Category Archives: Politics, Policies And Process
Graduate Retention Strategies: Ageist, Sexist Or Just Shortsighted?
Graduate retention is a serious aspect of any decent policy for regeneration. But the emphasis on new / young graduates alone is strange, when there are always also other highly qualified and more experienced people who might offer at least as much in any developing economy.
A recurring theme in the regeneration of cities and regions is the emphasis on retention of graduates. This is an entirely reasonable focus, given the cost of producing graduates and the potential which they have in terms of economic value. The flight of bright graduates from regional to capital cities is a well-marked issue for most regional economies.
Reducing the loss of graduate talent is generally a task allocated to the regional universities which have educated them. There is a whole sector of most regional knowledge economies which is dedicated simply to training and retaining graduates in the hope that they will enhance the economic performance of that region.
Extending the scope for retention
There are also now schemes which train ‘women returners’, women who have taken time out to raise a family or who have
only later in their working lives decided to develop their formal skills. Generally these schemes give good value for the ‘returners’ and their future employers, at least in terms of providing competent middle-level practitioners and professionals; and certainly they can make a really significant difference to the lives of the women who undertake the training.
Overlooked and under-used
But there is another group of people with high skills who are often simply not geared into their local and regional economy in any meaningful way. These are often older, highly qualified and experienced graduate women who are no longer working (but are usually not registered as unemployed), and who may remain living in an area because they have family or other personal commitments there.
These women generally do not need any further training (except in the same way that other practising professionals might need it) and they often undertake a good deal of voluntary and unpaid work in their communities. Little of this work however is given any formal economic value, and even less of it is focused strategically on the requirements of their economic location.
How could their activities be strategically focused, when these women, often for reasons beyond their individual control, may have almost no continuing professional connection in their communities?
Invisible people
In an economy with a significant proportion of women leaders and decision-makers the ‘invisible’ older female graduate might be identified as a person with serious economic potential,
someone for whom every effort should be made to find or create suitable high-level employment or enterprise opportunities commensurate with her qualifications and experience.
Highly qualified men are likely, we might suppose, to move to a job elsewhere which meets their requirements; the women may have no choice but to relinquish their employment, if their family moves elsewhere or if circumstances mean their job disappears. In many challenged regional and local economies however the scope to realise this female potential remains unperceived by those (mostly men) who decide the strategy for their local economies.
Doing the audit
Has anyone tried to estimate the numbers of ‘non-economically-productive’ highly qualified older women in a given regional or
local economy undergoing regeneration? Does anyone know what these women currently contribute informally to their economies, or what they could contribute formally in the right contexts?
Older women are often seemingly invisible. My guess, from many private encounters, discussions and observations over the past few years, is that here is an almost totally untapped resource.
Nurturing all available resources
Retention of young graduates is of course critical to economic renaissance; but so is the gearing in of the potential of older and more experienced graduates. This is another example of why economic regeneration strategists need to appreciate and nurture more carefully what they already have, as well as what they would like for the future to procure.
This article is also linked from the New Start magazine blog of 14 March 2007.
International Women’s Day: Let’s Focus On Feminist (Gendered) Economics
Today (8 March) is International Women’s Day, when women are celebrated in many parts of the world. But after more than a century of campaigning, women and men remain unequal in wealth and power. It’s time for an overtly feminist, gendered approach to economics, examining the differential impacts and advantages of economic activity on women and men.
The campaign for ‘women’s rights’ has been going for a very long time now.
One of the original texts about women’s rights, The Subjection of Women
The question is, therefore: despite worthy events such as International Women’s Day, why is there still such a long way to go?
Convenient inertia
‘Convenient’ is probably too kind a word to describe the collective failure to see the negative experience of most women in regard to economics, employment, public life and business. Nonetheless,
the word convenience points us in the right direction if we want to explain the stifling inertia many women experience in their quest simply for equality.
There are many fair-minded and decent men, but there are also large numbers who would rather see inequality and exploitation anywhere except on their own doorstep. And since men still have more power and influence than women, it’s often their perspectives which have the most weight. ‘Women’s equality’ may not be a taboo subject, but it is certainly a sidelined one.
