Mairi Spowage: 'You can still feel that slight judgement of women'

When Professor Mairi Spowage attended an economics conference with a male colleague, it was assumed she was his junior. In fact, she was his boss.

This kind of mistake doesn’t happen often, but it does still happen. And as the new chief of respected economic thinktank, the Fraser of Allander Institute (FAI), Spowage hopes to take down some of those preconceptions.

Spowage is the first female director of the FAI in its almost 50-year history. That’s indicative of the economics sphere more broadly, which remains male dominated. “I feel like it is changing, maybe, a bit, but obviously it takes a long time for that to filter through to more senior positions,” she says.

Like many women, it was only when Spowage had children that she really felt confronted by the glass ceiling. “It wasn’t like there was anybody who said anything bad, but it was more of the kind of expectations on the fact that, well, maybe I’d go part time. And this slight tinge of judgement that you didn’t, you know? Anybody that wants to do that when they have kids, great, good on them, but it wasn’t the right thing for our family, so we didn’t do it,” she says. “In the roles I had, I wanted to devote to them full time and my husband was part time and that’s what worked for us, but yeah, you can still feel that slight judgement, I think, of women.”

Spowage is keen to play her role in fixing the “leaky pipeline” when it comes to female economists – and indeed other under-represented groups in the profession. She believes it is important to have greater diversity because it encourages different ways of thinking about the same problems. “If you have people who have lived experience of different kinds throughout their life, it’s really important and it can bring a lot of diversity of thought, both to how you approach a problem and maybe the policy solutions that you suggest would be useful,” she explains.

The Fiscal Commission showed right from the start that it wasn’t afraid to say things that the government didn’t like

This is why she is so passionate about the Economic Futures project, a programme which aims to link students with external partners to show how economics can apply in real life. She has led the project almost since its inception.

“A lot of students, when they’re at school, don’t necessarily think about economics as a subject, because I don’t think they’re really sure what it is and what it can be used for, and particularly in comprehensives, it’s not taught as a separate subject – not exclusively, but pretty much everywhere it’s taught as a separate subject in Scotland is a private school – so that is a bit of an issue, particularly for the diversity of the economics profession.

“And then when they do get to university, some of the teaching in the early years is very focused on theory or some of the maths of economics, and it isn’t terribly applied. I think students have difficulty seeing, well, what could I use this for? How could I use this in a way that might chime with some of my passions about wanting to change the world or make things better?”

She continues: “What we’re trying to do is address lots of these different issues and look at, through the Economic Futures programme, engaging with schools to tell them what you can use economics for in the real world and how it can help answer policy problems, whether that’s through doing things like I did through maths and statistics, or in economics. We do a lot of work on things like child poverty, on health policy, on education policy, on crime policy, to look at how we can analyse different data to help tell us what works in those policy spheres. It’s not always about economic policy that economics can bring insight to.”

Indeed, it’s reflective of her own journey into economics. Spowage attended Alva Academy, a state school in Clackmannanshire, where economics wasn’t an option. She did, however, develop a love of maths which she went on to study at St Andrews University. There, she got interested in statistics – and how to use it to solve real problems, chiefly on biodiversity. After her master’s, she got onto the civil service fast-track programme, began working for the Scottish Government, and it was there that she got her first taste of more traditional economics. She describes it as “kind of a strange route”.

“It was only when I really took that job that I discovered how much I really loved the area of trying to measure the economy and help us understand it properly to be able to see which interventions were the right ones to make in the economy, and what economic policies work and which ones don’t work,” she says.

Then in January 2014, returning from her third maternity leave, she started a new job as head of national accounts at the Scottish Government. That was just months before the independence referendum. “It was right into the deep end,” Spowage says, wryly adding: “It was fun.”

“The scrutiny on [economic statistics] was ramped up and the interest in those was ramped up, which means as the senior statistician who’s responsible for that, there was a lot more things like briefings and talking to ministers about the results so that they understand what they are, and obviously what consequence they have for whatever is going on in the political sphere.

