OECD | The Paula Principle

October 18, 2018October 19, 2018

Productivity and the PP

Last month, global leaders from governments, private sector companies, trade unions and civil society pledged to take concrete action towards closing the gender pay gap by 2030. The global commitments – to ensure women in every sector of the workforce are paid equally to men for doing work of equal value – were made at the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) Pledging event held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. As part of the rationale for the initiative, Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, said, “Gender pay gaps are not only unfair for those who suffer them, but they are also detrimental to our economies. If you do not have…

June 19, 2015

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently, both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC. Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit. I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings. The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…

August 20, 2013

PS on older women working, and Shakespeare

A PS to yesterday's post, where I pointed out that women aged 45+ are most often found to be breadwinners. Kimberley Botwright of the OECD's Public Affairs directorate has been running a rather improbably but delightful series of blogs linking Shakespeare plays to current OECD analyses. So far we've had Merchant of Venice used to explore issues of financial stability, and Romeo & Juliet for policies on youth and risk. Her post on Love's Labour's Lost led me to data on labour market participation. If you toggle it to show the figures on employment rates amongst older women, you can see that there's a pretty strong relation between them and the relative prosperity of the…

June 9, 2013

Noncogs

Noncogs is short for non-cognitive skills, and I've just been at an OECD meeting where my former colleague Koji Miyamoto is preparing for some longitudinal studies to measure these in several different countries. Noncogs are, obviously, distinguished from cognitive skills, both general ones such as reasoning and analytical skills and specific ones such as subject-related skills (mathematical, linguistic etc). Noncogs include the capacity to concentrate on medium- or long-term goals, perseverance, the ability to deal with setbacks and the capacity to interact well with others. There is increasing evidence that in many contexts noncogs are as important as cogs, if not more so. (We should always remember that the two categories are not watertight, and interact…

March 5, 2013

Discrimination against part-timers: a slightly unfair example

"The flexibility of Britain's labour market makes stagnation slightly more tolerable in the short-term than in countries where rigid labour markets have contributed to high unemployment. Yet there is a price to pay, as many jobs are part-time or temporary; when you take account of inflation, wages overall are declining." Thus Pier Carlo Padoan, chief economist of OECD, writing in this month's Prospect magazine. Nothing remarkable there, you might say. Padoan goes on: "If economic weakness lingers, there is a risk of further polarisation between full-time employees and those in part-time, insecure, often low-paid work." Again, the statement is in one sense unremarkable - except for the important warning from…

January 12, 2013February 11, 2013

part-time pathways

The PP got its first publicity splash yesterday with a 2-page feature in London's Evening Standard ! In a previous blog I referred at some length to the excellent OECD report Closing the Gender Gap. I quoted one figure which I said I found hard to believe - that only 3% of part-time women workers went on to work full-time. I checked with the OECD and they very promptly and helpfully gave me the reference source. It turns out that the 3% refers specifically to women who use part-time employment as a stepping stone to full-time having started outside employment altogether. The broader figure for progressing from part-time to full-time is 14% , and I…

January 7, 2013

Closing the Gender Gap

Welcome to 2013. I didn't switch off Paula completely, but steered clear of blogging etc. One xmas party conversation led to an interesting hypothesis: that male CEOs who have daughters will get it (the PP, that is, or gender issues generally) , but won't if they don't. The reason my cocktail acquaintance gave for her idea is that those with no children won't get it anyway, and those with sons will think that no one can combine professional work with children, because sons take up so much organisational energy. Only those with daughters will see that work and parenting can be combined with (relative) ease if things are sensibly managed. She…

November 1, 2012November 18, 2012

It’s not just OECD countries

The Paula Principle emerged for me from looking at OECD data. This shows conclusively how general the trend is for girls and women to do better than boys and men in education. But OECD countries are relatively wealthy, and not typical of all countries. I'm in Morocco at a meeting of the World Committe on Lifelong Learning. I've just learnt that girls here already outperform boys at the level of the baccalaureate. Moreover Faoud Chafiqi, a researcher who also works in the education ministry, reported that girls' aspirations for higher education are far stronger than boys. I assume, obviously, that the same tide is happening here as we have seen…

October 18, 2018October 19, 2018