I dont think I want sex equality..........................

[VeniVidiVickiQV]

Because, i dont think, all things considered, it is in fact equal, is it?

Am quite happy to do my womanly things, but have the appropriate amount of respect and recompense for it.

it's not just Gordon Brown, all governments have wanted women to work forever

I think that quite often the harshest critics of women are other women.

How many times do you hear "Well, I managed", said somewhat sniffily?

I'll expand if this doesn't make sense

But why is it specifically women who are exhausted? A man who is working f/t & coming home to look after children is going to find it just as exhausting.

Good points re everything becoming a marketable commodity Tref.

Flick through a posh read like 'Junior' to see the ludicrous ads for bespoke waqlnut treehouses and daft soft focus photo sessions for half naked pregnant women.

Dh definitely gets more pressure from work.

Last year ds was ill - turned out to be a campylobacter infection. I leave for work earlier: dh rang me in a panic & I made my excuses & rushed back home.

It was quite obvious over the next few days that for ME to be off looking after a sick child was more acceptable than it would've been for dh to take the time. In a genuinely equal world 'My son's ill, I need to stay at home because he can't go to the childminder' would be as acceptable from dh as from me.

No-one said to me 'Can't your dh do that?'. On the one day of ds's illness that I did go to work & leave dh holding the fort, dh's boss had absolutely no scruple in saying 'But why isn't your dw at home with him?'

Incidentally, I work longer hours & earn more - so on a purely economic measure I'm the 'main breadwinner'.

I think where I'm going with this ramble is that I'd like dh to have sex equality!

Indeed - that is also my point olivia - that woman supposedly want equality, but it's not being balanced on both sides with the men.

But I think how parents are treated in the workplace says more about how little parenting is regarded in general rather than about sex equality. When I was little I watched my mum tell a client on the phone that she couldn't make a meeting because she'd promised to take me out. I think the reason she was able to do things like that(apart from the fact she was very good at her job) was that in those days (1970's) a woman that high up was so unusual her bosses still treated her in the way they would any other woman - and so, because she was a mum, she was given some slack when she felt I needed her. These days both mums and dads are expected to hand their kids over to other people to raise which is just bizaare. I agree that successive governments have tried to get both parents working for economic reasons. What I think is unique about the current government's ideas is that they believe children are better off spending as much time as possible in institutions (nursery, pre-school and school) rather than at home, with maximum government input into what happens in those institutions. There is an interesting booklet on this called The Nationalisation of Childhood on this which is available from Amazon.

In terms of sex equality, the bottom line is that men are still dictating what women should look like and how they behave. When Jordan is being held up as a feminist icon you know we are in the s**t.