changing world of work essay

The World of Work is Rapidly Changing IELTS Essay

The world of work is rapidly changing and employees cannot depend on having the same job or the same working conditions for life. Discuss the possible causes and suggest ways to prepare people to work in the future.

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. You should write at least 250 words.

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This essay was asked on Recent IELTS Exam 20 January 2022 India Question Answers

The World of Work is Rapidly Changing IELTS Essay – Model Essay 1

These days, people’s workplaces are constantly changing and evolving to meet the demands of modern society. Furthermore, the roles and responsibilities of jobs are also undergoing changes to adapt to new ways of working and living. This essay will discuss the possible reasons for these changes and suggest some ways that people can better prepare themselves for their future careers.

Firstly, due to the developments in hi-tech machines and artificial intelligence, millions of people all around the world are losing their jobs and being replaced by automated processes. For example, millions of factory workers have lost their jobs because they have been replaced by machines that are able to do their job quicker and more effectively. Furthermore, as a result of the ever-increasing desire to cut expenses and increase profits, many jobs are being outsourced to countries where the wages are lower. For instance, when a person calls a tech support helpline in an English-speaking country, they will most likely be connected to someone in another country, like India or the Philippines, where the wages are lower.

However, there are a number of ways that people can prepare for changes in their workplaces in the future. Firstly, students preparing to leave high school need to be advised about the sustainability of the career path they are choosing. To illustrate, autonomous vehicles are predicted to replace most delivery and taxi driver jobs in the very near future, so this is not a job that someone should expect to have for a very long time. Furthermore, while some jobs are being replaced by technology, many jobs are simply incorporating technology into their process, and therefore people will need to be able to keep up to date with these changes. To help achieve this, specific courses could be designed to help educate people on the use of modern technology in their workplaces.

In conclusion, although there are many changes in the workplace these days, educating people to carefully choose their career and to keep up to date with modern technology, is the key to avoiding any major problems.

I E L T S XPRESS

The World of Work is Changing Rapidly Essay – Model Essay 2

It is irrefutable that the work scenario is altering at a fast pace. Working conditions are also different and the process of job-hopping is very common. This essay shall delve into the possible causes for these changes and suggest ways to prepare for work in the time to come.

To begin with, the development of science and technology has changed the structure of work. For example, people no longer need to do some heavy work by themselves. Instead, they can use machines. Secondly, competition has become intense and people have to constantly update themselves with the latest materials and methods. Sometimes they cannot compete with the new techno-savvy workforce and so have to change jobs out of compulsion.

Furthermore, we belong to an era of consumerism. Being surrounded by so many choices, people today want to buy new things and for that, they do multiple jobs. In addition, the 24/7 society of today provides us the opportunity to work day and night. For instance, in earlier times, there were very few jobs which were round-the-clock jobs. But, today, globalization has brought in a multitude of options of working day and night. The line between day and night has become dim and people have become workaholics.

There could be many suggestions to prepare for work in the future. People should have a set goal in their mind and get training accordingly. Moreover, it is important to draw a line somewhere. The stress and strain of the fast modern workplace is leading many to nervous breakdowns. In the developed countries, a new term called downshifting has already come where after a certain stage, people are saying ‘no’ to promotions and showing contentment with less. We should also realize that if we stick to one job, then also life can be more stable and we can enjoy our leisure also. ieltsxpress

To put in a nutshell, I pen down saying that, although work conditions are different today and we have a need to update our knowledge regularly, we can plan our life in a meticulous way and have a balance between work and leisure.

Also Check:   There is a General Increase in Anti-Social Behaviour Essay

IELTS Writing Task 2 on Jobs – Model Essay 3

In today’s modern world, people tend to change jobs more often than before and don’t want to work permanently in one environment. I would like to explore the sources of this issue and suggest several solutions for future work.

Firstly, due to the global recession, many employers have to downsize and restructure their businesses. This leads to a number of redundant employees being forced to leave their jobs and find other ones. Another reason is that, as living costs are getting higher and higher, people want to earn as much money as they can to meet their needs. Hence, they seek better opportunities and well-paid jobs everywhere, every day. Some also look for new challenges. Last but not least, thanks to new technology, people nowadays are able to access information more easily, including information about job recruiting.

One of my suggestions for this problem is that if we can create a comfortable working environment and build strong relationships between colleagues; and between managers and workers. These will make employees find it harder to leave. To archive this, courses such as leadership training and communication skill training should be carried out to help supervisors lead their team efficiently without causing any stress, and help employees fit inconveniently. ielts xpress 

By the way of conclusion, I would like to state that change job is one the remarkable signs of technological times and soft skill training courses possibly help people adapt to the working environment instead of finding a way to escape it.

The Workplace is Changing Rapidly – Model Essay 4

Work culture lately has been dynamically transformed, mainly due to improvements in technology like transport and communication. Job security has become a dicey issue as employees now need to keep themselves updated with the advancements around them. This essay shall further explain the reasons and offer probable solutions. ieltsxpress.com

In the last two decades, we have seen a remarkable spread of technology in all wakes of life. With easy access to the Internet and computers, work has become faster and easier. Innovation of office tools is encouraged everywhere so as to not let anything hinder the growth of trade and commerce. With each task becoming effortless, manual intervention at many places has been reduced. Ergo, rising insecurity is seen among employees. Additionally, employees are expected to multi-task in their jobs making it more difficult for older workers to sustain.

The remedial measures for such a situation are very few as of now. First of all, state-of-the-art employee training centers to help the employees stay well-versed with the high-tech upgradations. To solve this problem from an earlier level, universities should start imparting practical training in their curriculum, with the know-how of current on-the-job scenarios to prepare potential workers better. All this needs to be done as the employees losing their jobs also lose financial security for their families, and it is very difficult to start again from ground zero.

To conclude, I’d say we should accept the ever-changing technological advancements as they’re unlikely to stop. Better would be to equip ourselves and become flexible accordingly so as to welcome such developments.

How The World of Work is Changing – Model Essay 5

It is indeed true that the world has been increasing by loops and bound for a long time and very few employees can handle obstacles in their near future. Because it has some reason. However, to my notion, employees need some specification training for it.

There are various reasons behind why it has increased, first and foremost, in globalization time every company wants to grow fast. Secondly, important roles are being played by studying on the contemporary world. that is why every employee ought to be cognizant of every field. so that he/she can do everything for their job. Moreover, technology has changed every life completely. for instance mobile, internet and computer are very prominent in the work field. it helps the employee to make their job easy. Finally, in today’s time, we can see a person living in India and working for a company located in us.

on contrary, every problem has a solution there is some way which can help employees for their job. to start with they must be taught English because English is a basic requirement for learning any new thing. Moreover, they must be friendly with their peer group members. in addition, management skills, internet, and computer knowledge must be important. these all things give help them in their upcoming time.

To sum up, I firmly believe that there are ample chances in today’s work environment. However, by following some training. we can prepare employees for the near future growth and make spectacular culture.

Ideas for World of Work

Also Check:   It is Impossible to help all people in the world IELTS Essay

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Five key trends shaping the new world of work

Job seekers in companies in regions most affected by high unemployment rates must broaden their horizons beyond a search for employment opportunities to exploring work opportunities. Image:  Alex Kotliarskyi for Unsplash

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Stay up to date:, future of work.

Listen to the article

• There is transformation happening in the world of work, both as a result of the pandemic, and underlying structural shifts.
• Companies are restructuring for efficiency, and recruiting for skills rather than potential, while talent is highly mobile.
• Digital skills are increasingly central to workers' employability.

From the phenomenon of " quiet quitting " to the great resignation , the post-pandemic reluctance of workers to return for the office has been well documented . There are other changes happening as a result of the subsequent economic slowdown: employment offers have been rescinded amidst layoffs in technology companies often seen as beacons of growth, and a STEM skills shortage has led to calls for upskilling and re-skilling programmes in the workplace and a global scramble for talent . But many of the trends we are currently seeing in the world of work predate the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are five shifts that look set to endure:

1. Restructuring companies for efficiency

Changes to industry structures and disruptions to business models have encouraged companies to restructure for relevance and competitiveness. Companies such as General Electric have split while others have responded with mergers, as in the case of Tata Group . Holding companies that have been able to do without job cuts, like Alphabet, are calling for an increase in employee productivity .

Have you read?

Hybrid entrepreneurship - 5 reasons to build a venture while still working , what is the optimal balance between in-person and remote working, a new study shows just how beneficial remote working can be.

Despite capital flow to many emerging markets, several industries remain informal, fragmented, and dominated by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) , which create 7 out of 10 jobs. Irrespective of the market, industry and approach, the pursuit of efficiency in companies prioritise retention and hiring of employees with skills and competencies that contribute directly to the bottom line.

2. A shift to skills-based hiring

Faced with the need to deliver short to medium-term results, companies are increasingly hiring for skills backed with experience, and less for potential. This has led to a decline in graduate recruitment . Many employers are eliminating degrees from their hiring criteria in favour of skills assessment. Only 11% of business leaders “strongly agree” that students are graduating from higher education with the necessary competencies. This has led to calls for higher education reform .

Young people entering the world of work have to embrace work-integrated learning opportunities available as internships, placements, and apprenticeship programmes to provide relevant experience in developing their skills. More than four in five employers believe internships can prepare graduates to succeed in their companies.

3. The mobility of talent

The global war for skilled talent has led to massive opportunities for some workers to move across jobs, industries and countries. The normalization of remote work accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and powered by digital technologies for collaboration has made it possible for top talent to glide across jobs or be in multiple jobs at a time. Research predicts that today’s youngest workers will hold twelve to fifteen jobs in their lifetime .

Therefore, individuals and companies must evaluate their work opportunities from a broader and global lens, shifting to a mindset of career mobility and the development of transferable skills for a lifetime of numerous job opportunities. At the same time, the future looks likely to hold higher trade tariffs and tighter border controls, and we have yet to see what this means for worker mobility.

4. The rise of 'work' and the decline of 'employment'

The rise of platform companies has fundamentally changed the rules of employment . Companies such as Uber have created work opportunities for around 5 million drivers worldwide without signing a single driver employment contract. The gig economy has opened up opportunities for individuals and companies to access a diverse and global pool of talents to get tasks done on demand - as well as undermining many of the structures that have underpinned employment security.

This has changed how organizations approach recruitment, with a move away from human resources departments managing employees, and towards talent strategy teams exploring how to meet human resources needs. Analytic tools to measure performance enable a holistic view of talent management in the workplace. Job seekers in companies in regions most affected by high unemployment rates must broaden their horizons beyond a search for employment opportunities to exploring work opportunities. Regulators in industries dominated by platform companies need to push for benefits to be tied to work opportunities, not just employment, to protect the interest of workers.

5. The central importance of digital skills

The digital transformation of industries has brought about massive shifts in the world of work. Organizations across all sectors, from agribusiness, finance and manufacturing to media, are evolving into technology companies . In this context, 'employability' is not just about 'soft skills' such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking and emotional intelligence. As digital platforms in AI applications, robotics, and the Internet of Things make inroads into the workplace, employability skills will be increasingly centred around using these digital technologies at work.

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How the World of Work Is Changing, in 5 Charts

Earlier this month, Elon Musk declared something that, a few years ago, wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow: Tesla employees must “spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week.” 

In 2022, that’s a controversial thing to say.

The world of work is rapidly changing, and the shift to remote work is only one facet of the transformation. From the rise of independent contractors to the flexibility imperative, the blueprint for the workforce of the future is being redesigned in real-time. 

Lots of things are happening at once. We’re in the midst of a “white-hot” labor market . And yet tech companies are laying off 10%, 15%, even 20% of their workforce. Simultaneously, we’re seeing the highest inflation rates in four decades . 

It raises a lot of questions about the new post-lockdown reality: Why are people still quitting in record numbers? How are workers re-evaluating their priorities? 

Here are five charts that provide some clarity in the chaos.

1. Tech layoffs are hitting again—but highly-skilled workers are still in the driver's seat

Q2 of 2022 layoffs.fyi counted over 20,000 startup layoffs. This comes just two years after 2020’s COVID tech reckoning , where Q2 layoffs topped 60,000.

