A generation ago women burnt their bras in the fight for equality, but with more mothers opting to stay at home rather than return to work and a growing backlash over maternity rights, Dani Garavelli asks...
LUCY Forbes loved her job as a captain in the army. The three years she spent in Germany as part of the Royal Corps of Transport were among the best in her life. But the farmer's daughter always knew that as soon as she had her first child, she would
give up work to concentrate on her family. After she got married, she moved home to take up a post as office manager with the Ministry of Defence in Glasgow before joining the Territorial Army.
Then, when her daughter Rachel was born, she gave up even her TA work to be a full-time mum. "Both my husband and I came from very traditional families where the mothers had stayed at home, and that's what I wanted for my kids too," says Forbes, who now has Angus, seven, and Hannah, three, as well as Rachel, who is now 10.
"I've never regretted my decision. Sometimes, people will say to me: 'But what will you do when Hannah starts school?' But this is it for me. I have arrived. I'm not wondering how quickly I can get rid of them and back to work.
"I want to spend time with them. I find it rewarding and I think they benefit too. They get home-cooked meals, to play with their friends after school and the three of them also get to spend time with each other, which wouldn't really happen if they were in after-school care."
The 41-year-old says she understands why other mothers choose to work. "I understand that if you have a job such as a teacher, with child-friendly hours, or if you had to train for years to be something like a GP or a lawyer, then it must be hard to give that up.
"But I don't think I would have liked it, especially when they were little. I mean, if you pick up your children from nursery at 6pm, and have to feed them and put them to bed by 7pm, then it almost seems more like processing them than looking after them."
Forbes is one of a growing number of women rejecting the once-iconic idea of the supermum – with high-flying job, tidy house, tray of home-baking and array of impeccably dressed children. To a generation this was someone to be revered and emulated. Epitomised by the likes of City financier Nicola Horlick, she seemed to sum up what three decades of feminism had achieved. But now it seems the goddess of multi-tasking has been knocked off her pedestal.
Last week, a survey from Cambridge University revealed an increasing number of men and women regard working mothers not as the linchpin of society, but as a threat to domestic well-being. "When it comes to the clash between work and family life, doubts about whether a woman should be doing both are starting to creep in," said Jacqueline Scott, professor of empirical sociology, who led the study.
And that's not all. In recent months, there have been other signs that the campaign for sexual equality might be suffering some setbacks.
Even as feminists seemed to be gaining ground (with the Government introducing 12-month maternity pay and moving towards flexible working hours for those with children under 16), some of their most basic tenets were being challenged in a way that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Worse still, among those questioning the virtues of women's hard-won victories was a sprinkling of veteran campaigners who had helped achieve them.
It was one thing when Sir Alan Sugar – of Amstrad and The Apprentice fame – said women's careers were suffering because employers were not allowed to ask them if they planned to have babies (and so assumed they would). Or when Dragons' Den entrepreneur Theo Paphitis expressed his antipathy towards working mothers with the words: "They (women] get themselves bloody pregnant and they always argue they'll be working until the day before they have the baby, go down to the river, wash it off, give it to the nanny and be back at work the following day, but sure enough their brains turn to mush and then after the birth their maternal instincts kick in, they take three months off, get it out of their system and are back to normal."
But when Nicola Brewer, the chief executive of the new Equalities and Human Rights Commission, claimed extended maternity rights could make employers think twice before hiring or promoting women; and arch-feminist Rosie Boycott, co-founder of Spare Rib magazine, complained they were likely to hurt small businesses (in particular, her own farm in Ilminster, Somerset), it seems something is going seriously awry.
Add the new Cambridge University report, which suggests support for gender equality peaked in the 1990s, to the brew, and you have to ask yourself: are we seeing the slow death of feminism as we know it? Is this apparent volte face a betrayal of everything women have been pushing for or simply a realisation that they cannot, in fact, "have it all"?
There is, of course, more to feminism than the issue of working mothers, but because it is such a pertinent issue in the lives of so many women it has taken on a totemic status. According to the survey, based on data from the international social survey programme and other polls of public opinion in Britain, the US and Germany, people are beginning to lose faith in the idea of mums having jobs outside the home. In 1994, 51% of women in Britain and 52% of men said they believed family life would not suffer if a woman went to work. By 2002, the proportions had fallen to 46% of women and 42% of men.
The results were even more marked in the US, where the percentage of people who believed family life did not suffer if a woman was working fell from 51% in 1994 to 38% in 2002.
"It is conceivable that opinions are shifting as the shine of the supermum syndrome wears off and the idea of women juggling high-powered careers while also baking cookies and reading bedtime stories is increasingly seen to be unrealistic by ordinary mortals," said Scott.