There’s always something more urgent and important to address…
Economic analysis
So let’s start to approach this, seriously, another way. Let’s look routinely and quite expressly at how women and men fare in the
economy and the corridors of power.
In other words, let’s have an Economics which uses gender as an analytical tool in the same way that other Social Science analysis does. Only once the unspoken taboo had been broken did social scientists begin to perceive the realities of gender impact, direct and indirect, on society itself.
Moves in the right direction
Big steps are being made, with the introduction of equality standards for all English local authorities.
As part of these standards, Gender Impact Assessments, required from April 2007, are to be the vehicle through which the Women and Equality Unit and the Department for Trade and Industry is bringing into sharp focus the issue of gender in relation to the Government’s Public Service Reform.
Start them young
Government policy, excellent in intention though it may be, is one thing. Taking matters seriously in wider society, even if there are sanctions for not doing so, is sometimes another.
The next steps are to ensure that Business / Enterprise Studies and Economics embed gender differentials into their curriculum from the very start. This should be as much a part of the Economics (and other) GCSE curricula as it already is the Social Science one. Early on is the best place to start.
And at the other end of the scale corporates at every level should be required to give much more ‘gendered’ (and other diversity-linked) information in their annual reports. Business moves where its pocket takes it, and the bottom line here is exactly that, the visible bottom line. At a time of claimed skills
shortages, becoming gender conscious is good for business, as well as good for people.
Progress?
There are small initiatives such as the idea of the Conference Diversity Index, and also some much larger pointers to the future which thread through this train of thought.
In 2006 the London Business School launched the Lehman Brothers Business Centre for Women, with the intention of providing solutions for the challenges that businesses face in attracting and retaining talented women.
Signs of success
But alongside the urgent necessity to get more women to the very ‘top’ we need to ensure that most of them don’t stay much nearer the bottom.
The costs of gender inequality impinge on us all. There are a few thinkers and scholars who have established a baseline here, but only when gender is a clearly articulated part of mainstream public consciousness, politics and business will we really be getting somewhere.
A shorter version of this article was published as a letter in The Guardian on 8 March 2007.
Students: Customers, Clients Or Collaborators?
Not all academics are happy to see their students referred to as ‘customers’. They have a point. The role of college lecturers is to ensure that their students gain the knowledge and skills required to take them further in their chosen fields. The ‘student as customer’ model is incomplete, if only because teaching staff inevitably know more about the chosen field than do learners. Along with the actual knowledge required, there may be scope to look afresh at the skills base students need – and at the implications of that for the ‘consumer’ status of students.
Edward Snyder, Dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, is vexed about the notion of students as ‘customers’. In an article published by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, he writes:
‘Do we really want to tell them [students] that they are customers – and that they are always right – when we [post-graduate tutors] are in the last, best position to influence their overall academic, ethical and professional development?’
An important question
Prof Snyder asks an important question here – and it applies at least as much to pre-university and undergraduate students as it does to his very high fliers.
I recall one particularly demanding group of college students (all
groups, as any teacher will tell you, have their own signature character and dynamic) who informed me very early on in their course that they didn’t want to ‘do’ a given part of the syllabus because it was ‘boring’.
My riposte – that they were on an externally prescribed and examined course, so were going to have to get on with it, and they could tell me their views again when they had completed that part of the syllabus – left some of them genuinely puzzled. It had never occurred to them that choices and judgements are best made on the basis of direct experience, not just hearsay or even less. For optimum results, you can’t just pick’n’mix college education as you might your Saturday grocery shopping.
An extra dimension
The student – tutor interaction can never just be that of customer
– salesperson; though it might sometimes be described as client – professional (for instance, when the learning is by overt mutual consent very focused and directed).
Usually, however, the learner – teacher relationship should be that of collaborator – facilitator, within a context of guidance and the tutor’s expertise in the field being studied. This should ideally include encouragement by that tutor of efforts by the students to collaborate with each other (and, if possible, with more experienced practitioners) to explore the wider meanings and skills which lie behind the subject in question.
Beyond that, there may also, by mutual consent, be a role for tutors as their students’ professional mentor and / or coach.
The challenge
There is a challenge here. It is relatively easy to evaluate
‘customer satisfaction’ and to respond to what one learns as a provider from such evaluation.