And with several companies valued at unicorn status just one year ago—including Cameo and Loom—cutting back their staff by more than 10%, the formerly frothy startup sector appears to be calming down in the face of a potential downturn.

That said, hiring has not slowed down, according to recruiters , with top tech talent still in high demand. Those getting laid off are getting job offers thrown into the comments on LinkedIn post announcing their departure.

Meanwhile, 4.4 million Americans voluntarily left their jobs in April, amounting to some of the highest levels since 2000. It’s a trend that doesn’t show signs of letting up . 

2. Independent work is starting to feel more stable than a full-time job

Traditional full-time employment is losing one of its core appeals: stability. 

A survey by MBO Partners featured in the Harvard Business Review revealed that nearly 70% of polled independent workers reported feeling, “more secure working independently.“ That's an increase from 32% in 2011 and 53% in 2019.

But their research uncovered another striking phenomenon about the perception of independent work. Among full-time employees, roughly 30% agreed that independent work was more stable than their current job. This offers yet another explanation as to why so many salaried employees are striking out on their own.

3. Americans are losing faith in their employers 

In May of 2022, worker confidence saw its steepest drop since the onset of the pandemic.

What’s driving this dynamic? As George Anders, a senior editor at LinkedIn, describes , “There’s a new restlessness in the workforce, expressed in everything from greater job-hopping to a surprising reluctance to return to (reopened) offices.”

Wages and prospects for top executives remain high. But creating real excitement about companies’ long-term growth—for all employees , not just a few key decision-makers—is harder now. 

4. People are quitting because of low pay—plus a lack of advancement and respect at work

While well-resourced companies are still flexing their muscle to dole out cash incentives—including headline-grabbing, $100K bonuses from the likes of Apple —insufficient compensation is still the main driver of resignations. Workers also cite “no opportunities for advancement,” “disrespect,” and “not enough flexibility” as major reasons for leaving full-time positions. 

Can large firms bake these sometimes-intangible benefits into the modern workplace? It remains to be seen. But given the increasing visibility of roles like Chief Wellbeing Officer and new imperatives on unlimited paid time off, it’s clear that cash doesn’t solve everything.

5. The alternative workforce is growing quickly—and not just in IT

The alternative workforce—which encompasses contractors, gig workers, freelancers, and crowd workers—is now essential across sectors. 

Whereas the alternative workforce was previously perceived to be confined to IT and ‘repeatable tasks,’ Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends report found alternative workforce growth in fields ranging from marketing to HR and operations. 

With the normalization of hybrid and remote teams and higher percentages of US adults gaining experience as contractors , the alternative workforce is likely a permanent fixture of the modern economy. 

Facing the new world of work

June 5, 2021 Have you just graduated, or are you about to? Or maybe someone else in your life has? It’s commencement season for high schools and colleges in many places around the globe. Here’s a primer on what new grads need to know about the working world. Explore our special graduate’s guide  or take a closer look at topics like:

• The future of work—remote, hybrid, and in-person—plus what people are thinking as they peer ahead
• Learning as a skill to develop over time (and what it can do for your career)
• How CEOs and other leaders are thinking about talent, customer experience, digital trends, global forces, and more
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace
• Well-being, stress management, and finding meaning

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The future of work in the developing world

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Laurence chandy lc laurence chandy former brookings expert, director of data, research and policy - unicef.

January 31, 2017

• 13 min read

The 2016 Brookings Blum Roundtable was convened to take on that agenda. How are the factors driving change in global labor markets playing out differently in developing economies? What are the jobs of the future and how will the terms of employment differ? What skills will those job demand and how will those skills be acquired? And finally, what are the implications of these changes for development prospects and for society?

This essay provides a brief account of the roundtable conversation. It is followed by six essays, authored by leading experts on this topic, that were commissioned to inform the roundtable discussion.

An era of change

The effects of technology—especially digital innovation—and globalization on labor markets are three-fold.

The first effect is disruption as jobs relocate to take advantage of lower costs, evolve to entail different tasks, or undergo wholesale change with the elimination of old jobs and the emergence of new ones. Disruption is a permanent feature of any dynamic economy, the upshot of markets responding to changing conditions. While the effects of disruption can be devastating for any particular individual or community, its effects for workers as a whole are positive if old jobs are replaced with new ones that are safer, less physically arduous, more stimulating, and provide greater autonomy. This has been the case for the median worker in rich economies throughout modern history up until recently, but less true for developing economies. [1] Today’s patterns of disruption are more discriminating, creating new groups of winners and losers, and can no longer be blithely assumed as a net positive. In addition, disruption is believed to be growing in intensity.

Technology has made capital goods cheaper and encouraged their substitution for workers. The result has been a shrinking share of national income accruing as wages as opposed to profits across rich and poor economies.

The second effect is a diminishing role of labor . Technology has made capital goods cheaper and encouraged their substitution for workers. The result has been a shrinking share of national income accruing as wages as opposed to profits across rich and poor economies. Some analysts view this phenomenon in combination with accelerating disruption as inevitably leading toward large-scale technological unemployment. This is an especially alarming prospect in the developing world where demographics are expected to increase the size of the global work age population by half a billion people by 2030. Another possible consequence is to reinforce the trend toward widening inequality.

The third effect is to decentralize economic activity away from corporations to which individuals provide their labor, toward the crowd in which workers participate as micro-entrepreneurs. This phenomenon is a facet of both the digital economy and globalization with the unbundling and contracting out of ancillary services from firms such as accounting and marketing. It is associated with changes in the terms of employment, both positive, such as increased flexibility, and negative, including the decline of unions and weakened workers’ bargaining power, the erosion of norms on pay equity, and reduced job security. These effects are most apparent in rich economies where the formal sector dominates.

While there is good evidence for each of the three effects, their speed and scale is surrounded with uncertainty. For instance, estimates on the share of jobs that are at risk of automation over the medium term vary from 9 to 47 percent for OECD economies; fewer estimates exist for the developing world meaning the possible range is arguably even greater. In another example, a year ago the World Bank reported evidence of the hollowing out of labor markets in the developing world, mirroring the pattern observed in industrialized economies. More recent analysis reveals no such pattern. [2]

Breaking free of a Western lens

One of the challenges in discussing the future of jobs in the developing world is that the jobs agenda and the semantics and metrics that go with it principally reflect a rich economy setting. Without recognition of this, such discussions can easily become divorced from reality.

In the West, being employed means generating an income; those that are not employed are assumed to be either idle or not in a position to take on a paid job. By contrast, individuals recorded as being employed in the developing world typically represent only a small portion of those that are economically active, with the majority instead engaged in low productivity activities in the informal sector. Thus, whereas raising employment in the rich world means moving people into paid employment, in the developing world it entails moving people into more productive—and likely better paid—lines of work.

This has important consequences. In industrialized economies the spread of automation implies the risk of redundancy for many workers. In developing economies, many workers are engaged in economic activities that are already some distance from the technology frontier—in other words, they could feasibly be done with greater technology and efficiency—and are paid accordingly. Automation needn’t imply the loss of that work, but rather the possibility of a further diminishing income. Thus, estimates of the share of jobs at risk of being eliminated in rich and poor economies have different consequences, though both are undoubtedly worrisome.

These differences can also result in labor market conditions in the developing world being mistakenly glorified. For instance, subsistence living in the developing world can be unhelpfully classified as entrepreneurship, implying a degree of choice and value that is clearly lacking. By the same token, subsistence living and informal work share some characteristics with the gig economy in rich economies, despite obvious and important differences.

Distinguishing a jobs agenda from a development agenda

The jobs agenda is increasingly becoming recognized as a priority within developing economies and the international development community.

Despite these challenges, the jobs agenda is increasingly becoming recognized as a priority within developing economies and the international development community. Demand for better jobs and anxiety about the sustainability of livelihoods consistently poll among the top issues in surveys of public opinion, including the vast My World exercise conducted to inform the contents of the Sustainable Development Goals.

At the same time, the development community has struggled to articulate how a jobs agenda differs from support for economic development more generally. This is understandable. Job opportunities in any economy are in part a function of a country’s level of income with poor countries constrained by low domestic demand and investment.

That’s why linking poor economies with consumers and investors in rich countries can be such a powerful force in expanding the range of opportunities for workers—and it is precisely this economic integration that underpins the dramatic economic convergence and poverty reduction in the developing world over the past quarter-century. New technologies have the promise to further expand these linkages, including platforms that couple workers with overseas firms, and, in the near future, instant translation services powered by artificial intelligence. The ability of poor economies to take advantage of these opportunities rests on equipping their workers with sufficient education and skills, as well as access to technology and digital infrastructure.

Even for countries that share the same level of income, the number and quality of jobs can vary significantly with the sectoral composition of their economies. For policymakers seeking to steer their economies toward more labor-intensive sectors, this can present a moving target. Whereas 20 years ago, manufacturing was lauded for its ability to absorb large numbers of relatively unskilled workers and to provide a stepping stone for economies seeking to develop capabilities and move into increasingly productive activities, today service-driven economies with a digital focus such as the Philippines and India may present the most promising and sustainable example to follow.

Just as low income in an economy constrains the number of good jobs that are available, it is also associated with various other adverse characteristics of labor markets including greater job insecurity, limited social protections and high information costs. A credible jobs agenda requires recognizing the constraint of low income and the extent to which it is binding for different labor issues. For instance, the biggest barrier to firms moving into the formal sector is arguably their low productivity and this cannot be divorced from a country’s level of development. By contrast, new technologies can be transformative in reducing information costs in even the poorest economies.

Skills for the future

Education has consistently been associated with high rates of return in both rich and poor economies, but the precise mechanism by which education generates those returns remains somewhat contested. Some view education principally in terms of the imparting of skills while others emphasize its ability to sort individuals by their innate capabilities. The recent emergence of evidence of dismal learning outcomes in schools across large parts of the developing world could be interpreted as swinging the debate more in favor of the latter explanation. That is problematic for a future where the skills demanded of most, if not all, workers are seen as increasingly complex and quickly evolving implying the need for lifelong learning.

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Another area of contention is the skills that should be given emphasis in training tomorrow’s workers. If that determination is made narrowly on the basis of the pattern of job creation and elimination, it likely leads to an emphasis on STEM skills. If instead it is made on the basis of the increasing speed of disruption and the changing organization of economic activity toward micro-entrepreneurship, then this raises the importance of soft skills and business skills to help workers adapt to a changing marketplace and to make optimal choices. Workers themselves appear to see the wisdom in this assessment: the most popular course on the online education platform, Coursera, is on “learning to learn.”

Digital technology is ushering in broader changes in the education sector, by threatening to depose those institutions that deliver inadequate outcomes and replace them with ones better suited to the changing global economy. However, we remain a long way from building an ecosystem that can address workers’ needs in assessing capabilities, imparting skills, accrediting skills acquired, and guiding each individual’s trajectory through a path of lifelong learning. A particular institutional gap exists in establishing a credible and secure repository to record each individual’s portfolio of qualifications and capabilities.

As the institutions that dominate the education sector change, this inevitably leads to questions about the role of government in the sector. The enormous positive externalities associated with education would suggest an important role. However, this need not necessarily be as a service provider, but more in shaping policy and providing finance for education. The greatest externalities likely occur for early childhood interventions—an area where government’s role has historically been too limited.

The future of job matching platforms

Another area where digital technology is altering the institutions that shape labor markets is in the process of matching workers with vacancies. This is an exciting area of innovation and invention in the developing world. By linking workers and firms to the information they need, digital job matching platforms can both help markets clear more quickly and induce dynamic responses, including in the content of education programs and in the investment decisions of firms and workers. For example, when Apple adopted the new programming language, Swift, hundreds of freelancers on the digital job platform, Upwork, responded rapidly by training themselves to take advantage of new work opportunities.

A central objective for job matching platforms is to accelerate this feedback loop. That will likely require greater linkages with other actors including those involved in education provision and skill certification. Such partnerships hold enormous potential for transforming labor markets but have yet to be harnessed at scale.

