top 20. I suppose you could take this as a timely signal of the slide into mediocrity - but I'm always one to avoid cynical pessimism. Here's how the UK's overall picture looks: Let me get my methodological beef out of the way. On education, WEF…

I don't often see the New York Review of Books, but I was trekking high up with a group of friends recently, with no access to papers, so we swapped our reading around. As a result I got to see a fascinating review by Elaine Blair of Kate Kirkpatrick's biography of de Beauvoir (accompanied by an elegant cartoon by Karl Stevens of deB at a cafe table, fag hanging from lower lip). I have always admired not just deB's brilliance, but the fact that she opened up not just gender but old age as fields for politics as well as philosophy. That's two pretty major strikes. The review argues that…

Just a couple of items, before I disappear for a couple of weeks, trekking in the Himalayas (yes, lucky me). First, here's a chart from the Learning & Work Institute's useful data on adult learning. LWI monitors what's going on every year or two; as well as measuring participation levels by all kinds of factor (age, class etc), they ask about the benefits of learning: to the person's job; to their health and wellbeing, and to gaining qualifications. The chart below shows the results on this last one: whether the learning that men and women engage in leads to qualifications, or to more learning. The final column shows a big…

I went last week to a packed meeting of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at Kings College London, to hear Carrie Gracie talking about her book Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money. Carrie was in conversation with Julia Gillard, ex-PM of Australia and leader of the GIWL. As Carrie pointed out, Julia was impressively well-prepared, with a postit-festooned copy of the book, and the two women's dialogue flowed along very well. The story is that of Carrie's discovery that as BBC's China Editor she was not being paid the same as her male BBC equivalents, in spite of explicit assurances that this would be the case, made…

It's that time of year again. OECD has just published its annual Education at a Glance. I was actually working at the OECD in the 1970s (yes, I know...) when EAG was first developed, though I had no hand in it. In those days the title was descriptively accurate - EAG was a slim document you could flip through quickly. Today the title is richly ironic. Anyway, forsaking nostalgia for my youthful time in Paris I turned to the figures for female and male achievement. They confirm the basic trend: women continue to increase their educational lead over men, at every level and in almost every subject. The situation is…

I’ve been having several discussions recently about reverse convergence.  This is the rather unwieldy term I used in the PP to refer to the need for more men to follow working/career patterns that have traditionally been seen as female, in order to balance the convergence that women are increasingly showing on male patterns–full-time employment, with assumptions that a ‘career’ must involve continuous upward movement. In another life I was secretary of the Association for the Social Study of Time, yet another of the myriad organisations set up by the prolific Michael Young.  Michael and I were interested in the ‘rhythms of society’ – what forms the daily, weekly, termly and annual cycles…

John Lanchester has written an interesting piece in the latest London Review of Books on what he calls a Good New Idea - an unconditional payment to every citizen, usually called Universal Basic Income.  Lanchester is an excellent exponent of economic issues, and does a good job with UBI (though he fails to mention a more recent report from Guy Standing, and that the Labour Party has recently said it would include in its next manifesto a commitment to piloting UBI in some form). UBI, as Lanchester observes, appeals to both left and right on the political spectrum.  Its universality appeals to the form, with the power to raise poorer people's…

It's that time of year again - when the World Economic Forum publishes its annual assessment of progress towards gender equality. This is a treasure trove of data and comparative rankings on four dimensions of equality: education, health, politics and economics. The headline news for the UK has been simple: the country went down 6 places in the overall ranking, dropping out of the top 20. I suppose you could take this as a timely signal of the slide into mediocrity - but I'm always one to avoid cynical pessimism. Here's how the UK's overall picture looks: Let me get my methodological beef out of the way. On education, WEF…

I don't often see the New York Review of Books, but I was trekking high up with a group of friends recently, with no access to papers, so we swapped our reading around. As a result I got to see a fascinating review by Elaine Blair of Kate Kirkpatrick's biography of de Beauvoir (accompanied by an elegant cartoon by Karl Stevens of deB at a cafe table, fag hanging from lower lip). I have always admired not just deB's brilliance, but the fact that she opened up not just gender but old age as fields for politics as well as philosophy. That's two pretty major strikes. The review argues that…

