The Paula Principle

Anna Coote

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
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Time on our Side

I have productive friends. My previous post drew on Melissa Benn's What Should We Tell Our Daughters?  This one draws on Time on Our Side, Anna Coote's broad-ranging and stimulating collection from the New Rconomics Foundation. It's subtitled 'a new economics of work and time', and brings together ideas about how we should measure well-being more adequately than via conventional GDP growth;   reconcile economic policy and practice with the imperatives of environmental change;  and arrive at fairer and more satisfying balance of  paid work, caring and other activities.  Sounds fairly challenging?  It is, but it's a thoroughly grounded and realistically argued set of essays. The book's key agenda item is the…
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Over time and cohort/generation effects

I was very glad to hear recently from Anna Coote of nef that they will be publishing a fuller treatment of new approaches to working time.  Anna and I agree that it is vital to think of this in the context of working lives, ie over the full period of the decades that people work.  Her earlier work for nef focussed very much on a shorter working week, and explored the very broad range of benefits which would flow from a general shortening of the week:  a better spread of employment, better family arrangements and a more environmentally friendly consumption patterns, to  name but three rather large ones.  It's good news…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
Read More

Time on our Side

I have productive friends. My previous post drew on Melissa Benn's What Should We Tell Our Daughters?  This one draws on Time on Our Side, Anna Coote's broad-ranging and stimulating collection from the New Rconomics Foundation. It's subtitled 'a new economics of work and time', and brings together ideas about how we should measure well-being more adequately than via conventional GDP growth;   reconcile economic policy and practice with the imperatives of environmental change;  and arrive at fairer and more satisfying balance of  paid work, caring and other activities.  Sounds fairly challenging?  It is, but it's a thoroughly grounded and realistically argued set of essays. The book's key agenda item is the…
Read More

Over time and cohort/generation effects

I was very glad to hear recently from Anna Coote of nef that they will be publishing a fuller treatment of new approaches to working time.  Anna and I agree that it is vital to think of this in the context of working lives, ie over the full period of the decades that people work.  Her earlier work for nef focussed very much on a shorter working week, and explored the very broad range of benefits which would flow from a general shortening of the week:  a better spread of employment, better family arrangements and a more environmentally friendly consumption patterns, to  name but three rather large ones.  It's good news…
Read More

Salutary reminders on pay gaps and progress

There has been a steady trickle of important PP-relevant analyses in recent weeks.  Here are just two of them. First, the TUC shows how the gender pay gap is biggest for women in their 50s, at about £8500 per year, or £85000 over the decade.  This is a powerful reminder that we need to look at these effects over the whole of the working life.  Of course much of the gap derives from the point at which women have children.  For mothers in their 50s the gap is 42%, and so the crucial remedies are better childcare provision and parental leave, with encouragement for men to share child-rearing responsibilities. But…
Read More

Time on our Side

I have productive friends. My previous post drew on Melissa Benn's What Should We Tell Our Daughters?  This one draws on Time on Our Side, Anna Coote's broad-ranging and stimulating collection from the New Rconomics Foundation. It's subtitled 'a new economics of work and time', and brings together ideas about how we should measure well-being more adequately than via conventional GDP growth;   reconcile economic policy and practice with the imperatives of environmental change;  and arrive at fairer and more satisfying balance of  paid work, caring and other activities.  Sounds fairly challenging?  It is, but it's a thoroughly grounded and realistically argued set of essays. The book's key agenda item is the…
Read More

Over time and cohort/generation effects

I was very glad to hear recently from Anna Coote of nef that they will be publishing a fuller treatment of new approaches to working time.  Anna and I agree that it is vital to think of this in the context of working lives, ie over the full period of the decades that people work.  Her earlier work for nef focussed very much on a shorter working week, and explored the very broad range of benefits which would flow from a general shortening of the week:  a better spread of employment, better family arrangements and a more environmentally friendly consumption patterns, to  name but three rather large ones.  It's good news…
Read More