It is more difficult to measure the impact and future value of collaboration and skills development. But that is what adult students often require, just as much as younger learners.
The question is, how is this complex interactional ‘contract’ best negotiated between students and teachers, at a time when we are all encouraged from a very early age to see ourselves just as customers, selecting at whim what we will or will not ‘consume’?
Read more articles about Education & Life-Long Learning.
The Cost Of Childcare: Women’s Work And Women’s Wages
Pre-school childcare is generally regarded as expensive. Even with government financial support, it stretches many household budgets. But there are now many more childcare places than hitherto. More places and higher costs, properly handled, may together be a longer-term sign of better status for women in the labour market.
The cost of pre-school childcare, we are constantly reminded, is ‘spiralling’ – highest, as ever, in London, and lowest in the north-west of England. The Daycare Trust tells us that the average cost of a full-time nursery place for under-twos is now (as of January 2007) £152 a week in England, and £131 in Wales. With individual average earnings at £447 a week, this is a hefty chunk out of some household budgets.
Early years support
Few would deny, however, that the government is doing its best to provide quality care for pre-school children. Welcoming recent developments, Alison Garnham, joint Chief Executive of the Daycare Trust called on the Government, as well as other political parties, to deliver the Ten Year Childcare Strategy:
‘At long last we have a government that is committed to making
progress in childcare facilities in this country. When New Labour came to power they faced major challenges in delivering high quality and affordable childcare to all families and we welcome wholeheartedly the improvements that have been made under the Ten Year Strategy.‘
Big changes from the past
Long gone is the grim time when finding childcare was an individual (mother)’s nightmare, relying only on a hunch and perhaps a local health visitor – who probably didn’t ‘approve’ of working mums – in the exhausting search for someone reliable to care for one’s children whilst the money to feed them was earned.
In 2007, Sure Start is metamorphosing into Children’s Centres,
and the tax credit system – to the daily tune of more than £2m for almost 400,000 families – helps many parents, as do tax-relief childcare vouchers (now up to age 12); and three- and four-year olds are entitled to 12.5 hours of free nursery education a week. In London, there is also a Childcare Affordability Programme which subsidises the cost of childcare by up to £30 for eligible parents.
Direct costs are up
Nonetheless, parents in the UK pay about 70% of the costs of childcare, compared to an average of about 30% for other European parents. (Where, of course, childcare patterns are sometimes very different.) And costs have risen more quickly than inflation – almost 6% in 2006, against inflation of less than half this.
Alongside this, there are reports that affordable childcare is
difficult to find in many areas.
Not all bad news
I have three takes on this situation:
There is the individual problem for parents who find it hard to fund good childcare; there is the opportunity for business-minded child carers at last to earn a decent living; and there is a shift in the labour market which, longer-term, may well serve everyone well.
Parents’ stretched budgets
First, I have every sympathy with parents who struggle to make ends meet and find the costs of ‘quality’ childcare so difficult. Raising young families is always a challenge and it is crucial that every possible support is given to parents in their efforts to do this responsibly and well.
It’s very important from every perspective that parents – including, but not only, single parents – and their children receive all the help which can be mustered by their communities, employers, and the government.
Childcare entrepreneurs
Second, this situation is by no means bad news for those entrepreneurs – almost all of them women – who see a childcare market opportunity and grasp it.
Childcare providers, at least in Britain, has traditionally been appallingly badly paid. It is about time that this changed. These days many people are concerned about the quality of what they eat. If there is now a public debate also about the quality of care for their children, this can only be to the good.
The market will rise to the opportunity; but, just as with quality food, provision may not always be cheap. (Though expense is not always the issue: sometimes it’s actually organising the right thing which is the problem. Neither home-grown food nor local, small-scale quality childcare need be so very expensive.)
The labour market
Finally, if I were a feminist economist (assuming such persons consciously exist), I would be pleased about the current scenario.
It is likely that most of those who are pushing for higher wages in response to childcare costs will be women. By the logic of the market this demand will have to be addressed and to some extent met.
And a corollary, given only finite amounts of available money,
may well be a market shift towards more equality of income between women and men. If women demand more pay, male employees (or indeed their managers / shareholding employers) will have to give way to a degree at least – especially as women are increasingly vital to the workforce, now often taking the field in terms of qualifications (sometimes gained whilst their little ones are receiving childcare) and skills.