Just a couple of items, before I disappear for a couple of weeks, trekking in the Himalayas (yes, lucky me). First, here's a chart from the Learning & Work Institute's useful data on adult learning. LWI monitors what's going on every year or two; as well as measuring participation levels by all kinds of factor (age, class etc), they ask about the benefits of learning: to the person's job; to their health and wellbeing, and to gaining qualifications. The chart below shows the results on this last one: whether the learning that men and women engage in leads to qualifications, or to more learning. The final column shows a big…

I went last week to a packed meeting of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at Kings College London, to hear Carrie Gracie talking about her book Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money. Carrie was in conversation with Julia Gillard, ex-PM of Australia and leader of the GIWL. As Carrie pointed out, Julia was impressively well-prepared, with a postit-festooned copy of the book, and the two women's dialogue flowed along very well. The story is that of Carrie's discovery that as BBC's China Editor she was not being paid the same as her male BBC equivalents, in spite of explicit assurances that this would be the case, made…

It's that time of year again. OECD has just published its annual Education at a Glance. I was actually working at the OECD in the 1970s (yes, I know...) when EAG was first developed, though I had no hand in it. In those days the title was descriptively accurate - EAG was a slim document you could flip through quickly. Today the title is richly ironic. Anyway, forsaking nostalgia for my youthful time in Paris I turned to the figures for female and male achievement. They confirm the basic trend: women continue to increase their educational lead over men, at every level and in almost every subject. The situation is…

I’ve been having several discussions recently about reverse convergence.  This is the rather unwieldy term I used in the PP to refer to the need for more men to follow working/career patterns that have traditionally been seen as female, in order to balance the convergence that women are increasingly showing on male patterns–full-time employment, with assumptions that a ‘career’ must involve continuous upward movement. In another life I was secretary of the Association for the Social Study of Time, yet another of the myriad organisations set up by the prolific Michael Young.  Michael and I were interested in the ‘rhythms of society’ – what forms the daily, weekly, termly and annual cycles…

John Lanchester has written an interesting piece in the latest London Review of Books on what he calls a Good New Idea - an unconditional payment to every citizen, usually called Universal Basic Income.  Lanchester is an excellent exponent of economic issues, and does a good job with UBI (though he fails to mention a more recent report from Guy Standing, and that the Labour Party has recently said it would include in its next manifesto a commitment to piloting UBI in some form). UBI, as Lanchester observes, appeals to both left and right on the political spectrum.  Its universality appeals to the form, with the power to raise poorer people's…

It's that time of year again - when the World Economic Forum publishes its annual assessment of progress towards gender equality. This is a treasure trove of data and comparative rankings on four dimensions of equality: education, health, politics and economics. The headline news for the UK has been simple: the country went down 6 places in the overall ranking, dropping out of the top 20. I suppose you could take this as a timely signal of the slide into mediocrity - but I'm always one to avoid cynical pessimism. Here's how the UK's overall picture looks: Let me get my methodological beef out of the way. On education, WEF…

I don't often see the New York Review of Books, but I was trekking high up with a group of friends recently, with no access to papers, so we swapped our reading around. As a result I got to see a fascinating review by Elaine Blair of Kate Kirkpatrick's biography of de Beauvoir (accompanied by an elegant cartoon by Karl Stevens of deB at a cafe table, fag hanging from lower lip). I have always admired not just deB's brilliance, but the fact that she opened up not just gender but old age as fields for politics as well as philosophy. That's two pretty major strikes. The review argues that…

Just a couple of items, before I disappear for a couple of weeks, trekking in the Himalayas (yes, lucky me). First, here's a chart from the Learning & Work Institute's useful data on adult learning. LWI monitors what's going on every year or two; as well as measuring participation levels by all kinds of factor (age, class etc), they ask about the benefits of learning: to the person's job; to their health and wellbeing, and to gaining qualifications. The chart below shows the results on this last one: whether the learning that men and women engage in leads to qualifications, or to more learning. The final column shows a big…

