Live webchat with Cristina Odone (Friday 23 Oct), 1-2pm

[HelenMumsnet]

We're delighted to announce that Cristina Odone is joining us for a webchat tomorrow lunchtime (Friday 23 Oct, 1-2pm).

Cristina has just written a paper for the Centre for Policy Studies (Tory thinktank) called What Women Want.. And How They Can Get It. In it, she argues that the Government needs to stop encouraging women/mothers back to full-time work because most of us don't want to commit to a full-time job.

In her conclusion, she says: "... we need to break the stranglehold that a small coterie of women who work fulltime and buy into the macho way of life, enjoy on our public life. They have, for years, misrepresented real women who reject the masculine value system for one that rates caring above a career, and inter-dependence above independence."

Some of you have already been discussing her views on this thread and you can download the full paper here.

Cristina is a writer, broadcaster and journalist - she was editor of the Catholic Herald and deputy editor of the New Statesman - and a mother.

If you can't join us tomorrow for the chat, please post your advance questions here.

Really? The only way to ensure some muslim girls are educated is to ensure there are faith schools?

Cristina given that you are being so cool and open can I be cheeky and ask about your working hours?

Rather it said that a third would not work at all if (as others have already commented) finances weren't an issue - which in the world we live in (where you buy goods and services with legal tender not good intentions) is an expression of intent that holds no weight at all.

You seem quite keen on informal childcare arrangements perhaps focused on one or two carers. This is a recipe for unreliability and failure imo. I arranged with a friend once to look after my children for a few afternoons whilst I was at work. Two weeks in she went and got a paid job (how very dare she!) and I had to rearrange and start again. Many women don't have the networks to call on which allow this sort of arrangement anyway - and why shouldn't government support them? Childcare subsidies are surely dwarfed by the input of working women to the economy? Expecially when you consider that working whilst your children are young goes to support your earnings through your life. If we all stayed at home for 5 or 10 or 20 years we would have to accept that lack of economic effort would leave a huge hole both in our own finaces and in those of the nation.

penthesileia and morningpaper the reason we talk about " if money were no object" in the questionnaire is so we find out what women WANT as opposed to what they have to do. The government any government should help them achieve this, right? for instance by not offering incentives to women who have small children to go out to work FT.... and actually, I WAS surprised that as many women and men said they did NOT want to work. I was suprised because we've all been told from when we were kneehigh to a grasshopper that (paid) work was IT

"for many traditional muslim parents the only way they will allow their daughters to go to school is if they are enrolled in a muslim school."

If such discrimination on the grounds of sex widely exists, shouldn't it be approached head on?

(But you don't have to give up that part of you at all - you may be Catholic but I doubt that your Catholic part of you is THAT hinged on a total faith in the magisterium... surely it is more about the experience of the eucharist, the fully sacramental life, the importance of justice and mercy? The anglo-catholic liturgy is virtually indistinguishable from the roman rite... basically, change 'perpetual light' to 'light perpetual' and you're almost there ... A non-sacramental life is like a married without sex... I mean you can do it, but you are missing out on so much of the participatory and forgiving side of human spiritual existence...And how marvellous it would be to kneel at the altar and receive the eucharist with your husband... really if that isn't what mercy is about, what is?)

ANYWAY enough GOD stuff

Tallying school hours with working hours was the intention behind the Extended Schools scheme, surely? But your paper was very disparaging about that.

I do feel that the paper lacks ACTUAL PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS particularly in our current economic climate when family-friendly tax breaks are likely to go up the swanny pretty soon anyway...

TheMysticMasseuse: i've got three children (two step) 16 14 and 6 . when the 6 yr old DD is at school I dive into my work (at home, writing comic novels and serious pamphlets) and then emerge at 3. Then I resume work once they're in bed (usually with DH doing the same because he's a workaholic journo)

Inmyheadiminparis I think faith schools ensures that traditional muslim parents are more likely to keep their daughters in school, yes (wrote a pamphlet about it called In Bad Faith for the CPS last year)

So you work full time, basically, although with flexibility. well same as i do (but on a p-t salary as the evening hours don't count). there is no such thing as part-time work, really...

LeninGhoul an incentive from the govmt means the govmt is sending a message across - and the message is we value you more as a paid worker than as a mum

I understand - to a certain extent - that you wanted to find out what people wanted. Ok. Fine. But if you asked me that question, I would instantly - in my head - imagine myself as having won the lottery or some other fantasy situation.

The fact is it is financially impossible to support everybody in what they want. That's obvious. Even if the government made it easier for companies to employ women part-time (which is sensible, of course), it would still not give people what they want. Life's not like that.

Besides, I still don't know that the questions asked genuinely ironed out - or addressed - the hidden sexist bias which may have informed your respondents' "wants". Fine if we're happy building society based on latent sexism (of both men and women); not so fine if we're not...

"The reason we talk about "if money were no object" in the questionnaire is so we find out what women WANT as opposed to what they have to do"

Do you not see, though, that people's relationship with work is more complicated than that? Plenty of people enjoy their work while acknowledging if they won the lottery tomorrow they might jack it in and spend more time doing other things?

I'm also a bit about your case study apparently saying it's fine for a man to have an affair if his wife has a demanding career - as NL says, does that work both ways?

northernlurker I 'm sorry you thought it wasn't practical enough. I did call for less regulation and red tape for part time work, and for less Statist rules about who minds the children (ok you had a bad experience with your friend (SOME friend) but do you know how many women would love to be able to do what the policewomen in Aylsebury did, exchanging babysitting services but are scared of getting Ofsted bnging on their doors...!!!!)

Quick time check - Cristina has to go at 2pm (slight matter of a kitchen floor to sort out). Thanks again for coming on, hope you've enjoyed the discussion.

Thank you for coming on, Cristina.

longtalljosie: hold on, my case study doesn't say he was right to have an affair. (AND i CERTAINLY wouldn't condone any man's affair --if DH had one he'd be found at the bottom of the Thames with his ghoulies cut off) It says he DID have an affair, and the woman immediately blamed herself for being too powerful successful etc etc. She had been driven all her life to fulfil the Superwoman mould and suddenly discovered that there was a price to pay: in her case, her marriage.

"an incentive from the govmt means the govmt is sending a message across - and the message is we value you more as a paid worker than as a mum"

You are using MONEY here as the tool of incentivism (i.e. the rewards that the Government offers), which demonstrates the truth that, actually, that is what the Government is ALL ABOUT, the distribution of money: so of course, logically, the Government values paid workers more, because it deals with MONEY. That is the only logical way of our society operating, unless we have free and readily avaialable food/shelter/healthcare without having to participate in any sort of paid work - which is never going to happen.

It isn't the Government's job to help people achieve what they want when what they want doesn't help contribute money which runs our society. The Government is not the means by which we bring about global happiness, it is the means by which we divide money. Otherwise why should we stop at what mothers want? What about what child-free lazy arses want?

Well before the policewomen affair I doubt many people even thought about Ofsted interfering - and I believe the latest reading of the law from government actually says that Ofsted would NOT intervene in that case or similar. I very much doubt our nation is overflowing with women desperate to work and look after each other's kids.

By Cristina and thanks for chatting to us. I have a suspicion you do that on a regular basis under some clever nickname- will look out for a fellow Naipaul lover (and perhaps on that occasion we can discuss whether it's possible to love an author while despising his politics!