Courage in transition
It’s a long, hard struggle, this childcare – equality scenario. But things overall are already better than they were, and the likelihood is that more pressure, higher expectations and political will together really can make a difference.
The Government’s Every Child Matters programme can of course be improved as experience in ‘how to do it’ is gained in
communities and by decision-makers. Potential for improvements in childcare is however a positive, never a negative. The Government must keep its nerve.
The debates about affordability and quality in early years provision are welcome signs that every child does indeed ‘matter’, and that, slowly, the economy is adjusting to recognise just that.
Policy-Related Scientific Research In Context
Avian influenza (‘bird flu’) has again made us aware of the scientific research which underpins government policy. Some have great faith in this science, others have none. Our growing understandings of how scientific research and public policy inter-relate can however help inform both science itself, and how political / policy decisions might be taken in real life.
Avian influenza has provoked quite a debate in The Guardian about how science and politics inter-relate.
Recent contributors to this debate include Erik Millstone and Simon Jenkins, who are right to raise the issue of scientific advice to the Government in respect of avian influenza – just as Ministers are right to take this advice seriously.
But in reality there is no such thing as ‘pure’ scientific research. All research, whether ‘natural’ or ‘social’, is predicated on often taken-for-granted understandings of context.
However inadvertently, therefore, the gap between scientific advice and policy / politic, whether in the case of avian influenza or any other issue, is wide not as Prof Millstone and Mr Jenkins might in different ways seem to suggest.
The questions underpin the research
Scientific advice arises from scientific research questions, and scientific research tends to be structured largely around ‘received’ understandings of the issues involved – including, inevitably, contexts of those issues.
In other words, natural scientists, as non-experts in matters socio-economic, will tend, if unchallenged, towards uncritical acceptance of the status quo or predominant contextual view of the situation in the same way as any other ‘person in the street’.
It is not surprising therefore that science, in selecting which techno-scientific issues to address, has in the past often focused on the interests of the most collectively powerful and visible operators.
Socio-economic impact and policy
This is now changing as questions about socio-economic impact are, rightly, articulated more loudly.
It is encouraging that Government politicians and policy-makers are beginning to recognise the critical importance of framing scientific research, from its inception, around contextual as well as ‘purely’ scientific questions.
Articulating these wider understandings better from the inception of any piece of research is the way to ensure that scientific advice can best inform political decision-making. And doing this certainly does not diminish the robustness of scientific endeavour; rather the converse.
Scientific and poltical responsibility shared
The selection of ways forward in policy is ultimately a political responsibility; but making sure that ‘scientific’
questions acknowledge the whole spectrum of contextual interests is a responsibility which, thankfully, scientists advising decision-makers are themselves increasingly aware that they must share.
A version of this posting was published on The Guardian letters page of 17 February 2007.
Further commentary follows the e-bookshop.
BRCs: The Science Golden Triangle Wins Again
England’s Northern Universities are upset that the Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs) of excellence are all in the ‘Golden Triangle’ of Oxford, Cambridge and London. ‘Added value’ economic impact has been sidelined. With intimations of southern advantage and selective assessment perspectives, is this a re-run of the 4GLS synchrotron debate on location in the ‘north’ or ‘south’?
Prof Alan Gilbert, Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University, is championing medical science in England’s northern universities, after his institution was not selected as a comprehensive biomedical research centre of excellence (BRC). This accolade, worth 8-figure sums to each institution, has been awarded only to universities in Oxford, Cambridge and London.
Once again, the Golden Triangle has triumphed over everywhere else in England.
And once again the southern economy hots up as northern sensitivities are similarly inflamed.
Who decides?
The decision to support only Golden Triangle universities was made by the Department of Health / NHS National Institute for Health Research
(NIRH) high command, on the basis of assessment by a panel of experts working outside England of the international excellence of medical science in the competing universities.
This panel does not seem to have laid much emphasis on the impact of macro-investment in the knowledge economy on regional economies as such.
History repeats itself
So here we go again.
More science money is being invested where money has already gone. Comparatively less is made available where investment has historically been more difficult to obtain.