Doubtless this is true, but – given the number of voices now railing openly about the negative legacy of feminism – it is difficult to believe there is nothing more sinister at play. Where once it would have been anathema to criticise the strides women have made towards sexual equality, such opinions now barely raise an eyebrow. Among the more strident dissenters is clinical psychologist Oliver James, who rails against feminism, while propounding his theories on "affluenza" – the condition of aspirational consumerism James places at the heart of our cultural debasement.
"It's hard to deny feminist thinking played a very significant role," he once said. "Whether at school, at work or in bed, there has been an almost moral imperative on young women to seek something better and by implication to be dissatisfied with what they've got."
In a recent seminar to the Glasgow Centre for Health and Population, he also claimed the emancipation of women had been hijacked by "men in skirts" feminism, which, instead of valuing roles often played by women – for example, caring for children – tells them the best way to express their identity is through their work.
It was across the Atlantic that an apparent disaffection with feminist values first made itself felt. Events such as the decision in May this year by Washington University to give Phyllis Schlafly – long-time opponent of the women's movement – an honorary doctorate and the Supreme Court's overturning of the existing law to deny a woman the right to sue for pay discrimination were the straws in the wind.
But in the UK, too, working mothers have been under pressure for some time. In the past few years, they have had to contend with a barrage of reports suggesting nurseries are an inadequate form of childcare for the under-threes even as new Labour has been encouraging them to use them.
In his book Raising Babies, Australian Steve Biddulph claimed the average child in a nursery received only eight minutes of direct face-time contact a day. Reporting in the British Medical Journal, Professor Jay Belsky said 41% of children in daycare for more than 20 hours a week were insecure, but this was true of only 26% of toddlers cared for full-time by their mothers. And last year an evaluation of a £370m Government neighbourhood nurseries scheme found that toddlers spending more than 35 hours a week in daycare were prone to be more aggressive than their non-nursery peers.
On their own, of course, these make no political point about working mothers, implying only that a family member or nanny might be a better childcare option. But they have been seized upon by right-wing commentators as yet more evidence that working mothers are the source of all that ails society.
None of this is enough to dissuade Sandra Smith of the virtues of being a working mother. Much as she loves her two-year-old daughter Amy, she cannot imagine giving up her job as a medical researcher to care for her full-time.
Because of the nature of her work – she was in the middle of a project when her maternity leave started – she had to go back when her baby was just four and a half months. "It's not something you hear very often these days, but I really like my job," says Smith, who is also doing a PhD. "It has taken me a long time to get established, I feel I am doing something of value and I am fulfilled. And I suppose as Amy gets older it will be important to be a role model to her – to show her women can work and have children – that it is possible.
"Of course I feel guilty when I can't be with her – especially if she's under the weather, but I think I'm a better mother because I work."
Although Smith has never encountered any outward hostility to her own life choices, she fears the report will have an impact on others. "Whenever there is this groundswell of opinion that family life is being damaged, couples may worry they are not spending more time with the children and may decide to make changes – but mostly those changes will involve the woman rather than the man doing less work."
Barbara Matheson, chair of the Women in Management Network Scotland, fears the recession will make matters worse rather than better. "A lot of workplace culture in the private sector is male-orientated and revolves around long working hours. In an economic downturn that can become even more entrenched and if you are a woman with childcare issues then perhaps you stand out and feel under even more pressure than usual."
The Fawcett Society – which campaigns for gender equality – hopes the Cambridge University report will act as a wake-up call to employers. It sees the study not as proof that mothers should not work full-time, but that the workplace, and society at large, is still failing women.
"Women still shoulder the bulk of caring and housework at home," says campaigns officer Kat Banyard. "The long working hours culture and lack of flexible working hours means women are presented with impossible choices. The result? Motherhood carries a penalty and women and men are strait-jacketed by gender stereotypes."
She believes the answer is not so much extended maternity rights – which by being gender-specific can have the unintended result of making women even greater targets of discrimination – but a wholesale transformation of the workplace. If flexible working hours came as standard, she reasons, then being a working mother would no longer carry a penalty.
She's not the only one who remains optimistic. Author and teacher Courtney E Martin recently set out her vision of a radical new feminism for the 21st century. It should "support both men and women to be their most authentic selves in the world, shedding prescribed gender roles and really getting in touch with their authentic desires, passions and ethics," she said in a piece in The New Statesman.
"Feminist workplaces would nurture both men and women, fostering their relationship with their children and fulfilling work lives. The most exciting thing about feminism is that it is ultimately about leading more fulfilling, ethical, joyful lives, characterised by more healthy and genuine relationships," she concluded. Surely there isn't anything too threatening about that?