A bolder challenge still is to assist those workers for which matching platforms consistently fail to find job opportunities. Solutions for these individuals may require partnering with NGOs or government, and more complex interventions such as supporting worker relocation.

The consequences of a weak labor movement

While changes in the nature of work associated with the changing global economy are most prominent in advanced economies, there are nevertheless some important patterns shaping the developing world. Perhaps the most prevalent is the absence of a well-defined labor movement in many developing economies and a consequently limited role for collective bargaining. This is notable given what a prominent role these played in securing political goals and improvements in quality of life in the advanced economies during their own process of economic development. Moreover, the effects of technology and globalization appear to be reinforcing this pattern. There is already some early evidence of gig work in the developing world resulting in workers’ rights being less effectively upheld. [3]

There are a number of creative efforts underway to mitigate the negative consequences of these circumstances. For instance, some job matching platforms identify one of their core services to workers as helping them to optimally price their work. However, any attempt to strengthen workers’ bargaining power in an atomized work environment is unlikely to achieve the kind of results won by organized labor. For this reason, some entities focus today on promoting alternative ownership structures to avoid pitting workers against each other and against capital owners.

For most workers in the developing world, a secure job remains only an aspiration. Should the pattern toward decentralized economic activity continue unabated, that possibility may diminish further, even as economies develop and workers enjoy greater earnings. That would fundamentally redefine our idea of what “middle-class” status represents.

Rethinking the role of government

The prospect of greater disruption, a diminished role for labor, and the decentralization of economic activity places a greater onus on the adequacy of safety nets. While safety nets are at different stages of maturity across different countries, those in the developing world have some advantages over those in rich nations in adapting to the needs of a changing global economy. These include programs being less fragmented and more harmonized, and avoiding the constraints that come when benefits are tied too closely to employment.

Compensation forms a central part of most public safety nets, which in its most comprehensive form means a universal basic income. The UBI concept has sparked excited debates in the West over the past year, so it is striking that the most extensive pilot, and one designed with rigorous evaluation in mind, is taking place in Kenya, and that the country arguably most poised to enact a UBI on a national scale is India. Other aspects of safety nets that require more innovative and effective solutions are those focused on retraining and relocating dislocated workers.

The redesign of social safety nets can be understood as one important component of a broader rebalancing required in the social contract between government and citizens, employers and employees, and the winners and losers of the changing global economy. The role of government is not just limited to helping those most vulnerable to change, but shaping change itself, whether by guiding the direction of technology through public investments in research and development, putting in place regulations that foster competitive markets and that are supportive of collective bargaining, and providing digital infrastructure for all.

Perhaps the most fundamental changes government can help usher in concern culture and norms that constrain worker opportunities in the modern global economy. This includes addressing discrimination in hiring and the workplace, removing the negative stigma associated with certain types of jobs, and altering how work is defined to more fully encapsulate all the productive activities by which people define themselves, such as bringing up children and civil participation.

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How the pandemic transformed the world of work in 2021

There were winners and losers as work patterns continued changing, with repercussions for city centres and society as a whole

O f all the predictions on your 2021 bingo card, who had employees being fined for going into the office? Workers in Wales now face that threat since the tightening of Covid regulations amid the spread of the Omicron variant, with a possible £60 penalty for failing to work from home .

That is just one of many examples of how the pandemic has transformed the world of work this year – and perhaps for ever – for city centre employers, their staff and the service industry that depends on them for trade.

Out of office

Most white-collar workers are ending 2021 back where they began – hunched over laptops on kitchen tables, in spare rooms or even garden sheds . Yet this deja vu obscures a big change: it has been demonstrated to many employers that staff can do productive work from home, a hotel room or even a poolside lounger in another country , and don’t necessarily need to be in a city centre office.

As lockdown restrictions eased during the spring, many companies started to trial a hybrid model , permitting staff to split their time between the office and another location. Across a range of sectors, many of the UK’s largest office occupiers have shifted to this middle-way working pattern, from the big four accountancy firms to major tech companies. Deloitte ’s 20,000 UK employees were told in June they could decide “when, where and how they work” following the success of remote working during Covid.

Very few large corporates now expect staff to return to their desks for five days a week, with the exception of some major investment banks , who have been the loudest proponents of the return-to-office mantra.

The end of the space race

Remote working in 2021 also offered companies a chance to downsize their offices and slash their rent bills. Capita , one of the major providers of outsourced services to the UK government, announced in the spring it would close more of its offices to make bigger cost savings.

Sir Martin Sorrell ’s advertising and marketing firm, S4 Capital, told investors in the summer it had “terminated a number of office leases”, adding it was developing its hybrid office model to suit its workers, who it described as “digital natives”.

Meanwhile NatWest said it expects just 13% of its 64,000 staff to work full time in its offices in future. A third of the bank’s employees will be allowed to live and work anywhere in the UK and will only have to attend a NatWest building twice a month.

Winners and losers

Working parents, people with caring responsibilities, and some disabled workers are among those who have welcomed the widespread shift to flexible working , which they have long demanded. However, employment experts warn that, without proper monitoring, the switch could worsen workplace gender inequality .

Traditionally, more women have requested flexible working than men, and analysts caution that employers will have to ensure that those who attend the office less frequently do not miss out on opportunities for promotion.

A fifth (22%) of workers worry home working could affect their promotion prospects, according to a recent survey for stockbroker AJ Bell. The poll also found the burden of childcare among home workers still falls disproportionately on mothers, with more than a third (36%) of women with children under 16 reporting they do the lion’s share of childcare during work hours, compared with 19% of men.

There is also concern about the effect on pay. Evie, an executive assistant from Essex who did not want to give her surname, has enjoyed working from home, but said she was being offered lower salaries by prospective employers than before the pandemic.

“It’s been said to me in an interview [the salary was lower] because I’d be working from home and wouldn’t have to commute,” she said. “It’s definitely a game a few employers are playing. They’ll get you to sign the contract, but when restrictions change and we go back to the office, I know they won’t put the money up.”

The working week

Once the slow and steady return to the office began in the spring, it became clear that workers were ditching their commute on Mondays and Fridays. In a national trend, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday became the busiest days of the week for office visits, according to regular analysis during 2021 by real estate consultancy Remit Consulting.

“The pattern so far during the pandemic has been for Thursdays to be as busy as Wednesdays, and sometimes busier,” said Lorna Landells of Remit Consulting, adding that Friday was slipping behind as an office day. If this change becomes permanent, it will have lasting implications for transport companies and the city-centre service businesses – from sandwich shops and coffee bars to hairdressers and dry-cleaners – who depend on passing trade.

Some companies and some countries – including the governments of Spain and Scotland – are considering going further, and taking a fresh look at four-day week through pilot schemes.

Durham-based online bank Atom is one of the few employers which has taken the leap. It moved all of its 400 staff to a four-day week, with no change in salary, at the start of November. The company said its operations and customer service have not been impacted by the change, although it had seen a 500% surge in job applications.

“Our adoption of a four-day working week has been a huge success, and we are proud of how well our employees have adapted,” said Anne-Marie Lister, Atom’s chief people officer. “We firmly believe that a four-day week is the future of work for many.”

Staff walkout

For some, the future of work means handing in their notice. In what has been termed “the great resignation” , more than a quarter of workers reported they were actively planning to change jobs in the coming months.

Having stayed in posts where they were unhappy during the height of the pandemic, employees have begun to look for new roles, according to a survey of 6,000 workers by the recruitment firm Randstad UK. Others have been spurred on to look for a new employer by high levels of job vacancies and higher pay offers from those desperate to recruit.

For now, power looks to be in the hands of employees – not their employers – and they know what they want: more flexibility about where and when they work. Many will benefit from a better work-life balance, but the repercussions for city centres and society will be felt for some time to come.

• Working from home
• Work & careers
• Coronavirus
• Productivity
• Commercial property

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Four-day week could be within reach for British workers

‘Don’t be a table-hogger’: Debrett’s issues guide for working from a cafe

‘It’s damaging for the City’: post-holiday London streets stay quiet

Can workers cram five days worth of work into four days? Mothers already do

The Guardian view on a four-day week: policies needed to make it a reality

‘Sleep is venture capital’: employers wake up to benefits of a nap

Thousands of UK workers begin world’s biggest trial of four-day week

Disinfection robots and thermal body cameras: welcome to the anti-Covid office

Out of office? How working from home has divided Britain

I’m being asked to go back to the office, what are my rights in the UK?

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Education and Technological Unemployment pp 175–191 Cite as

Career Guidance and the Changing World of Work: Contesting Responsibilising Notions of the Future

• Tristram Hooley   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1453-4535 4  
• First Online: 30 April 2019

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Career guidance is an educational activity, which helps individuals to manage their participation in learning and work and plan for their futures. Unsurprisingly, career guidance practitioners are interested in how the world of work is changing and concerned about threats of technological unemployment . This chapter argues that the career guidance field is strongly influenced by a ‘changing world of work ’ narrative, which is drawn from a wide body of grey literature produced by think tanks, supra-national bodies and other policy influencers. This body of literature is political in nature and describes the future of work narrowly and within the frame of neoliberalism . The ‘changing world of work ’ narrative is explored through a thematic analysis of grey literature and promotional materials for career guidance conferences. The chapter concludes by arguing that career guidance needs to adopt a more critical stance on the ‘changing world of work ’ and to offer more emancipatory alternatives.

• Career guidance
• Critical pedagogy
• Future of work
• Neoliberalism
• Social justice

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Hooley, T. (2019). Career Guidance and the Changing World of Work: Contesting Responsibilising Notions of the Future. In: Peters, M., Jandrić, P., Means, A. (eds) Education and Technological Unemployment. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6225-5_12

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The Changing World of Work focuses on examining the implications of the changing work context on managing people and organisations.

The nature of work, the workforce and work relations is being reshaped constantly by changing demographics and greater diversity, by greater global integration and technological advancement, and by increased competition in product markets and in recruiting and retaining the best talent.

We work with employers, governments and policy makers through our research, consultancy and executive development to help them to understand the implications of this changing work context on how their people and organisations are managed. We support them to respond to the challenges they face in adapting their workplace and re-aligning their people to the changing context in which they are operating.

Bringing together expertise across organisational behaviour, human resource management, leadership, employment relations, and gender, diversity and inclusion, we help organisations to make the most of future opportunities and build more successful, diverse, inclusive, future-ready workforces.

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Changing demographics, gender and diversity

Managing global workforces and careers

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New ways of working

The future of part-time working: the impact of flexible furlough?

This research project examines whether and how employers’ perceptions of part-time working have been influenced by their experience of the flexible furlough scheme.

Photo essay: Changing world, changing work

Date: 28 February 2017

The world of work is changing fast, through innovation, increasing mobility and informality. But it needs to change faster to empower women, whose work has already driven many of the global gains in recent decades.

Women still predominantly occupy jobs that pay less and provide no benefits. They earn less than men, even as they shoulder the enormous—and economically essential—burden of unpaid care and domestic work.

Realizing women’s economic empowerment requires transformative change so that prosperity is equitably shared and no one is left behind. The international community has made this commitment in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Every woman should enjoy her right to decent work. As a global champion for gender equality and women’s empowerment, UN Women asks: What do we need to get there?

EQUAL PAY FOR WOMEN

It doesn’t matter where they work or what they do. Women globally are paid less than men for the same work.

Why does the gender pay gap persist? In many countries, disparities in education have begun to close. But that’s not enough to knock down gender-based discrimination in the world of work. It keeps women out of some jobs and segregates them into others—often the lowest paying ones.

Many constraints stem from balancing paid work and family responsibilities. Inflexible working hours and limited parental leave are among the factors forcing women into part-time employment or even out of the workforce for long stretches. Some countries still mandate women to retire earlier than men.

What can we do? Call for passing and enforcing laws and regulations upholding the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. Ensure that businesses do their part to close the gender pay gap.

CLOSE THE PARTICIPATION GAP

Record numbers of women are being paid for work. But labour force participation rates lag those of men .

Three-quarters of working-age men are in the labour force, compared to half of women, and in some regions, young women are unemployed at much higher rates than young men.