I went last week to a packed meeting of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at Kings College London, to hear Carrie Gracie talking about her book Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money. Carrie was in conversation with Julia Gillard, ex-PM of Australia and leader of the GIWL. As Carrie pointed out, Julia was impressively well-prepared, with a postit-festooned copy of the book, and the two women's dialogue flowed along very well. The story is that of Carrie's discovery that as BBC's China Editor she was not being paid the same as her male BBC equivalents, in spite of explicit assurances that this would be the case, made…

It's that time of year again. OECD has just published its annual Education at a Glance. I was actually working at the OECD in the 1970s (yes, I know...) when EAG was first developed, though I had no hand in it. In those days the title was descriptively accurate - EAG was a slim document you could flip through quickly. Today the title is richly ironic. Anyway, forsaking nostalgia for my youthful time in Paris I turned to the figures for female and male achievement. They confirm the basic trend: women continue to increase their educational lead over men, at every level and in almost every subject. The situation is…

I’ve been having several discussions recently about reverse convergence.  This is the rather unwieldy term I used in the PP to refer to the need for more men to follow working/career patterns that have traditionally been seen as female, in order to balance the convergence that women are increasingly showing on male patterns–full-time employment, with assumptions that a ‘career’ must involve continuous upward movement. In another life I was secretary of the Association for the Social Study of Time, yet another of the myriad organisations set up by the prolific Michael Young.  Michael and I were interested in the ‘rhythms of society’ – what forms the daily, weekly, termly and annual cycles…

John Lanchester has written an interesting piece in the latest London Review of Books on what he calls a Good New Idea - an unconditional payment to every citizen, usually called Universal Basic Income.  Lanchester is an excellent exponent of economic issues, and does a good job with UBI (though he fails to mention a more recent report from Guy Standing, and that the Labour Party has recently said it would include in its next manifesto a commitment to piloting UBI in some form). UBI, as Lanchester observes, appeals to both left and right on the political spectrum.  Its universality appeals to the form, with the power to raise poorer people's…

It's that time of year again - when the World Economic Forum publishes its annual assessment of progress towards gender equality. This is a treasure trove of data and comparative rankings on four dimensions of equality: education, health, politics and economics. The headline news for the UK has been simple: the country went down 6 places in the overall ranking, dropping out of the top 20. I suppose you could take this as a timely signal of the slide into mediocrity - but I'm always one to avoid cynical pessimism. Here's how the UK's overall picture looks: Let me get my methodological beef out of the way. On education, WEF…

I don't often see the New York Review of Books, but I was trekking high up with a group of friends recently, with no access to papers, so we swapped our reading around. As a result I got to see a fascinating review by Elaine Blair of Kate Kirkpatrick's biography of de Beauvoir (accompanied by an elegant cartoon by Karl Stevens of deB at a cafe table, fag hanging from lower lip). I have always admired not just deB's brilliance, but the fact that she opened up not just gender but old age as fields for politics as well as philosophy. That's two pretty major strikes. The review argues that…

Just a couple of items, before I disappear for a couple of weeks, trekking in the Himalayas (yes, lucky me). First, here's a chart from the Learning & Work Institute's useful data on adult learning. LWI monitors what's going on every year or two; as well as measuring participation levels by all kinds of factor (age, class etc), they ask about the benefits of learning: to the person's job; to their health and wellbeing, and to gaining qualifications. The chart below shows the results on this last one: whether the learning that men and women engage in leads to qualifications, or to more learning. The final column shows a big…

I went last week to a packed meeting of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at Kings College London, to hear Carrie Gracie talking about her book Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money. Carrie was in conversation with Julia Gillard, ex-PM of Australia and leader of the GIWL. As Carrie pointed out, Julia was impressively well-prepared, with a postit-festooned copy of the book, and the two women's dialogue flowed along very well. The story is that of Carrie's discovery that as BBC's China Editor she was not being paid the same as her male BBC equivalents, in spite of explicit assurances that this would be the case, made…

