The Paula Principle

Netherlands

Going Dutch?

I've said before - many times - that we need to rethink our approach to part-time work.  This is increasingly obvious in the light of the changing nature of employment generally, and not only in relation to the PP.   Included in this rethinking should be proposals for new ways of classifying part-timers.  The simplistic binary division into full-time and part-time has to go if women's careers and competences are to get a fair shout. In the last chapter of the PP book I suggest that we might restrict 'part-time' to work that is 8 hours a week or less, i.e. that is genuinely marginal.  This may be a step…
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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…
Read More

Going Dutch?

I've said before - many times - that we need to rethink our approach to part-time work.  This is increasingly obvious in the light of the changing nature of employment generally, and not only in relation to the PP.   Included in this rethinking should be proposals for new ways of classifying part-timers.  The simplistic binary division into full-time and part-time has to go if women's careers and competences are to get a fair shout. In the last chapter of the PP book I suggest that we might restrict 'part-time' to work that is 8 hours a week or less, i.e. that is genuinely marginal.  This may be a step…
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