These gaps suggest that not all women who want to work can do so . Some are discouraged by gender bias. Others find no way of surmounting barriers, such as the lack of parental leave, and child and dependent care. Whatever the cause, women have a right to participate equally. The economics are compelling too—a potential boost of 28 trillion USD to global annual GDP by 2025.

What can we do? Enact paid parental leave and flexible work policies, provide child care, and encourage public and private employers to aim for gender parity at all levels of hiring.

SHARE UNPAID CARE!

Women make a huge economic contribution that fills gaps in services. Why is it unshared and uncounted?

Cooking, cleaning, caring for children and the elderly—economies depend on such work, valued at between 10 and 39 per cent of GDP. It can contribute more to an economy than manufacturing or commerce.

Unpaid care and domestic work fills gaps in public services and infrastructure—and are largely provided by women. That’s an unfair burden and an unfair barrier to equal labour force participation and pay. Reducing these requires shifting norms around who does this work, and investing in decent, paid work in the care economy.

What can we do? Pass policies that reduce and redistribute unpaid work, such as through more paid jobs in the care economy, and encourage men to share care and domestic work. Invest in systems to provide water, electricity, transportation and other essentials that reduce household labour.

FOR EVERY WOMAN: DECENT WORK

Far too many women labour in informal work with little pay or protection of their rights.

Gender discrimination unfairly concentrates women in jobs as street vendors, domestic workers and subsistence farmers, among other informal occupations. For women with few skills or knowledge of their rights, or who have migrated to another country, informal jobs may be the only option to earn a living.

Informal employment typically is poorly paid. Falling outside the reach of labour laws, it can be unsafe and bereft of social benefits, such as pensions, sick pay and health insurance. Globally, 57 per cent of domestic workers have no limitations on their working hours.

What can we do? Extend social protection and minimum living wages, promote the transition to formal employment in line with ILO Recommendation No. 204, and ratify ILO Convention 189 on Domestic Workers.

ANY JOB IS A WOMAN’S JOB

Work is rapidly transforming. Ending occupational segregation must be part of the shift.

Technology and the greening of economies provide new opportunities for women in the world of work. But gaps need to be closed, with women over-represented in lower-paid jobs and under-represented in leadership positions, and in science and technology. Half the global working population is in the service sector, dominated by women; their share reaches as high as 77 per cent in East Asia.

Gender barriers in work are embedded in discriminatory laws, social norms and policies. Trade policies may take advantage of a cheap female workforce, for instance. Fiscal policy may limit spending on services that could help women better balance work and family.

What can we do? Take urgent policy action to eliminate barriers that discriminate against women workers. Provide education and training for women that open opportunities for women in the changing world of work.

ORGANIZING: IT’S A WOMAN’S RIGHT

The nature of women’s work often keeps them outside the reach of labour organizing and union protections.

Women’s ability to organize in workplaces and communities is indispensable for upholding labour rights. Women’s collective voice is a pathway to ensuring decent work, and to influencing public policy priorities. In trade unions, women members have driven achievements in organizing and collective bargaining, including among highly vulnerable groups such as domestic workers.

Yet many barriers remain to the right to organize, including repressive laws . Women working part-time or isolated in homes may have fewer opportunities to learn about, form or join protective networks, self-help groups or organizations such as unions.

What can we do? Aim for gender parity in decision-making positions in trade unions, worker and employer organizations and corporate boards. Urge governments, employers and organized workers to jointly promote the human and labour rights of all women workers.

STOP HARASSMENT AT WORK!

Violence against women is a violation of their rights. In the workplace, it imposes high costs.

Going to work presents risks of violence and harassment for women across all ages, incomes and job types. A boss may link advancement to sexual favours. A taxi cab might become a source of income and a risk for rape.

The consequences are many . Damages to physical and mental health can lead to absenteeism, lower earnings and job loss. Women may feel unfairly constricted in their choice of employment or freedom of movement.

What can we do? Enact and implement laws and policies to criminalize all forms of workplace harassment and gender-based violence. Work with unions, employers and advocates for informal workers so all women know their rights and can seek redress for violations.

EQUALITY IN LAWS AND BENEFITS

Discriminatory legal provisions and social protection gaps increase the chance that women will live in poverty.

Only 67 countries have laws against gender discrimination in hiring practices, while at least 155 have one or more gender-based legal restrictions on women’s employment and entrepreneurship. Discriminatory laws and inadequate legal protection compound gender inequalities and disempower women workers.

Women also lack social protection benefits—they are over- represented among the 73 per cent of people with only partial or no access to pensions, unemployment compensation and even health insurance. This renders them more vulnerable to poverty—on top of earning less than men.

What can we do? Remove all discriminatory labour legislation in line with CEDAW. Enact well-designed social protection schemes that reduce poverty and reach all women, including those who are working, retired or providing unpaid care.

ECONOMIES THAT WORK FOR WOMEN WORK FOR ALL

The future envisioned for humanity and our shared planet, across all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, rests on fully freeing women’s power and potential. It is time to act on the high ambitions of the 2030 Agenda and guarantee that every woman can thrive and contribute, including through decent, dignified work.

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Promises and Pitfalls of Technology

Politics and privacy, private-sector influence and big tech, state competition and conflict, author biography, how is technology changing the world, and how should the world change technology.

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Josephine Wolff; How Is Technology Changing the World, and How Should the World Change Technology?. Global Perspectives 1 February 2021; 2 (1): 27353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2021.27353

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Technologies are becoming increasingly complicated and increasingly interconnected. Cars, airplanes, medical devices, financial transactions, and electricity systems all rely on more computer software than they ever have before, making them seem both harder to understand and, in some cases, harder to control. Government and corporate surveillance of individuals and information processing relies largely on digital technologies and artificial intelligence, and therefore involves less human-to-human contact than ever before and more opportunities for biases to be embedded and codified in our technological systems in ways we may not even be able to identify or recognize. Bioengineering advances are opening up new terrain for challenging philosophical, political, and economic questions regarding human-natural relations. Additionally, the management of these large and small devices and systems is increasingly done through the cloud, so that control over them is both very remote and removed from direct human or social control. The study of how to make technologies like artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things “explainable” has become its own area of research because it is so difficult to understand how they work or what is at fault when something goes wrong (Gunning and Aha 2019) .

This growing complexity makes it more difficult than ever—and more imperative than ever—for scholars to probe how technological advancements are altering life around the world in both positive and negative ways and what social, political, and legal tools are needed to help shape the development and design of technology in beneficial directions. This can seem like an impossible task in light of the rapid pace of technological change and the sense that its continued advancement is inevitable, but many countries around the world are only just beginning to take significant steps toward regulating computer technologies and are still in the process of radically rethinking the rules governing global data flows and exchange of technology across borders.

These are exciting times not just for technological development but also for technology policy—our technologies may be more advanced and complicated than ever but so, too, are our understandings of how they can best be leveraged, protected, and even constrained. The structures of technological systems as determined largely by government and institutional policies and those structures have tremendous implications for social organization and agency, ranging from open source, open systems that are highly distributed and decentralized, to those that are tightly controlled and closed, structured according to stricter and more hierarchical models. And just as our understanding of the governance of technology is developing in new and interesting ways, so, too, is our understanding of the social, cultural, environmental, and political dimensions of emerging technologies. We are realizing both the challenges and the importance of mapping out the full range of ways that technology is changing our society, what we want those changes to look like, and what tools we have to try to influence and guide those shifts.

Technology can be a source of tremendous optimism. It can help overcome some of the greatest challenges our society faces, including climate change, famine, and disease. For those who believe in the power of innovation and the promise of creative destruction to advance economic development and lead to better quality of life, technology is a vital economic driver (Schumpeter 1942) . But it can also be a tool of tremendous fear and oppression, embedding biases in automated decision-making processes and information-processing algorithms, exacerbating economic and social inequalities within and between countries to a staggering degree, or creating new weapons and avenues for attack unlike any we have had to face in the past. Scholars have even contended that the emergence of the term technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked a shift from viewing individual pieces of machinery as a means to achieving political and social progress to the more dangerous, or hazardous, view that larger-scale, more complex technological systems were a semiautonomous form of progress in and of themselves (Marx 2010) . More recently, technologists have sharply criticized what they view as a wave of new Luddites, people intent on slowing the development of technology and turning back the clock on innovation as a means of mitigating the societal impacts of technological change (Marlowe 1970) .

At the heart of fights over new technologies and their resulting global changes are often two conflicting visions of technology: a fundamentally optimistic one that believes humans use it as a tool to achieve greater goals, and a fundamentally pessimistic one that holds that technological systems have reached a point beyond our control. Technology philosophers have argued that neither of these views is wholly accurate and that a purely optimistic or pessimistic view of technology is insufficient to capture the nuances and complexity of our relationship to technology (Oberdiek and Tiles 1995) . Understanding technology and how we can make better decisions about designing, deploying, and refining it requires capturing that nuance and complexity through in-depth analysis of the impacts of different technological advancements and the ways they have played out in all their complicated and controversial messiness across the world.

These impacts are often unpredictable as technologies are adopted in new contexts and come to be used in ways that sometimes diverge significantly from the use cases envisioned by their designers. The internet, designed to help transmit information between computer networks, became a crucial vehicle for commerce, introducing unexpected avenues for crime and financial fraud. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, designed to connect friends and families through sharing photographs and life updates, became focal points of election controversies and political influence. Cryptocurrencies, originally intended as a means of decentralized digital cash, have become a significant environmental hazard as more and more computing resources are devoted to mining these forms of virtual money. One of the crucial challenges in this area is therefore recognizing, documenting, and even anticipating some of these unexpected consequences and providing mechanisms to technologists for how to think through the impacts of their work, as well as possible other paths to different outcomes (Verbeek 2006) . And just as technological innovations can cause unexpected harm, they can also bring about extraordinary benefits—new vaccines and medicines to address global pandemics and save thousands of lives, new sources of energy that can drastically reduce emissions and help combat climate change, new modes of education that can reach people who would otherwise have no access to schooling. Regulating technology therefore requires a careful balance of mitigating risks without overly restricting potentially beneficial innovations.

Nations around the world have taken very different approaches to governing emerging technologies and have adopted a range of different technologies themselves in pursuit of more modern governance structures and processes (Braman 2009) . In Europe, the precautionary principle has guided much more anticipatory regulation aimed at addressing the risks presented by technologies even before they are fully realized. For instance, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation focuses on the responsibilities of data controllers and processors to provide individuals with access to their data and information about how that data is being used not just as a means of addressing existing security and privacy threats, such as data breaches, but also to protect against future developments and uses of that data for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making purposes. In Germany, Technische Überwachungsvereine, or TÜVs, perform regular tests and inspections of technological systems to assess and minimize risks over time, as the tech landscape evolves. In the United States, by contrast, there is much greater reliance on litigation and liability regimes to address safety and security failings after-the-fact. These different approaches reflect not just the different legal and regulatory mechanisms and philosophies of different nations but also the different ways those nations prioritize rapid development of the technology industry versus safety, security, and individual control. Typically, governance innovations move much more slowly than technological innovations, and regulations can lag years, or even decades, behind the technologies they aim to govern.

In addition to this varied set of national regulatory approaches, a variety of international and nongovernmental organizations also contribute to the process of developing standards, rules, and norms for new technologies, including the International Organization for Standardization­ and the International Telecommunication Union. These multilateral and NGO actors play an especially important role in trying to define appropriate boundaries for the use of new technologies by governments as instruments of control for the state.

At the same time that policymakers are under scrutiny both for their decisions about how to regulate technology as well as their decisions about how and when to adopt technologies like facial recognition themselves, technology firms and designers have also come under increasing criticism. Growing recognition that the design of technologies can have far-reaching social and political implications means that there is more pressure on technologists to take into consideration the consequences of their decisions early on in the design process (Vincenti 1993; Winner 1980) . The question of how technologists should incorporate these social dimensions into their design and development processes is an old one, and debate on these issues dates back to the 1970s, but it remains an urgent and often overlooked part of the puzzle because so many of the supposedly systematic mechanisms for assessing the impacts of new technologies in both the private and public sectors are primarily bureaucratic, symbolic processes rather than carrying any real weight or influence.