It's that time of year again. OECD has just published its annual Education at a Glance. I was actually working at the OECD in the 1970s (yes, I know...) when EAG was first developed, though I had no hand in it. In those days the title was descriptively accurate - EAG was a slim document you could flip through quickly. Today the title is richly ironic. Anyway, forsaking nostalgia for my youthful time in Paris I turned to the figures for female and male achievement. They confirm the basic trend: women continue to increase their educational lead over men, at every level and in almost every subject. The situation is…

I’ve been having several discussions recently about reverse convergence.  This is the rather unwieldy term I used in the PP to refer to the need for more men to follow working/career patterns that have traditionally been seen as female, in order to balance the convergence that women are increasingly showing on male patterns–full-time employment, with assumptions that a ‘career’ must involve continuous upward movement. In another life I was secretary of the Association for the Social Study of Time, yet another of the myriad organisations set up by the prolific Michael Young.  Michael and I were interested in the ‘rhythms of society’ – what forms the daily, weekly, termly and annual cycles…

John Lanchester has written an interesting piece in the latest London Review of Books on what he calls a Good New Idea - an unconditional payment to every citizen, usually called Universal Basic Income.  Lanchester is an excellent exponent of economic issues, and does a good job with UBI (though he fails to mention a more recent report from Guy Standing, and that the Labour Party has recently said it would include in its next manifesto a commitment to piloting UBI in some form). UBI, as Lanchester observes, appeals to both left and right on the political spectrum.  Its universality appeals to the form, with the power to raise poorer people's…

It's that time of year again - when the World Economic Forum publishes its annual assessment of progress towards gender equality. This is a treasure trove of data and comparative rankings on four dimensions of equality: education, health, politics and economics. The headline news for the UK has been simple: the country went down 6 places in the overall ranking, dropping out of the top 20. I suppose you could take this as a timely signal of the slide into mediocrity - but I'm always one to avoid cynical pessimism. Here's how the UK's overall picture looks: Let me get my methodological beef out of the way. On education, WEF…

I don't often see the New York Review of Books, but I was trekking high up with a group of friends recently, with no access to papers, so we swapped our reading around. As a result I got to see a fascinating review by Elaine Blair of Kate Kirkpatrick's biography of de Beauvoir (accompanied by an elegant cartoon by Karl Stevens of deB at a cafe table, fag hanging from lower lip). I have always admired not just deB's brilliance, but the fact that she opened up not just gender but old age as fields for politics as well as philosophy. That's two pretty major strikes. The review argues that…

Just a couple of items, before I disappear for a couple of weeks, trekking in the Himalayas (yes, lucky me). First, here's a chart from the Learning & Work Institute's useful data on adult learning. LWI monitors what's going on every year or two; as well as measuring participation levels by all kinds of factor (age, class etc), they ask about the benefits of learning: to the person's job; to their health and wellbeing, and to gaining qualifications. The chart below shows the results on this last one: whether the learning that men and women engage in leads to qualifications, or to more learning. The final column shows a big…

I went last week to a packed meeting of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at Kings College London, to hear Carrie Gracie talking about her book Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money. Carrie was in conversation with Julia Gillard, ex-PM of Australia and leader of the GIWL. As Carrie pointed out, Julia was impressively well-prepared, with a postit-festooned copy of the book, and the two women's dialogue flowed along very well. The story is that of Carrie's discovery that as BBC's China Editor she was not being paid the same as her male BBC equivalents, in spite of explicit assurances that this would be the case, made…

It's that time of year again. OECD has just published its annual Education at a Glance. I was actually working at the OECD in the 1970s (yes, I know...) when EAG was first developed, though I had no hand in it. In those days the title was descriptively accurate - EAG was a slim document you could flip through quickly. Today the title is richly ironic. Anyway, forsaking nostalgia for my youthful time in Paris I turned to the figures for female and male achievement. They confirm the basic trend: women continue to increase their educational lead over men, at every level and in almost every subject. The situation is…

