Karen Bartlett is a writer, journalist and film maker.
Karen writes for The Times, The Sunday Times,The Guardian, WIRED and Newsweek. In broadcast Karen has made documentaries for the BBC World Service, and directed a series on the economic meltdown.
Karen’s book 'Architects of Death' about Topf and Sons will be published in March 2018. She is also the author of 'After Auschwitz', a critically acclaimed biography about Dusty Springfield, and a book about disease eradication in the Twentieth Century.
Growing Up X
Fifty years after he was killed, the daughter of Malcolm X wants to make sure her father isn't written out of history Half way down a winding country road in New York’s wealthy Westchester County, one of America’s most famous revolutionaries lies buried under three feet of crisp white snow. I...
Newsweek
How one man gave Congo’s women hope
Life is hell for women caught up in the conflict in the Congo. But one remarkable doctor helps survivors to build a future Why are the lives of African women worthless? It’s a question that Denis Mukwege asks every day that he works with the raped and mutilated women of the Democratic Republic...
The Times - World
‘If they gave me a house, I’d take it tomorrow’
All I want is to die under this mountain.” Noor Ebrahim, a slightly-built former messenger for Reader’s Digest, has returned to the area where he grew up. Now retired, he likes to remember the old days; he can point out his school — “it was tough” — the mosque where his family prayed and the spot...
The Times - World
Momma D: Dionne Warwick, the Grande Dame of Divas
She learnt her stagecraft from Marlene Dietrich; 50 years on, she’s mentor to Whitney Houston and P. Diddy Dionne Warwick opens up her arms in a stage bow: “I’m looking pretty good, don’t you think,” she says. The singer seems slightly surprised to be turning 70, and, with pearly white teeth a...
The Times - Arts
India's Barefoot Revolution
What would it be like if women ran the world? In some parts of India, it’s already happening If all revolutions begin in unlikely locations, few could be as unpromising as Borda. It’s a poor village in the poorest district of one of the poorest states in India. Only the blasting from a nearby ...
The Times - World
It’s murder on your mobile, says The Killing’s Sarah Lund
Hit crime drama The Killing is back for a second series, and Karen Bartlett talks mobile phone forensics with actress Sofie Gråbøl Detective Sarah Lund is a Luddite. The loner heroine of Denmark’s hit crime drama The Killing is as much of a 70s relic as her Faroe sweaters: She makes notes by h...
Technology
Skateistan: How skateboarding took off with Afghan kids
It’s no surprise that in a world full of rules most kids want to do something with no organisation, and no adults. “This country has more restrictions than just about any other,” Oliver Percovich says, explaining how his own passion for freedom and fun led to groups of boys and girls flying acros...
The Times - World
Life and Love with 'The Greatest': Muhammad Ali
When Yolanda “Lonnie” Williams was six years old she looked out of her front door in Louisville, Kentucky, and saw an energetic young man holding court to a wide-eyed gaggle of neighbourhood boys, including her brother. “Who’s that big man?” she asked her mother, not knowing that the answer wo...
The Times - Arts
Polio's Last Stand
Eradicating the Last 1% of Polio Is Deadly But Essential When 40-year-old Liberian civil servant Patrick Sawyer died of Ebola earlier this year in hospital in Lagos, having carried the disease from his home country to Nigeria, global health workers feared the epidemic would spread in West Af...
Newsweek
Bringing Anne Frank Home – to Germany
Like many people in their seventies and eighties, Buddy Elias and his wife Gertie are downsizing – clearing out the attic and getting rid of several generations’ worth of papers, clutter and possessions from their family home in Basel, Switzerland. Unlike most other pensioners, however, Elias is ...
Newsweek
A Race Apart: the beauty queens of the apartheid era
The Miss World finalists are now at the World Cup, but the women who represented South Africa in its past have divided memories So far the game has not been beautiful for the World Cup’s “33rd official team”. They have gone largely unnoticed in South Africa’s impressive new stadiums, despite d...
The Times - World
Maki Mandela: “As Nelson's child, I can say I am proud of him”
In the week that London marks the statesman's 90th birthday, his daughter reveals how she overcame her resentment that he was a father to the world, but not to her Nelson Mandela arrives in London today for what is likely to be his last major public appearance; a 90th birthday charity concert ...
The Times - World
The Vagina Monologues turns ten
Eve Ensler transformed the New Orleans Superdome into ‘Superlove' for a celebrity-studded event to campaign against violence towards women Few people know that New Orleans is the vagina of America. Few would suggest it. “It is fertile. It's a delta. And everyone wants to party there,” explains...
The Times - Arts
When Nicola Schofield’s boss told her the firm she worked for was suffering from the financial crisis, she was more than happy to keep her job by working fewer hours.
“I have a four-year-old daughter who’s just started school,” she said. “My husband works away and I’m the constant element in my family. Now I work school hours, so I can drop her off and pick her up. The reduced pay is equal to the extra money I needed to put her in a nursery while I was working full time.”