Technologists are often ill-equipped or unwilling to respond to the sorts of social problems that their creations have—often unwittingly—exacerbated, and instead point to governments and lawmakers to address those problems (Zuckerberg 2019) . But governments often have few incentives to engage in this area. This is because setting clear standards and rules for an ever-evolving technological landscape can be extremely challenging, because enforcement of those rules can be a significant undertaking requiring considerable expertise, and because the tech sector is a major source of jobs and revenue for many countries that may fear losing those benefits if they constrain companies too much. This indicates not just a need for clearer incentives and better policies for both private- and public-sector entities but also a need for new mechanisms whereby the technology development and design process can be influenced and assessed by people with a wider range of experiences and expertise. If we want technologies to be designed with an eye to their impacts, who is responsible for predicting, measuring, and mitigating those impacts throughout the design process? Involving policymakers in that process in a more meaningful way will also require training them to have the analytic and technical capacity to more fully engage with technologists and understand more fully the implications of their decisions.

At the same time that tech companies seem unwilling or unable to rein in their creations, many also fear they wield too much power, in some cases all but replacing governments and international organizations in their ability to make decisions that affect millions of people worldwide and control access to information, platforms, and audiences (Kilovaty 2020) . Regulators around the world have begun considering whether some of these companies have become so powerful that they violate the tenets of antitrust laws, but it can be difficult for governments to identify exactly what those violations are, especially in the context of an industry where the largest players often provide their customers with free services. And the platforms and services developed by tech companies are often wielded most powerfully and dangerously not directly by their private-sector creators and operators but instead by states themselves for widespread misinformation campaigns that serve political purposes (Nye 2018) .

Since the largest private entities in the tech sector operate in many countries, they are often better poised to implement global changes to the technological ecosystem than individual states or regulatory bodies, creating new challenges to existing governance structures and hierarchies. Just as it can be challenging to provide oversight for government use of technologies, so, too, oversight of the biggest tech companies, which have more resources, reach, and power than many nations, can prove to be a daunting task. The rise of network forms of organization and the growing gig economy have added to these challenges, making it even harder for regulators to fully address the breadth of these companies’ operations (Powell 1990) . The private-public partnerships that have emerged around energy, transportation, medical, and cyber technologies further complicate this picture, blurring the line between the public and private sectors and raising critical questions about the role of each in providing critical infrastructure, health care, and security. How can and should private tech companies operating in these different sectors be governed, and what types of influence do they exert over regulators? How feasible are different policy proposals aimed at technological innovation, and what potential unintended consequences might they have?

Conflict between countries has also spilled over significantly into the private sector in recent years, most notably in the case of tensions between the United States and China over which technologies developed in each country will be permitted by the other and which will be purchased by other customers, outside those two countries. Countries competing to develop the best technology is not a new phenomenon, but the current conflicts have major international ramifications and will influence the infrastructure that is installed and used around the world for years to come. Untangling the different factors that feed into these tussles as well as whom they benefit and whom they leave at a disadvantage is crucial for understanding how governments can most effectively foster technological innovation and invention domestically as well as the global consequences of those efforts. As much of the world is forced to choose between buying technology from the United States or from China, how should we understand the long-term impacts of those choices and the options available to people in countries without robust domestic tech industries? Does the global spread of technologies help fuel further innovation in countries with smaller tech markets, or does it reinforce the dominance of the states that are already most prominent in this sector? How can research universities maintain global collaborations and research communities in light of these national competitions, and what role does government research and development spending play in fostering innovation within its own borders and worldwide? How should intellectual property protections evolve to meet the demands of the technology industry, and how can those protections be enforced globally?

These conflicts between countries sometimes appear to challenge the feasibility of truly global technologies and networks that operate across all countries through standardized protocols and design features. Organizations like the International Organization for Standardization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and many others have tried to harmonize these policies and protocols across different countries for years, but have met with limited success when it comes to resolving the issues of greatest tension and disagreement among nations. For technology to operate in a global environment, there is a need for a much greater degree of coordination among countries and the development of common standards and norms, but governments continue to struggle to agree not just on those norms themselves but even the appropriate venue and processes for developing them. Without greater global cooperation, is it possible to maintain a global network like the internet or to promote the spread of new technologies around the world to address challenges of sustainability? What might help incentivize that cooperation moving forward, and what could new structures and process for governance of global technologies look like? Why has the tech industry’s self-regulation culture persisted? Do the same traditional drivers for public policy, such as politics of harmonization and path dependency in policy-making, still sufficiently explain policy outcomes in this space? As new technologies and their applications spread across the globe in uneven ways, how and when do they create forces of change from unexpected places?

These are some of the questions that we hope to address in the Technology and Global Change section through articles that tackle new dimensions of the global landscape of designing, developing, deploying, and assessing new technologies to address major challenges the world faces. Understanding these processes requires synthesizing knowledge from a range of different fields, including sociology, political science, economics, and history, as well as technical fields such as engineering, climate science, and computer science. A crucial part of understanding how technology has created global change and, in turn, how global changes have influenced the development of new technologies is understanding the technologies themselves in all their richness and complexity—how they work, the limits of what they can do, what they were designed to do, how they are actually used. Just as technologies themselves are becoming more complicated, so are their embeddings and relationships to the larger social, political, and legal contexts in which they exist. Scholars across all disciplines are encouraged to join us in untangling those complexities.

Josephine Wolff is an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her book You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches was published by MIT Press in 2018.

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News from the Columbia Climate School

Catherine McKenna on Her Life, Work and Preserving the World for Future Generations

Olga Rukovets

Catherine McKenna , Canada’s former Minister of Environment and Climate Change and a senior research scholar at Columbia’s Climate School, never imagined becoming a politician.

“What did I want to do when I grew up? I didn’t care about politics,” said McKenna, at a recent event at the Climate School. “I wanted to go to the Olympics [as a swimmer]. When I was 13 years old, that’s all I dreamed about.”

You cannot plan your life out, she told the room. It’s only in retrospect that you can connect the dots and create a nice story for your CV. (And it’s safe to say McKenna’s CV is quite an impressive one.)

But first, McKenna recounted the different directions her professional path took—from working at a pub in London and teaching swimming lessons (to former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s child) while studying for her master’s degree in international relations at the London School of Economics, to working for a G7 research group. McKenna then went to law school to pursue international law and human rights, and worked as a lawyer in Indonesia before becoming a senior negotiator with a U.N. peacekeeping mission in East Timor.

When she returned to Canada, McKenna co-founded a charitable organization called Canadian Lawyers Abroad, hoping to continue international humanitarian efforts. But she recalled being encouraged by one of her mentors to work on issues closer to home, including injustices faced by Canada’s Indigenous populations, rather than focusing on inequitable conditions abroad. Canadian Lawyers Abroad has since evolved into Level Justice , an organization that helps all communities in Canada play an active part in the legal system.

Despite her best efforts to effect positive change in Canada, McKenna found herself becoming disillusioned with the government in power in 2015. “The government was very against reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and it didn’t care about climate. These were things were really important to me. So that’s why I stepped up into politics,” she said, as she urged the young people in the room to consider this possibility as well. “We need good people, wherever you may live, to consider going into politics. It’s not easy, but it’s extremely important,” McKenna said.

“I did not know that I would one day be Minister of Environment and Climate Change. That was not the plan. Everyone is going to have a different journey, and I want you to feel like you can do it too—whatever it is that you want to do.”

She also entered politics as a promise to work toward a better world for the children—her own three kids as well as all the children who would grow up and inherit the many complex issues of their predecessors.

So in 2015, McKenna and her team knocked on over 100,000 doors while campaigning for a seat in Parliament, she said, showing the room a picture of just one of the many pairs of running shoes that were destroyed along the way.

From the beginning of her campaign, McKenna vowed to center people and communities in her communication and platforms. “I come from Hamilton, which is a steel town a little bit like Detroit, where you’ve got to be a real person and you can’t talk like an alien, which is actually what climate people often do,” McKenna told attendees.

All the hard work paid off. Just days after being elected, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called to ask McKenna if she would be Canada’s first Minister of the Environment and Climate Change and join COP21 in Paris a few days later (shortly after she learned that COP stood for “Conference of the Parties”).

“I did not know that I would one day be Minister of Environment and Climate Change. That was not the plan. It was amazing, but everyone is going to have a different journey, and I want you to feel like you can do it too—whatever it is that you want to do.” McKenna said.

COP21 became a historic conference—the first time the countries of the world agreed to tackle climate change with an ambitious goal of limiting global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, and ideally 1.5 degrees—and an achievement McKenna noted was possible due in large part to the many extraordinary women at the negotiating table.

McKenna learned countless lessons at COP21—including how one wrong word (“should” versus “shall”) could sink an agreement in its final moments, or how a seemingly small player (geographically speaking) like the Marshall Islands could create a tremendous difference on the world stage by founding the High Ambition Coalition —a group that successfully pushed for a 1.5 degree temperature target. And McKenna returned to Canada more determined than ever that climate change was the critical issue to address—and that their government would need multilateral support to do so.

McKenna made “pinky promises” to the many young people she met along her journey that she would work toward a safer world for them. “I’ve left politics, but I still have those kids as a reminder of what this is all about. We have the solutions, we can scale the solutions, but we are constantly finding reasons why we can’t do things,” McKenna said.

Earlier this year, McKenna—who is also CEO of Climate and Nature Solutions and founder of Women Leading on Climate —and Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and France’s climate change ambassador and special representative for COP21, authored an article in Time magazine about why this year must be the one for exponential climate action, distilling necessary actions into five key items:  

1. Implement the International Energy Agency net zero pathway 2. Phase out fossil fuels 3. Scale financing to the Global South 4. Align national and subnational net zero action 5. Empower people.

“Governments will break your heart sometimes,” McKenna told the Climate School attendees. “But people are real, and people believe and want action.”

Speaking directly to the audience, McKenna said, “This isn’t over. I’m still trying, but now it’s on you [to fight climate change and help build a better future]. That’s the quid-pro-quo pinky promise to me.”

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Essay Editing: Fine-Tuning Your Work

Crafting an essay is akin to sculpting a masterpiece from raw marble—each word, sentence, and paragraph carefully chiseled by essay writers to convey a precise message or evoke a particular emotion. However, the journey towards perfection does not end with the initial draft; rather, it is through the meticulous process of editing that the true essence of the work emerges. Essay editing is not merely about fixing grammatical errors or polishing the surface; it is about delving deep into the core of the piece, refining ideas, and sharpening arguments to create a compelling narrative that resonates with the reader.

Understanding the Editing Process 

Editing is a multifaceted process that requires both attention to detail and a keen understanding of the overarching goals of the essay. It begins with a comprehensive review of the content, focusing on clarity, coherence, and relevance. Professional essay writers often seek assistance from reputable sources like https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/uk-writings-review-high-quality-custom-essay-provider-grace-carter for high-quality feedback and guidance on their writing endeavors.

Here are some key aspects to consider during the editing process:

Structure and Organization: Ensure that the essay follows a logical progression, with each paragraph building upon the previous one. Check for smooth transitions between ideas and consider reordering paragraphs if necessary.

Clarity and Precision: Clarify any ambiguous or convoluted sentences to ensure that the message is conveyed clearly to the reader. Use precise language and avoid unnecessary jargon or overly complex vocabulary.

Relevance of Supporting Details: Assess the relevance of each supporting detail or example. Remove any information that does not directly contribute to the central thesis or argument.

Polishing the Prose 

Once the structural elements of the essay are in place, it is time to focus on the finer details of the prose. This involves scrutinizing each sentence for clarity, conciseness, and elegance. Here are some tips for polishing your prose:

Eliminate Redundancies: Identify and remove any redundant phrases or words that do not add value to the sentence. Streamline your writing to make it more concise and impactful.

Vary Sentence Length and Structure: Keep your reader engaged by varying the length and structure of your sentences. Mix shorter, punchy sentences with longer, more complex ones to create rhythm and flow.