I’ve been having several discussions recently about reverse convergence.  This is the rather unwieldy term I used in the PP to refer to the need for more men to follow working/career patterns that have traditionally been seen as female, in order to balance the convergence that women are increasingly showing on male patterns–full-time employment, with assumptions that a ‘career’ must involve continuous upward movement. In another life I was secretary of the Association for the Social Study of Time, yet another of the myriad organisations set up by the prolific Michael Young.  Michael and I were interested in the ‘rhythms of society’ – what forms the daily, weekly, termly and annual cycles…

John Lanchester has written an interesting piece in the latest London Review of Books on what he calls a Good New Idea - an unconditional payment to every citizen, usually called Universal Basic Income.  Lanchester is an excellent exponent of economic issues, and does a good job with UBI (though he fails to mention a more recent report from Guy Standing, and that the Labour Party has recently said it would include in its next manifesto a commitment to piloting UBI in some form). UBI, as Lanchester observes, appeals to both left and right on the political spectrum.  Its universality appeals to the form, with the power to raise poorer people's…

It's that time of year again - when the World Economic Forum publishes its annual assessment of progress towards gender equality. This is a treasure trove of data and comparative rankings on four dimensions of equality: education, health, politics and economics. The headline news for the UK has been simple: the country went down 6 places in the overall ranking, dropping out of the top 20. I suppose you could take this as a timely signal of the slide into mediocrity - but I'm always one to avoid cynical pessimism. Here's how the UK's overall picture looks: Let me get my methodological beef out of the way. On education, WEF…

I don't often see the New York Review of Books, but I was trekking high up with a group of friends recently, with no access to papers, so we swapped our reading around. As a result I got to see a fascinating review by Elaine Blair of Kate Kirkpatrick's biography of de Beauvoir (accompanied by an elegant cartoon by Karl Stevens of deB at a cafe table, fag hanging from lower lip). I have always admired not just deB's brilliance, but the fact that she opened up not just gender but old age as fields for politics as well as philosophy. That's two pretty major strikes. The review argues that…

Just a couple of items, before I disappear for a couple of weeks, trekking in the Himalayas (yes, lucky me). First, here's a chart from the Learning & Work Institute's useful data on adult learning. LWI monitors what's going on every year or two; as well as measuring participation levels by all kinds of factor (age, class etc), they ask about the benefits of learning: to the person's job; to their health and wellbeing, and to gaining qualifications. The chart below shows the results on this last one: whether the learning that men and women engage in leads to qualifications, or to more learning. The final column shows a big…

I went last week to a packed meeting of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at Kings College London, to hear Carrie Gracie talking about her book Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money. Carrie was in conversation with Julia Gillard, ex-PM of Australia and leader of the GIWL. As Carrie pointed out, Julia was impressively well-prepared, with a postit-festooned copy of the book, and the two women's dialogue flowed along very well. The story is that of Carrie's discovery that as BBC's China Editor she was not being paid the same as her male BBC equivalents, in spite of explicit assurances that this would be the case, made…

It's that time of year again. OECD has just published its annual Education at a Glance. I was actually working at the OECD in the 1970s (yes, I know...) when EAG was first developed, though I had no hand in it. In those days the title was descriptively accurate - EAG was a slim document you could flip through quickly. Today the title is richly ironic. Anyway, forsaking nostalgia for my youthful time in Paris I turned to the figures for female and male achievement. They confirm the basic trend: women continue to increase their educational lead over men, at every level and in almost every subject. The situation is…

I’ve been having several discussions recently about reverse convergence.  This is the rather unwieldy term I used in the PP to refer to the need for more men to follow working/career patterns that have traditionally been seen as female, in order to balance the convergence that women are increasingly showing on male patterns–full-time employment, with assumptions that a ‘career’ must involve continuous upward movement. In another life I was secretary of the Association for the Social Study of Time, yet another of the myriad organisations set up by the prolific Michael Young.  Michael and I were interested in the ‘rhythms of society’ – what forms the daily, weekly, termly and annual cycles…