“As a statistician in government, you have a lot of protection under the stats code and all these things, ministers can’t interfere with anything you’re doing. They don’t even know what you’re releasing until the day before, and so it is an interesting role in government, particularly in that quite high pressured, very political space… There was just such huge interest in everything you’re releasing because the stakes were so, so high.”

Even after the No vote, that interest didn’t wane. “There was the referendum, then there was Smith, then there was the negotiation around the fiscal framework, then there was the Scotland Act, and then there was the Fiscal Commission. I guess the fallout from the referendum and the Smith Commission and the new powers and all that just kept the interest on, what can we say about Scotland’s economy, how important will Scotland’s economy be?”

The shifting constitutional debate led to her next job: the deputy director of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, just as it was created.

Spowage says: “It was such a great experience. Working with somebody like Susan Rice was amazing – what a lady. She’s just amazing – what a dame, I should say!

“It was a great opportunity to go and do something that not many people get to do, which is to set up a public body. Obviously, my expertise was on the analytical side and I was brought in to say, who do we need in the Fiscal Commission? What sort of skills do we need? Where can we source these people from? So, thinking about recruitment and setting out the skills we would need to be able to be a credible, independent, transparent voice in this debate.”

Asked if she thinks the SFC was successful in being that voice, Spowage says it has been. “I think the Fiscal Commission showed right from the start that it wasn’t afraid to say things that the government didn’t like, which shows the importance of having an independent organisation to do that.”

What her time at the Scottish Government and the SFC did demonstrate, though, was a real lack of understanding around data, and it’s a problem she and the FAI are keen to tackle. “We try and help the general public, if they’re interested, but certainly journalists, policymakers, parliamentarians. We try and help everybody.

“We try and shed light, especially on some of these debates where you get, for example, the UK Government saying one thing and Scottish Government saying another thing. Then we’ll try and write something which says, well, usually it’s both. They’re both true, what the two governments are saying, but it’s because they’re looking at a slightly different definition or they’re including Covid spend or not including Covid spend. So, both things are true or factually accurate, but it depends what baseline you use.

“I don’t think any of that, whilst understandable politically, is helpful for public understanding of things like budgets or the fiscal framework and understanding of devolution and what that means for Scotland.”

I’ve never been, in a series of weeks and months, throughout my career, in a situation where things change so quickly

She believes this has big implications for wider political debate. “These sorts of arguments don’t necessarily help the public to engage with these issues and there’s a definite call to both governments, constantly, about transparency around budget processes and financial information so that people can understand better what’s going on.”

“The thing that we’re about at the Fraser is using analysis to bring insights to help with real policy problems,” she adds.

Never has that felt more important than in the last two years. Spowage says it became clear at the start of the pandemic that waiting months for new data was not good enough – decisions needed to be made quicker.

“I’ve never been, in a series of weeks and months, throughout my career, in a situation where things change so quickly… You’re conscious that up to the week you release them, something else could happen which you might need to reflect in your forecast which could completely change the game – if there was another lockdown or something like that. Our forecasts just before Christmas were produced before Omicron variant raised its head, all we could do is say, well, these were produced before this, and so it just depends on how the government responds in the new year in terms of how accurate these might be.”

The pandemic has put a lot of pressure on Spowage, particularly since she stepped up within the FAI. She feels the weight of the thinktank’s reputation on her shoulders. “Our reputation, which has been built up over many years – well before I was even born, never mind the director – is so precious, the reputation of the Fraser is so precious. You do feel that burden, of course, to make sure that that reputation is maintained and built upon.”

That can make finding a work/life balance difficult. “Sometimes it can be challenging with a role like this, if you’re on Good Morning Scotland at 6:30 and then somebody wants you for the [BBC’s] Nine. It’s important for the institute that we say yes to these things,” she says.

But Spowage is ready to handle these challenges. “I’ve got lots of ambitions. I’d like us to grow a wee bit further, but I think growing slowly and sustainably is important in terms of the people that we have, and we need to get the right people in the right positions. I think getting more broadly known across the UK would be good, as well as being an expert on the Scottish economy, to be an expert of regional devolved statistics, these sorts of things… We want to be relevant, and we want to be doing things that are useful to policymakers and the parliament in Scotland.”