Word Choice and Imagery: Choose words that are vivid and evocative, creating images that linger in the reader’s mind. Avoid clichés and overused phrases, opting instead for fresh and original language.

Refining Your Argument 

One of the primary goals of essay editing is to strengthen the central argument or thesis statement. This requires careful analysis of the evidence and reasoning presented in the essay. Here are some strategies for refining your argument:

Evaluate Supporting Evidence: Scrutinize the evidence and examples used to support your argument. Ensure that they are relevant, credible, and effectively contribute to the overall thesis.

Strengthen Logical Connections: Check for gaps or inconsistencies in your reasoning and fill them in with additional evidence or analysis. Make sure that each point logically leads to the next, building a coherent and persuasive argument.

Anticipate Counterarguments: Consider potential counterarguments to your thesis and address them preemptively in your essay. This demonstrates a thorough understanding of the topic and enhances the credibility of your argument.

Addressing Grammar and Style 

Grammar and style are the final touches that can elevate your essay from good to exceptional. Paying attention to these details demonstrates professionalism and attention to quality. Here are some areas to focus on when addressing grammar and style:

Grammar and Punctuation: Double-check for grammatical errors, punctuation mistakes, and typos. Pay special attention to commonly misused words and homophones.

Consistency and Tone: Maintain consistency in tone and style throughout the essay. Ensure that the language used is appropriate for the audience and purpose of the piece.

Sentence Structure Variety: Experiment with different sentence structures to maintain reader interest. Combine simple, compound, and complex sentences to create a dynamic and engaging narrative.

In conclusion, essay editing is an essential step in the writing process that allows authors to refine their ideas, clarify their arguments, and polish their prose to perfection. By approaching editing with diligence and attention to detail, writers can transform their initial drafts into compelling and impactful works that resonate with readers. Remember, editing is not just about fixing mistakes; it is about striving for excellence and creating a lasting impression with your writing. With each edit, your essay evolves, inching closer to its full potential. So, embrace the editing process as an opportunity for growth and refinement, and watch as your words come to life on the page.

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Regions & Countries

1. politicians, changing leadership and political parties.

In the vast majority of the 24 countries surveyed, politicians are the most common subject of proposals to improve democracy. Some call for different types of people to enter the political arena, while others simply want their current politicians to perform better. Many want their leaders to pay closer attention to and respond more appropriately to constituents’ needs.

“The members of the legislature are stupid, so I want them to improve.” Woman, 20, Japan

While not top of mind in most places, people sometimes argue for a total change in leadership . This includes removing incumbent heads of state and instating a preferred politician. In Poland, where the survey took place before the October election which removed the then-ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) , this was the top change people thought would improve democracy.

Respondents also look beyond the people in politics to focus on political parties . This issue is particularly salient in the Netherlands, where parties are the second-most mentioned topic, though they rank in the top five in South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the U.S. Many requests center on changing the number of political parties – some want more and some want fewer. Others want to see a change in how parties interact, with calls for less fighting and more cooperation. A number of these responses specifically address the behavior or strength of the opposition party.

Politicians

In nearly all countries surveyed, politicians rank first among the 17 topics coded. In countries where politicians are not the top issue, they still rank in the top five.

Suggestions for improving democracy by way of politicians come in many forms.

Some would like to see different people in politics, or more representation . Others focus on the qualities of politicians, such as honesty or empathy, but also their skillset and general competence . Still others ask that politicians change their behavior, both when working with each other and when working with constituents, emphasizing responsiveness .

Representation: Changing who is in politics

“If politicians were ordinary people who were on public transport, who used the means and the laws that they later apply.” Woman, 41, Spain

One group of suggestions involves changing the types of people involved in politics . For some, politicians are too dissimilar from their constituents, and “ordinary citizens should be able to enter” the government instead. As one Australian woman explained: “If ordinary people were elected to Parliament instead of big, official people, our country would probably be a better place to live. Ordinary people know how hard it is to get jobs, live below the poverty line and raise families on the low sums that the Australian government allows Centrelink to pay out each fortnight.” Another man in Nigeria put it more plainly: “They should give somebody like me a chance of ruling in Nigeria.”

“Wealthy people in government are not helpful in democracy because they don’t understand what it’s like to work in unionized jobs and not be able to afford necessities.” Woman, 41, UK

Some people focus specifically on the wealth of political leaders , calling for “fewer rich wealthy people” in the government. In Nigeria, one woman said, “They should allow the poor people to rule.” A man in Argentina said there should be “more poor people who can reach important positions.” And one Canadian man suggested “having more people from the upper-middle class, or people who have to work and earn their income, know what it’s like to pay taxes, and understand how difficult it is to survive in our world.”

Others say that “youth should take part in politics.” Younger politicians are viewed as a conduit for change and new ideas while “old ones don’t care anymore.” As one woman in South Africa pointed out, the “youth are the ones who are in line with the community issues.” Many respondents think younger people should be more involved in politics for their own sake: “Young people must create their own future.” A 30-year-old Argentine man said, “Let the young people get involved in politics, as they are the future and will change the country.” And respondents sometimes emphasize that younger people need to be prepared before entering politics, as one man in India said: “Youth should take part in politics, and training the leaders is the solution.”

“We want young blood or women to take over as our government.” Man, 34, South Africa

More women entering politics is another suggestion for improving the functioning of democracy. One woman in Sweden said, “More women in power, and then I think we will have a good political system.” A Japanese man echoed this call, saying one way to improve democracy is “to increase women’s participation in politics by making more than half of the members of Parliament women.” And a man in Spain said, “Simply, in this country, if instead of men there were more women in power, the country would do so much better.”

Still others call for people of different racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds to be in politics. One man in South Africa asked for “a better balance of races in Parliament,” and a woman in Brazil proposed “racial quotas for politicians.” In the Netherlands, one woman suggested more representation of different “cultures, diaspora groups, origins and backgrounds. Because if you look at photos of the cabinet, you see a whole group of White people, which is not objective when you talk about the different cultures and backgrounds in the Netherlands.”

Specific backgrounds come up in some responses. In Australia, one man highlighted how “Indigenous people need to have more say in government,” and a woman in the U.S. shared a similar sentiment, saying, “As a matter of fact, this is Native land, and us Natives should be in charge, not other races.” An Israeli man proposed “more Arab Knesset members so they have more influence on decisions.” Kenya sees similar calls for “leaders from all tribes” to be elected, and a man in India requested that members of Parliament “be from all the castes.”

Competence: Changing politicians’ qualities

“Political leaders should be improved.” Man, 61, South Korea

Many suggest improving the overall quality of politicians . “If the leader is good, there will be improvement,” explained one man in India. These calls are often straightforward, as in the case of a Mexican woman whose singular request was for “better politicians.” Some suggest basic requirements for holding political office, like one man in Japan who said, “We need politicians who have common sense and can think logically.” This sentiment is shared in Kenya, where one respondent suggested that democracy would be improved if “competent leaders” were elected.

Politicians need extroversion, knowledge and experience from foreign countries, integrity and a democratic spirit.” Man, 49, Greece

In some cases, respondents set even higher bars for their politicians, specifically asking that they be “knowledgeable people” or “experts on key policy issues.” One Hungarian woman explained that “experts would pass responsible laws.” For one woman in Spain, the coronavirus pandemic illustrated the importance of having experts on an issue decide “everything that has to do with that issue. For example, during COVID, the people who decided were a doctor and an expert.” Others are more reluctant to have experts govern outright and would just like politicians to listen more to experts or have more advisers.

People also want to see changes in the personal character of politicians:

“It will improve when we get a strong and determined leader who puts the issues and problems of people first.”

– Man, 36, South Africa

“More decisiveness from the politicians. I think it’s weak now; they don’t dare to make decisions and they are like civil servants.”

– Woman, 66, Netherlands

“All political people are very bad. All political persons should be honest.”

– Man, 32, India

“To have trustworthy and honest authorities who can give an account of what they do and where they do their jobs.”

– Man, 67, Mexico

“I think they need to behave less like children, learn what people want and be less self-interested. And learn how to tell the truth. And not avoid answering questions.”

– Woman, 76, UK

“For politicians to stop going for a win for their party and egos, and instead to focus more on what’s best – for the short and long term – for the country.”

– Man, 65, U.S.

Responsiveness: Changing politicians’ behavior

Politicians’ conduct is another subject of people’s suggestions. They want politicians to take their responsibilities more seriously and show “more interest in the work they are asked to do.” In Australia, one woman wanted “fewer ‘charismatic’ leaders and more serious and committed candidates.” Another Australian thought politicians need to have a greater sense of responsibility because “saying ‘I don’t know’ or ‘it isn’t my responsibility’ loses the respect of the electorate.” One man in the U.S. plainly stated that democracy needs “serious elected officials, not crazy ones like you have now in the GOP.”

Others are concerned about making sure politicians “say what they mean and do what they say,” especially when it comes to keeping promises made during campaigns . One man in France said politicians must “avoid saying things that will never be done, lying just to get elected.” In Sweden, a respondent asked for “less fishing for votes with false promises.” In several cases, people specifically called for repercussions “if election promises are not carried out.” One man in Australia suggested that politicians “should be forced to stand down” if they do not “honor their promises.” The sentiment is shared in Japan, where one man said that “those who have not worked to carry out their campaign promises” should be prevented “from running for the next term.”

“The government should listen to the voice of the people, because the voice in the inside is not the voice of the lower level. People’s complaints in the lower level are seldom taken.” Woman, 39, Indonesia

One oft-repeated request is for politicians to listen more closely to their constituents . Many feel that democracy “is not working because politicians have their own agenda and are not listening to anybody.” In the Netherlands, one man explained that “the ordinary man in the street is not really listened to” and “not much” comes of what they ask for. People instead call for politicians to “pay attention to what facilities the people are not getting” and understand that they are meant to be “pro-people.” One Kenyan man said democracy would improve “if elected leaders represented people as the people want and represent the problems they are facing.”

People also highlight specific groups in the country that politicians should pay special attention to . In Japan, several said politicians need to “hear more women’s opinions” and be more attentive to the needs of young people. In other instances, people want politicians to hear “more opinions from poor people.” One Israeli respondent emphasized “taking the opinions of Arabs into consideration,” and a woman in Brazil stressed the need for politicians to better understand “the homeless people.” Other groups that are highlighted include the elderly, LGBTQ people, religious groups and refugees. (For more on what people said about individual rights and equality, read Chapter 4 .)

Still, some think that politicians need to “place less emphasis on the wants of minority groups.” In Australia, some painted these groups as “noisy” or “loud” and said politicians should listen to the “silent majority” instead. Other respondents in both Australia and the U.S. even name specific groups they think are receiving undue attention, such as “Aboriginal people,” women and “illegal immigrants.”

Changing leadership

Instead of improving the quality of their politicians, some want to remove the current governing parties or heads of state . This issue appeared in the top five topics cited in Poland, Hungary and South Africa. In most other countries surveyed, though, it does not rank in the top 10.

In about half the countries surveyed, those who do not support the governing party or parties are more likely to mention changing their political leadership than those who do support these parties. (For more information on how we classify governing party supporters, refer to Appendix D .)

In Hungary, for example, where changing leadership is the third-most mentioned suggestion for improving democracy, 12% of those who do not support Viktor Orbán’s governing coalition of Fidesz and the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KNDP) mention changing leadership, compared with 1% of those who do support these parties.

Calls to put someone else in power, particularly in Poland

Across the 24 countries surveyed, Poles particularly stand out for the emphasis they placed on changing leadership – Poland is the only country where the issue ranked first. The survey was conducted in spring 2023, prior to the October 2023 parliamentary elections that ousted the governing right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) .

“As long as PiS is in power, there will be no democracy in Poland.” Man, 24, Poland

Polish responses about how to improve their democracy centered squarely on changing the governing party: “Removing PiS from power,” said one Polish man. “PiS should lose the election,” echoed a Polish woman.

Poles who do not support PiS are more likely to mention changing leadership than those who do support PiS (17% vs. 4%, respectively, though PiS supporters were overall less likely to provide a response). Younger Polish adults are also more likely to mention changing leadership than those ages 40 and older. Indeed, in the October election, turnout among the youth was unusually high .

