September 22, 2016
Women told to wear heels and vamp up their appearance at work 0
It seems the news earlier this year that a woman from an FM company based at PwC had been sent home for not wearing heels is sadly not an isolated incident, as employers regularly tell women to put on more makeup, wear high heels and short skirts. The research by solicitors Slater and Gordon claims large numbers of women feel their employer has unfairly criticised their appearance in the workplace, with nearly one in five (19 percent) saying they felt more attention was paid to their appearance by their bosses than to their male peers. Shockingly, nearly one in 10 women (seven percent) have been told by bosses they preferred them to wear high heels whilst in the office or with clients, because it made them “more appealing”. Many women revealed they had been told to dress more provocatively and to be “sexier” – with almost 90 percent (86 percent) of those pressured to dress “sexier” and feeling their career might suffer if they didn’t comply.
August 8, 2016
Universal basic income is an idea whose time has come at last 0
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing
It is no longer a question of whether one of the world’s major economies will introduce a universal basic income for all of its citizens, but when. Over the weekend, the leader of the UK’s Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn announced in an interview in the Huffington Post that he was ‘instinctively looking’ at an idea that is already being discussed and piloted in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway and Canada. Corbyn may be one of the current glut of what would have once been political outliers in the Western World, but the idea of a universal basic income is one that is increasingly accepted in mainstream economic thinking. The RSA continues to campaign for it and has even put a number on it, suggesting that every UK citizen should be offered £308 between the ages of 25 and 65. Andrew Flowers offers up a masterful and detailed analysis of the economic and political issues involved in this piece on fivethirtyeight.com.
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