Schofield’s boss, Vivienne Duke of the Leeds recruitment consultancy Equals One, said everyone in their small team of six worked flexibly. Duke herself works only four days a week, and the firm has recently taken on someone who works mostly from home. But while these arrangements were mutually convenient, Duke said they were prompted by economic necessity.
“Cost is the key issue,” she said. “We needed to reduce costs because we have less income at the moment. We had to cut back, but didn’t want to lose anyone from the team.”
Schofield said she believed that had she not been able to agree to work fewer hours she would have lost her job.
It’s a common dilemma. Andrew Walker of the pay and benefits consultancy Croner Reward said: “Flexible working is a very topical phrase. The question is: flexible for whom?”
He cited the recent case of digger manufacturer JCB, which offered its workforce a four-day week rather than redundancies. “Most people would rather have something than nothing, but it’s not really fair to call that ‘flexible’ because given the choice those employees would rather work five days and collect a full salary.”
Under current UK legislation more than 4.5m people qualify for the right to request flexible working arrangements as parents of children who are under six or disabled.
More than 90% of employers agreed to such requests last year. Despite the large take-up, however, business secretary Peter Mandelson said that, because of the recession, there would be a review of new legislation to extend the flexible working scheme to parents of all children under 16 next April.
Flexible working can include anything from shorter hours to term-time employment, late starts or working from home. But while some argue that flexibility is a useful tool that could help small and medium-sized firms reduce costs and ride out the recession without losing valuable skills, the government’s decision to review its proposal was welcomed by business groups that had expressed alarm at the original proposal.
The Institute of Directors claimed that the right to request more flexible working would “impose significant new burdens” on companies.
Sarah Veale, head of equality and employee rights at the TUC, described the government’s climbdown as a “typical knee-jerk wobble”. She did concede, however, that in any recession women, and particularly mothers, would be hardest hit.
A case in point is that of Sophie Jones (not her real name), who had built a successful career in financial services. She requested a flexible working arrangement so that she could look after her first child. It worked for two years but recently Sophie found herself out of a job.
“I don’t think the economic environment lends itself to flexible working at the moment,” she said. “For women, it’s a risk to draw attention to yourself in that way . . . if you want to hang on to your job.”
Few men take up the option of flexible working, although both sexes place an equally high value on work /life balance, a recent study showed. And many of the companies surveyed were surprised to learn that a large proportion of their male workforce already operated an informal system of flexible working, while women traditionally requested a formal arrangement.
Marina di Natale, chief financial officer at Evo Research, said asking for flexible working had transformed her life. “I’m part of a phenomenon of people in their late thirties who realised that they could work more productively by spending three days a week in the office and two days doing something different. I’m not a mother and I don’t have caring responsibilities – I just realised there was more to life [than working full-time] and now I’m writing a PhD in my free days. I have a friend in a similar position who spends her extra days working for a charity.”
Di Natale said her three days in the office were spent more efficiently and she was more productive and more loyal to her employer. “How much ‘face time’ you put in at the office is an antiquated idea,” she said. “Modern thinking is about getting the best performance out of someone and focusing on the end result – not how labour-intensive it was to get there.”
She admitted, however, that some sectors were better suited to this creative transformation than others. “City institutions will never truly embrace flexible working. It’s 7am until 7pm, no matter what the outcome.”
Walker of Croner Rewards said: “Not everyone can afford to work less, and have less money – and those benefits you give up now might be the ones you need in the future.
“The illusion of flexibility may prove to be just that. It might make you feel you are more in control of your destiny, but in these difficult times the truth is you’re probably not.”
Welcome to my website. I hope these pages give you a flavour of some of my work in books, print, onl…
Last week I was in Istanbul attending a Youth Forum for teenagers from around the world. But not eve…
When Nelson Mandela retired after serving one five-year term as President of South Africa in 1999 he…
I’ve just returned from China, after a gap of about 16 years, and I met these undergraduates – comin…
Eradicating the Last 1% of Polio Is Deadly But Essential
When 40-year-old Liberian civil servan…
When Yolanda “Lonnie” Williams was six years old she looked out of her front door in Louisville,…
She learnt her stagecraft from Marlene Dietrich; 50 years on, she’s mentor to Whitney Houston and …
What would it be like if women ran the world? In some parts of India, it’s already happening
If…
*Life is hell for women caught up in the conflict in the Congo. But one remarkable doctor helps surv…
All I want is to die under this mountain.” Noor Ebrahim, a slightly-built former messenger for Rea…
Hit crime drama The Killing is back for a second series, and Karen Bartlett talks mobile phone foren…
It’s no surprise that in a world full of rules most kids want to do something with no organisation…
Fifty years after he was killed, the daughter of Malcolm X wants to make sure her father isn’t writt…
Like many people in their seventies and eighties, Buddy Elias and his wife Gertie are downsizing –…
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