While Poles focused on removing the particular party in power, people in other countries sometimes emphasize the need to put different people or parties into office . “The government should be changed. The Congress Party government should come to power,” said one man in India. “Raila Odinga should be granted leadership,” said a woman in Kenya, naming the leader of the opposition. And a South African man suggested that “the African National Congress give other parties a chance to govern the country, and Cyril Ramaphosa step down as a president.”

“A change of government at the next election would improve democracy. The Conservatives have been in power for too long.” Woman, 53, UK

In other countries, too, calls to change leadership prioritize removing someone currently in power as opposed to installing someone else. Some respondents name the current head of state as who they would like to see out of office. One Brazilian man said, for example, “Get President Lula and his gang out of power.” Or, as one woman in Canada put it: “If we could get Justin Trudeau out of leadership, then I would be happier with democracy.”

Rebuilding leadership from the ground up

“The legislature has a lot of problems – it needs to be improved, starting with a new election of lawmakers.” Man, 65, South Korea

Some requests to change leadership are not specific to a person or party, but rather focus on bringing in a fresh slate of politicians . “Fire everyone and start fresh,” said one woman in the U.S. An Argentine woman echoed this view: “Take out the current politicians, reform and formulate new laws, and start from scratch.”

Several of these calls to rebuild target the legislature. A man in Greece said, “all 300 members should leave the Parliament. The structure of the Parliament should change radically.” A woman in Spain suggested, “I would carry out a purge in the useless Senate.”

“The established order must be replaced: a new generation with more women and people from the business world. There are too many people who have only been in politics. That is an unhealthy situation.” Woman, 53, Netherlands

A few focus less on a specific leader, party or institution and more generally on the need for change. One Italian man said, “In order to improve democracy in this country, it would take a coup d’etat. We need to reset all privileges and start over in full respect of people.”

Political parties

People sometimes target political parties when making suggestions for improving democracy. The issue is particularly salient in the Netherlands, where parties are the second-most mentioned topic. Parties are a top-five issue in Spain, Sweden, South Korea and the U.S. In most other countries surveyed, parties rank in the top 10.

Some proposed changes relate to the number of political parties. Other suggestions are related to how parties act, both on their own and with other parties.

“Get rid of all the political parties, we need a redo.” Woman, 39, Canada

More political parties

Some want to see more political parties, as with a respondent in Kenya who wanted “the use of a multiparty system” and one in Greece who thought “more political parties in the Parliament” would improve democracy.

Some express a simple desire for more options to choose from . For example, a man in Canada found “very little difference between the NDP (New Democratic Party) and Liberal” now that the Liberal Party, which “used to be centralist,” has “moved to the left.” In South Korea, also dominated by two parties, a man said having “at least three parties to contest the elections” would help improve the country’s democracy. Similarly, one woman in the U.S. wanted “more parties, more points of view.”

“That no large coalitions exist and we therefore have more than three parties.” Woman, 57, Germany

In other cases, people see the existing parties as too polarized and want additional parties to represent centrists . A man in the U.S. said, “There truly needs to be a relevant third party that would represent the middle-of-the-road ideology between Republicans and Democrats.” This sentiment is echoed in Australia, where one woman thought democracy “works well, but it’s the party room that buggers it up.” This would be fixed if the “extreme wings” of parties became “parties of their own as most people vote for a moderate view,” she said.

Some see the creation of more parties as an opportunity to introduce new ideas . A British man said democracy would improve “if some new parties came to the United Kingdom with some fresh blood and fresh ideas, instead of the same people. The old parties are not so interested in the people living in the UK. They only care about their own pockets and their own ideas.” Suggestions for new parties sometimes focus on the inclusion of young people as a way to bring about different ideas. One Greek woman emphasized that “political parties should be created by young people with new ideas.”

Fewer political parties

Some suggest reducing the number of political parties would create more simplicity . In Nigeria, one man said that “with too many parties, things will go wrong.” A Canadian man held a similar view, saying, “the number of parties should be limited to three: left, center and right. I believe it would lead to less chaos.”

In Mexico, some highlight the monetary cost of having a large number of parties : “There should be fewer parties so that the payroll is less expensive,” said one Mexican woman. Another man thought there should only be two political parties because the current number of parties results in “a lot of money spent.”

“Fewer parties. No party has a clear policy. It’s just a moderate Swedish soup. And if someone tries to stand out, they never succeed.” Woman, 52, Sweden

People in the Netherlands, where political parties are the second-most mentioned issue, also note how “democracy is being muddled by smaller parties.” One woman explained: “I think it is too fragmented, therefore more difficult to form coalitions, and therefore more difficult to govern.” Another woman called for “fewer political parties. Otherwise you will become entirely ungovernable because many compromises have to be made. Too many parties leads to uncertainty among voters.”

There is no clear consensus on the ideal number of political parties to have in a country . For example, in the Netherlands, one man suggested that there “be seven to eight parties at most” while another suggested “a three-party system.” Still others want no parties at all, as in the case of a man in Japan: “Dissolution of all political parties. We will create a system in which even members of Parliament are not bound by political parties and are involved in politics based on their individual ideas.”

“By creating a two-party system like America’s. Then they can better keep the promises made.” Man, 40, Netherlands

Although some Americans would like to see more parties or a multiparty system, people in other countries sometimes point to the two-party system in the U.S. as ideal . An Italian man said, “We should have a democratic system like the American one: a presidential system, two parties that you can identify with. In Italy, there are too many parties. In America everything is perfect, but in Italy it is not possible.” A Japanese man suggested that “it would be better to have two major political parties like America. Now, there are various small political parties, and they are not united.”

Less conflict between parties

“Stop the constant opposition policies, like when a party is in favor of one thing, the rival party has to be against it.” Man, 19, Spain

Many think democracy would improve if political parties stopped fighting with each other . A French man explained that parties “spend their time fighting among themselves. It is not favorable for the French. They discuss and don’t make any real progress on the subjects.” In neighboring Italy, one man similarly took issue with “party squabbling,” and in Spain, a respondent wanted a “decrease in aggressiveness and hostility between parties.” This sentiment is echoed across other countries, including South Africa, where a man asked that “parties stop degrading each other.”

“If the Republicans and Democrats would just work together this would be the greatest country in the world.” Man, 58, U.S

People give various reasons for their concern about interparty conflict. Some point out how friction between parties creates gridlock : With “two parties fighting and voting along party lines, we never get anything done,” said a man in the U.S. A Canadian man shared a similar idea, saying, “If parties stop bickering, we might advance further.” Others are concerned because “democracy requires mutual efforts while competing,” according to a South Korean man, and because “parties that don’t want to cooperate with others are not democratic,” according to a Dutch man. A Dutch woman succinctly said, “If political parties do not want to work together, a democracy is useless.”

More cooperation between parties

“Get together more, talk more, diversity of opinions. That the parties leave personal benefits aside and agree, more like the Argentine team.” Man, 31, Argentina

Parties are also called upon to work together . As a woman in the U.S. said: “I would like to see both parties work together and not see each other as wrong. Compromise is the name of the game!” This is echoed in South Korea, where one man said that “compromise is necessary.” One South African respondent noted that working together would allow all parties to focus on “reaching one goal and keeping our country peaceful with stability.”

For others, improved communication between parties is the key for greater harmony. An Argentine woman explained that democracy would work better if “the different parties have a dialogue.” And an Israeli respondent similarly asked for “more dialogue and goodwill to bridge the gaps between the various parties.”

Changes to the opposition party

Some specifically request that opposition parties offer less resistance . A respondent in Kenya, for example, asked the opposition to “calm down a little.” In Hungary, some go even further to suggest that the opposition be “done away with” or “stay silent.” A man in South Africa explained that democracy may be better off without any opposition parties because “no one will ever oppose the decisions, which creates stability in the country.”

“Less hyperbole from the Liberal-National Coalition. We need a viable opposition instead of the half-witted reactionaries that the Coalition keeps serving up.” Man, 50, Australia

Other suggestions for opposition parties are more targeted. In Australia, people want opposition parties “to stop opposing things just to score political points” or to stop “voting against a good bill just because they are in opposition.” A Spanish man also spoke out against disagreement for the sake of it: “Don’t assume that the opposition must always say the opposite of what the ruling party says.”

Still, in some countries, the emphasis is reversed, and people want a stronger opposition that “will keep the government in check.” As one man in the UK explained: “I think we need an opposition that genuinely disagrees with the government. There has got to be debate. We have a Parliament and it’s not being used properly.”

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The Cowardice of Guernica

The literary magazine Guernica ’s decision to retract an essay about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reveals much about how the war is hardening human sentiment.

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Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

In the days after October 7, the writer and translator Joanna Chen spoke with a neighbor in Israel whose children were frightened by the constant sound of warplanes. “I tell them these are good booms,” the neighbor said to Chen with a grimace. “I understood the subtext,” Chen wrote later in an essay published in Guernica magazine on March 4, titled “From the Edges of a Broken World.” The booms were, of course, the Israeli army bombing Gaza, part of a campaign that has left at least 30,000 civilians and combatants dead so far.

The moment is just one observation in a much longer meditative piece of writing in which Chen weighs her principles—she refused service in the Israeli military, for years has volunteered at a charity providing transportation for Palestinian children needing medical care, and works on Arabic and Hebrew translations to bridge cultural divides—against the more turbulent feelings of fear, inadequacy, and split allegiances that have cropped up for her after October 7, when 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage in Hamas’s assault on Israel. But the conversation with the neighbor is a sharp, novelistic, and telling moment. The mother, aware of the perversity of recasting bombs killing children mere miles away as “good booms,” does so anyway because she is a mother, and her children are frightened. The act, at once callous and caring, will stay with me.

Not with the readers of Guernica , though. The magazine , once a prominent publication for fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction, with a focus on global art and politics, quickly found itself imploding as its all-volunteer staff revolted over the essay. One of the magazine’s nonfiction editors posted on social media that she was leaving over Chen’s publication. “Parts of the essay felt particularly harmful and disorienting to read, such as the line where a person is quoted saying ‘I tell them these are good booms.’” Soon a poetry editor resigned as well, calling Chen’s essay a “horrific settler normalization essay”— settler here seeming to refer to all Israelis, because Chen does not live in the occupied territories. More staff members followed, including the senior nonfiction editor and one of the co-publishers (who criticized the essay as “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism”). Amid this flurry of cascading outrage, on March 10 Guernica pulled the essay from its website, with the note: “ Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow.” As of today, this explanation is still pending, and my request for comment from the editor in chief, Jina Moore Ngarambe, has gone unanswered.

Read: Beware the language that erases reality

Blowups at literary journals are not the most pressing news of the day, but the incident at Guernica reveals the extent to which elite American literary outlets may now be beholden to the narrowest polemical and moralistic approaches to literature. After the publication of Chen’s essay, a parade of mutual incomprehension occurred across social media, with pro-Palestine writers announcing what they declared to be the self-evident awfulness of the essay (publishing the essay made Guernica “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness,” wrote one of the now-former editors), while reader after reader who came to it because of the controversy—an archived version can still be accessed—commented that they didn’t understand what was objectionable. One reader seemed to have mistakenly assumed that Guernica had pulled the essay in response to pressure from pro-Israel critics. “Oh buddy you can’t have your civilian population empathizing with the people you’re ethnically cleansing,” he wrote, with obvious sarcasm. When another reader pointed out that he had it backwards, he responded, “This chain of events is bizarre.”

Some people saw anti-Semitism in the decision. James Palmer, a deputy editor of Foreign Policy , noted how absurd it was to suggest that the author approved of the “good bombs” sentiment, and wrote that the outcry was “one step toward trying to exclude Jews from discourse altogether.” And it is hard not to see some anti-Semitism at play. One of the resigning editors claimed that the essay “includes random untrue fantasies about Hamas and centers the suffering of oppressors” (Chen briefly mentions the well-documented atrocities of October 7; caring for an Israeli family that lost a daughter, son-in-law, and nephew; and her worries about the fate of Palestinians she knows who have links to Israel).