When the big debates about synchrotron investment in the North of England were conducted, the medical science people were
hardly to be seen. The Wellcome Trust, a major player in bio-medical research, was widely regarded as unhelpful to those making the northern case, and even some northern university medical scientists did not support it.
Yet investment (usually of government money) in scientific institutions with capacity and established further potential is critical to wider long-term prospects for the UK economy.
Biggest impact, greatest added-value
Prof Gilbert says that universities must not ‘ask favours because we have been disadvantaged historically’. But in fighting his case he could look at the Daresbury (4GLS) – Rutherford Appleton (Diamond) synchrotron debates to see that the issues may be slightly different.
It is not ‘asking favours’ if those of us, the public whose money is
being spent, demand equity in terms of investment opportunities for top-level science.
Wider perspectives
The NHS is a very closed institution which has not, historically, been good at acknowledging it is now an important part of the wider knowledge economy.
Patient care is the aspect of this huge organisation which most members of the public experience, but that should be a fundamental ‘given’. It cannot provide refuge from the fact that, medically or otherwise, international science knows no silos.
Excellence in context
Nor can a rightful emphasis on patient experience permit us to forget, as collectively holders of the public purse, that any public investment needs to work in as many different ways as possible.
As the growing success of the U.K.’s ‘northern’ Darebury Laboratories has shown, internationally excellent science, public benefit across the nation and added-value regional development can evolve hand in hand, if enough decision-makers have the vision and courage to ensure that this will happen.
Single-Sex Schools Or Classes? What’s The Longer Term Impact?
Recent figures confirm that girls are doing better at school (and university) than boys. Single-sex classes within co-ed schools are not however generally seen as a way to resolve this inequality. But how much do we know about the longer-term impact on men and women of single-sex or mixed gender teaching?
Increasing concern about the higher academic achievement of girls than of boys in the U.K. has again raised the issue of single-sex classes (or even schools) as the norm.
Reasons for this concern are interesting, given the historical lack of concern* when girls under-performed relative to boys (and given also that even highly women still earn much less than their male counterparts). Nonetheless, current concerns are both legitimate and pressing.
[* With honourable exceptions – e.g. the fourth letter by Edward Brotherton in this 1864 Manchester Guardian correspondence.]
There is an uncomfortable feeling, overall, that the underperformance of boys is likely to lead to a larger disaffected ‘underclass’, than when things were the other way around.
And we can add to that the obvious consequence of
underperformance, in restricting the availability of talent to the economy, whether this be a male or female issue.
‘Solutions’?
For these reasons, as well as for reasons of equality of opportunity as such, much debate has recently occurred on the subject of mixed-sex and single-sex classes and schools. The general (but not unanimous) opinion on the basis of available evidence, it seems, is that there is little impact either way.
Frankly, I have my doubts about whether this analysis is adequate.
The evidence over many decades is that women do significantly less well economically and professionally than men, if you look at mature outcomes. And this happens even for people with the same qualifications. In other words, any initial advantage
diminishes as time goes on, almost regardless of family, parenthood (men become parents, too) and much else.
Early impacts
But there is one element of background which seems to make a difference, for women if not for men – and that is the ‘space’ in the secondary years which single-sex classes offer girls, to learn (some) things independently of boys.
It seems, especially in the more mathematically-related curriculum, that this helps girls; and it probably also helps in terms of self-determination and a conviction that it’s OK as an independent person to go ahead and do things with one’s life.
Certainly, this was a major indicator, in research undertaken quite early on by myself and others looking at how women scientists hold their own.
And perhaps the same applies to boys. If the girls aren’t there to talk about all the soft stuff in class, maybe the boys would have to have the courage to talk about it themselves – which could be an important help when ‘real life’ catches up with them in later adolescence and adulthood.
Balancing different agendas
There is a suspicion that some schools prefer mixed teaching because they see the girls (more mature and less disruptive?) as a stabilising influence on the boys. But this is not an equitable way forward and two wrongs do not make a
right.
I’d go for the so-called ‘diamond’ arrangement – segregated teaching for some core subject in the early years of secondary school – but not, if at all possible, for totally separate schools for girls and boys. There can surely be a middle way.