John Lanchester has written an interesting piece in the latest London Review of Books on what he calls a Good New Idea - an unconditional payment to every citizen, usually called Universal Basic Income.  Lanchester is an excellent exponent of economic issues, and does a good job with UBI (though he fails to mention a more recent report from Guy Standing, and that the Labour Party has recently said it would include in its next manifesto a commitment to piloting UBI in some form). UBI, as Lanchester observes, appeals to both left and right on the political spectrum.  Its universality appeals to the form, with the power to raise poorer people's…

It's that time of year again - when the World Economic Forum publishes its annual assessment of progress towards gender equality. This is a treasure trove of data and comparative rankings on four dimensions of equality: education, health, politics and economics. The headline news for the UK has been simple: the country went down 6 places in the overall ranking, dropping out of the top 20. I suppose you could take this as a timely signal of the slide into mediocrity - but I'm always one to avoid cynical pessimism. Here's how the UK's overall picture looks: Let me get my methodological beef out of the way. On education, WEF…

I don't often see the New York Review of Books, but I was trekking high up with a group of friends recently, with no access to papers, so we swapped our reading around. As a result I got to see a fascinating review by Elaine Blair of Kate Kirkpatrick's biography of de Beauvoir (accompanied by an elegant cartoon by Karl Stevens of deB at a cafe table, fag hanging from lower lip). I have always admired not just deB's brilliance, but the fact that she opened up not just gender but old age as fields for politics as well as philosophy. That's two pretty major strikes. The review argues that…

Just a couple of items, before I disappear for a couple of weeks, trekking in the Himalayas (yes, lucky me). First, here's a chart from the Learning & Work Institute's useful data on adult learning. LWI monitors what's going on every year or two; as well as measuring participation levels by all kinds of factor (age, class etc), they ask about the benefits of learning: to the person's job; to their health and wellbeing, and to gaining qualifications. The chart below shows the results on this last one: whether the learning that men and women engage in leads to qualifications, or to more learning. The final column shows a big…

I went last week to a packed meeting of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at Kings College London, to hear Carrie Gracie talking about her book Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money. Carrie was in conversation with Julia Gillard, ex-PM of Australia and leader of the GIWL. As Carrie pointed out, Julia was impressively well-prepared, with a postit-festooned copy of the book, and the two women's dialogue flowed along very well. The story is that of Carrie's discovery that as BBC's China Editor she was not being paid the same as her male BBC equivalents, in spite of explicit assurances that this would be the case, made…

It's that time of year again. OECD has just published its annual Education at a Glance. I was actually working at the OECD in the 1970s (yes, I know...) when EAG was first developed, though I had no hand in it. In those days the title was descriptively accurate - EAG was a slim document you could flip through quickly. Today the title is richly ironic. Anyway, forsaking nostalgia for my youthful time in Paris I turned to the figures for female and male achievement. They confirm the basic trend: women continue to increase their educational lead over men, at every level and in almost every subject. The situation is…

I’ve been having several discussions recently about reverse convergence.  This is the rather unwieldy term I used in the PP to refer to the need for more men to follow working/career patterns that have traditionally been seen as female, in order to balance the convergence that women are increasingly showing on male patterns–full-time employment, with assumptions that a ‘career’ must involve continuous upward movement. In another life I was secretary of the Association for the Social Study of Time, yet another of the myriad organisations set up by the prolific Michael Young.  Michael and I were interested in the ‘rhythms of society’ – what forms the daily, weekly, termly and annual cycles…

John Lanchester has written an interesting piece in the latest London Review of Books on what he calls a Good New Idea - an unconditional payment to every citizen, usually called Universal Basic Income.  Lanchester is an excellent exponent of economic issues, and does a good job with UBI (though he fails to mention a more recent report from Guy Standing, and that the Labour Party has recently said it would include in its next manifesto a commitment to piloting UBI in some form). UBI, as Lanchester observes, appeals to both left and right on the political spectrum.  Its universality appeals to the form, with the power to raise poorer people's…