Madhuri Sastry, one of the co-publishers, notes in her resignation post that she’d earlier successfully insisted on barring a previous essay of Chen’s from the magazine’s Voices on Palestine compilation. In that same compilation, Guernica chose to include an interview with Alice Walker, the author of a poem that asks “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews,” and who once recommended to readers of The New York Times a book that claims that “a small Jewish clique” helped plan the Russian Revolution, World Wars I and II, and “coldly calculated” the Holocaust. No one at Guernica publicly resigned over the magazine’s association with Walker.

However, to merely dismiss all of the critics out of hand as insane or intolerant or anti-Semitic would ironically run counter to the spirit of Chen’s essay itself. She writes of her desire to reach out to those on the other side of the conflict, people she’s worked with or known and who would be angered or horrified by some of the other experiences she relates in the essay, such as the conversation about the “good booms.” Given the realities of the conflict, she knows this attempt to connect is just a first step, and an often-frustrating one. Writing to a Palestinian she’d once worked with as a reporter, she laments her failure to come up with something meaningful to say: “I also felt stupid—this was war, and whether I liked it or not, Nuha and I were standing at opposite ends of the very bridge I hoped to cross. I had been naive … I was inadequate.” In another scene, she notes how even before October 7, when groups of Palestinians and Israelis joined together to share their stories, their goodwill failed “to straddle the chasm that divided us.”

Read: Why activism leads to so much bad writing

After the publication of Chen’s essay, one writer after another pulled their work from the magazine. One wrote, “I will not allow my work to be curated alongside settler angst,” while another, the Texas-based Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah, wrote that Chen’s essay “is humiliating to Palestinians in any time let alone during a genocide. An essay as if a dispatch from a colonial century ago. Oh how good you are to the natives.” I find it hard to read the essay that way, but it would be a mistake, as Chen herself suggests, to ignore such sentiments. For those who more naturally sympathize with the Israeli mother than the Gazan hiding from the bombs, these responses exist across that chasm Chen describes, one that empathy alone is incapable of bridging.

That doesn’t mean empathy isn’t a start, though. Which is why the retraction of the article is more than an act of cowardice and a betrayal of a writer whose work the magazine shepherded to publication. It’s a betrayal of the task of literature, which cannot end wars but can help us see why people wage them, oppose them, or become complicit in them.

Empathy here does not justify or condemn. Empathy is just a tool. The writer needs it to accurately depict their subject; the peacemaker needs it to be able to trace the possibilities for negotiation; even the soldier needs it to understand his adversary. Before we act, we must see war’s human terrain in all its complexity, no matter how disorienting and painful that might be. Which means seeing Israelis as well as Palestinians—and not simply the mother comforting her children as the bombs fall and the essayist reaching out across the divide, but far harsher and more unsettling perspectives. Peace is not made between angels and demons but between human beings, and the real hell of life, as Jean Renoir once noted, is that everybody has their reasons. If your journal can’t publish work that deals with such messy realities, then your editors might as well resign, because you’ve turned your back on literature.

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Literary Magazine Retracts Israeli Writer’s Essay as Staffers Quit

An Israeli writer’s essay about seeking common ground with Palestinians led to the resignation of at least 10 staff members at Guernica.

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By Marc Tracy

Guernica, a small but prestigious online literary magazine, was thrown into turmoil in recent days after publishing — and then retracting — a personal essay about coexistence and war in the Middle East by an Israeli writer, leading to multiple resignations by its volunteer staff members, who said that they objected to its publication.

In an essay titled “From the Edges of a Broken World,” Joanna Chen, a translator of Hebrew and Arabic poetry and prose, had written about her experiences trying to bridge the divide with Palestinians, including by volunteering to drive Palestinian children from the West Bank to receive care at Israeli hospitals, and how her efforts to find common ground faltered after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s subsequent attacks on Gaza.

It was replaced on Guernica’s webpage with a note, attributed to “admin,” stating: “Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it,” and promising further explanation. Since the essay was published, at least 10 members of the magazine’s all-volunteer staff have resigned, including its former co-publisher, Madhuri Sastry, who on social media wrote that the essay “attempts to soften the violence of colonialism and genocide” and called for a cultural boycott of Israeli institutions.

Chen said in an email that she believed her critics had misunderstood “the meaning of my essay, which is about holding on to empathy when there is no human decency in sight.”

“It is about the willingness to listen,” she said, “and the idea that remaining deaf to voices other than your own won’t bring the solution.”

Michael Archer, the founder of Guernica, said that the magazine would publish a response in the coming days. “The time we are taking to draft this statement reflects both our understanding of the seriousness of the concerns raised and our commitment to engaging with them meaningfully,” he wrote in a text.

The essay was published on March 4 and taken down a few days later, according to the Wayback Machine, where the first-person essay is still available in archived form.

Chen, who was born in England and moved to Israel with her family when she was 16, writes in the essay about trying to reconnect with a Palestinian friend and former colleague after the Oct. 7 attacks, and of not knowing how to respond when her friend texted back reports of Israeli attacks on a hospital complex in Gaza.

“Beyond terrible, I finally wrote, knowing our conversation was over,” Chen’s essay said. “I felt inexplicably ashamed, as if she were pointing a finger at me. I also felt stupid — this was war, and whether I liked it or not, Nuha and I were standing at opposite ends of the very bridge I hoped to cross. I had been naïve; this conflict was bigger than the both of us.”

Chen said in the email that she had worked on the essay — her second for Guernica — with the magazine’s editor in chief and publisher, Jina Moore Ngarambe. Over emails and in a one-hour phone conversation, Chen said, “I was offered the distinct impression my essay was appreciated. I was given no indication that the editorial staff was not onboard.”

She still has not heard from anyone at Guernica, she said Tuesday.

Ngarambe, who in 2017 and 2018 worked at The New York Times as its East Africa bureau chief, did not reply to requests for comment on Monday and Tuesday.

In the days following the essay’s online publication last week, several Guernica staffers announced their resignations on X, calling the essay a betrayal of the editorial principles of the magazine, a nonprofit that was founded in 2004.

April Zhu, who resigned as a senior editor, wrote that she believed the article “fails or refuses to trace the shape of power — in this case, a violent, imperialist, colonial power — that makes the systematic and historic dehumanization of Palestinians (the tacit precondition for why she may feel a need at all to affirm ‘shared humanity’) a non-issue.”

Summer Lopez, the chief of free expression programs at PEN America, the writers’ group, said that “a writer’s published work should not be yanked from circulation because it sparks public outcry or sharp disagreement.”

“The pressures on U.S. cultural institutions in this moment are immense,” Lopez said in a statement. “Those with a mission to foster discourse should do so by safeguarding the freedom to write, read, imagine and tell stories.”

In a mission statement on its website, Guernica states that it is “a home for incisive ideas and necessary questions.”

Marc Tracy is a Times reporter covering arts and culture. He is based in New York. More about Marc Tracy

Our Coverage of the Israel-Hamas War

News and Analysis

A group of experts warned that “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza . In the coming months, the experts said , as many as 1.1 million people in the territory could face the severest level of hunger classified by the group.

​​A U.S. official confirmed that Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza and a presumed mastermind of the Oct. 7 assault on Israel, was dead ; he was targeted by an Israel airstrike earlier in March.

​​Israeli negotiators are traveling to Qatar to participate in a new round of talks aimed at achieving a cease-fire  in Gaza and the release of hostages held by Palestinian militants, according to officials.

A Tough Balancing Act: Israel has been noticeably out of step with Western nations when it comes to relations with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine. That approach reflects unique security needs that have gained new relevance  since the start of the war in Gaza.

A Struggle for Life’s Basics: Most of Gaza’s population fled to the southern territory of Rafah , hoping to escape the war. As they hunt for food and shelter, a potential Israeli invasion has added to their fears.

A Strained Lifeline: The United Arab Emirates has maintained its links to Israel throughout the war in Gaza, but the relationship, built on a U.S.-brokered deal, is under pressure as anger against Israel grows .

Shifting Ties: Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority has long lived apart from the nation’s secular mainstream, but the war in Gaza has both widened that divide and, in some ways, helped to bridge it .

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Time change for 2024 daylight saving happened Sunday. Here are details on our "spring forward."

By Kerry Breen

Updated on: March 11, 2024 / 8:00 AM EDT / CBS News

Daylight saving time for 2024 started this weekend, taking an hour from many sleep schedules as the clocks spring forward. 

In the early morning of Sunday, March 10, the time change took effect. This will give most Americans an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings until the clocks fall back again in the autumn. 

Here's everything to know about the time change. 

What time does the time change? 

The time changed at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 10. Daylight saving time always begins on the second Sunday of March, and ends on the first Sunday of November. 

Daylight saving time will be in effect until Nov. 3, 2024, when clocks "fall back."

Do we lose or gain an hour when we "spring forward"? 

When the clocks "spring forward," jumping from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, people in areas that observe daylight saving time will lose an hour. 

It means that waking up at, say, 8 a.m. Sunday morning will feel more like 7 a.m. 

Why does daylight saving time exist? 

There are several different stories claiming to explain the founding of daylight saving time. Farmers were credited with beginning the practice so they could have more daylight hours — but they didn't actually support daylight saving time when it was adopted. Benjamin Franklin has also been named as a creator of the phenomenon, but that's based on a satirical essay he wrote in 1784. 

As CBS News previously reported , the practice began in 1916. Germany observed daylight saving time that year to conserve fuel, and when the U.S. Embassy in Berlin notified their Washington, D.C. counterparts about the change in time, they noted that Germany believed changing the clocks would save millions of dollars by limiting the use of artificial lights. Other countries in Europe adopted the practice, and in 1918, the U.S. started to use it too. 

The story doesn't end there. In 1919, Congress repealed daylight saving time, even though then-President Woodrow Wilson tried to veto the decision. States were allowed to decide for themselves if they'd continue the practice. In World War II, the country actually observed daylight saving time all year. Congress attempted to do that again in 1974 to save energy, but that effort failed. 

It was in 1966 that the Uniform Time Act created the system that we know today. Originally it had daylight saving time beginning in April and ending in October, but later updates established the clocks spring forward the second Sunday in March and fall back the first Sunday in November.

Are there any states that don't have daylight saving time? 

A few states and territories don't observe daylight saving time. Arizona has not observed daylight saving time since 1968, though the Navajo Nation, which has some land in Arizona, does recognize the time change. Hawaii also doesn't use daylight saving time, having opted out of it in 1967. 

The territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Marina Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands also do not observe daylight saving time. 

Outside of the United States, most of the world doesn't observe daylight saving time. According to the Pew Research Center , only about a third of the world does so. Most of the countries that observe it are in Europe, while a few are in Latin America and the Caribbean. In Africa, Egypt is the only nation to use daylight saving time. 

What are the downsides of daylight saving time? 

The loss of sleep caused by clocks springing forward has some surprising effects that have led some experts to urge the practice be discontinued. 

In 2021, the National Sleep Foundation highlighted the negative effects that daylight saving time has on people's circadian rhythms. Those disruptions have been linked to a higher number of heart attacks and workplace injuries in the days after a time change.

AAA has warned  that less sleep can lead to a heightened risk of car crashes, and recommends that people adjust their sleep schedules to make sure to get seven hours of rest. Disruption of circadian rhythms can also have physical side effects, like an  increased risk of ischemic strokes , research from 2016 showed. 

Will daylight saving time end permanently in 2024? 

There have been pushes to end daylight saving time nationwide, but the practice isn't likely to end in 2024. 

While the Senate passed a bill in 2022 to make daylight saving time permanent and stop the clocks from changing, time ran out to vote on the proposal in the House and it did not become law.

A new version of the bill was introduced in March 2023. That bill remains in committee in both the  House and the Senate ; that's the step between a bill being sponsored and a bill being brought before the chamber to be voted on. 

In 2022, a CBS News/YouGov poll  found  that almost 80% of Americans supported changing the current system. The idea of permanently shifting an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening appealed to 46% of Americans. 

• Daylight Saving Time

Kerry Breen is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University's Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News' TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.

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