Even more critically, I’d make sure that analysis of research findings routinely extends beyond formal education to life outcomes, so we begin to understand more fully ‘what happens’ when individuals receive single-sex or co-ed teaching in their formative years.
Would You Choose The Iberian Lynx – Or A Road?
People who care about the environment do not always have the same priorities. For some the emphasis is on maintaining the habitat of ‘natural’ flora and fauna. For others the most important objective is sustaining an environment in which human beings can flourish now.
Who is right, and can these two objectives both be achieved?
There is a story going the rounds of a fairly recent environmental conference in southern Europe. The issue under debate was whether or not a large road should be built across the Iberian peninsula, to reduce the economic disadvantage of those who live at the ‘far end’ of it.
The problem however is that this region is a very significant natural habitat for rare species of animals and other living things – including the endangered Iberian lynx. Many conservationists therefore strongly oppose the idea of economic regeneration in the areas where the lynx is still minimally present. “How do I choose?”, demanded one policy maker.
Conflicting priorities
Here is an example of where ‘normal’ politics – regeneration and increased economic advantage for people with relatively very
little in the way of the claimed benefits of modern living – seems to clash fairly directly with the concerns of the environmental conservationists.
Obviously, there is an argument that, without environmental conservation and attention to natural diversity, there is likely to be no life of any kind on earth. But this may be a less immediate or pressing concern for those who have little material advantage, than for those more economically blessed. So what should the politicians and policy makers do?
What’s the way forward?
Can these two concerns be brought together in the context of real-time politics?
Would you go for the road or the lynx?
Carbon-Neutral Villages, British And Czech Alike
Self-sufficiency in energy is an ambition shared by many. Increasingly we are recognising that carbon-neutral living must be for real. Communities in Ashton Hayes, near Chester in the U.K., and Knezice, an hour east of Prague in the Czech Republic, provide different real-life examples of how this might be achieved.
Co-incidence or, perhaps, rather more than that? Perhaps the renewable energy agenda is at last becoming mainstream.
International Women’s Day 2007: What Will You Be Doing?
International Women’s Day is coming up on 8 March. It’s an event celebrating more than half the human population but it has a perennially low profile – often like the gender it celebrates. What’s International Women’s Day for, and how ‘should’ it be celebrated?
International Women’s Day is once more almost upon us.
Big events take a lot of organising, but, despite the IWD announcements, as in other years scarcely anyone is talking about how to celebrate this particular event. Of course there will be a scattering of (very welcome) arts happenings, and a conference or two, but… excitement in the air, there is not.
Celebration or frustration?
Perhaps the low-key approach to International Women’s Day is because many of us, women increasingly long in the tooth and short on patience, wonder if we will ever have an equitable stakehold in what’s on offer. Or else, still young and hopeful, perhaps we don’t yet think much about these matters.
Whatever, who wants to invest a lot of time and money in celebrating ‘women’s issues’?
One day a year is women’s notional allocation of celebratory time, and that’s not far off the proportion of wealth and top-level influence which women have, either. (I exaggerate and overstate the case a little, but not much.)
For those of us who, as women, value what we are and what we actually do, ‘progress’ does indeed seem to be very slow.
The dilemma: What does it take?
Our dilemma is this: Intuitively, we seek to celebrate, not stipulate. But celebration could be perceived as a very weak response to the multiple ‘challenges’ and deprivations which, globally, are still the lot of many more women than men.
Perhaps we should be marching in the streets, not sending out yet another lot of (idealised?) sisterly love, solidarity and affirmation.
Marching on the streets has however been done before, with sometimes important but generally only limited success – and often with fierce downsides for particular individuals.
And if we take just the harsher route of campaign, never celebration, we become very much like those whose behaviour, stereotypically, we may not always wish to emulate.
Solutions?
So is International Women’s Day worth celebrating?
I’d say, Yes – both because it focuses on issues which have particular resonance for many women of all ages and statuses, and because it reminds us of women elsewhere (than in the modern, western world) who should not be forgotten.
My ‘answer’, however, takes us almost nowhere in terms of how we should actually conduct our celebration.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Read the discussion of this article which follows the book E-store, and share your thoughts on the meaning of International Women’s Day, and how it could or should be ‘celebrated’.
Dreaming Realist 