E Pearson, your view seems to suggest that not hiring said potential maternity leave candidate and instead hiring a man (/ non reproduction capable woman) would be even more cost effective... possibly not the outcome you wanted?

Feminism told women they can have it all, work, children and life balance, which is true, but the % still has to add up to 100 not 300. Working mothers may be missing out or being forced to do things but working fathers have been doing it for years. Lets not kid ourselves, children are important but to ask an employer to give you benefits for nothing is stupid, employers are there to make a profit using your labour not to employ you for no reason.

What have working mothers done to deserve these bonuses? I think Chris Rock made the comment that you don't get a cookie for doing the right thing... caring for your kids and getting a job are what you should do, a welfare state collapses if the herd refuses to work for the few that don't.

Chris, edinburgh,

Jason White, I'm with you on this, articles about the crapness of being a working mummy are always written by columnists or women who have such huge household incomes they can afford to buy the sort of support real working mummies can only dream of. I'd love a job where I had all week to turn out a self absorbed 1000 words that appear to be written by a bright 15 year old, or a husband who earned obscene amounts doing something in the city or the media and could afford to pay for the nanny/au pair/daily cleaning lady/ironing service/organinc veg delivery etc.
Sadly, real working mummies like me are too busy doing 9-5 jobs and everything else to write articles about how rubbish it is to be a working mummy!
I could go on but I've got work to do before I go and collect my kids, cook dinner, help with homework,do housework, put the kids to bed and spend more than 15 mins with my husband (whose boss seems to think has no family) when he comes home before falling into an unconcious sleep.

Samantha, Sheffield, UK

Having read the comments, I find many people have lost the main point that I will Bitch about
"fundamentally unworkable traditional employment structures for mothers, and fathers, and, most importantly, children"

What about inclusion for all, having children is not just a joy.
It is an economic necessity !!

Christine, North West,

Before i would listen to any perceived persecution of the white male, i would like to see some facts. Do any of the more irate writers here actually have any statistics (not isolated incidents) to corroborate their view that women have taken over the world. I mean gender at education levels and the distribution through all sectors of employment now versus 20 years ago.

I believe Caitlin has a point but some serious number crunching would have to be made; it must cost more to hire and retrain new staff than it would to keep a job open and change working practises. I believe the Westpac model under Ann Sherry proved just that. She had to prove it was more cost effective to pay maternity leave and thus keep staff than to just lose them and hire someone new. Maternity pay was then introduced. That was a small step, not a political one but a business one. Businesses must be ready for the next one.

E Pearson, Sydney, Australia

Alice: Feminism has earned it's horrible reputation - in spades - and no, I don't have to read feminist writers and see if I agree. Man-haters all....sorry, but actions speak MUCH louder than words here.

T Roth: I'd like the right to not be discriminated against...I'm a white male...can I have that right too? Cause here in Canada I actually belong to the only group where it's ok to discriminate against me....BY LAW!

And the Author...Caitlin:

You have GOT to be kidding.....START bitching? Start? Give me a break. I turned a deaf ear years ago, more and more men are. You really think you'll get thier attention by turning up the volume? That's schoolbus mentality.

How about taking a good hard look at what the men in your life do, then tell us you "do it all".

Dan Moore, regina, Canada

It seems to me that, instead of complaining that women are not conforming to the feminist theory, we would be better employed at questioning the theory itself. Could it just be the case that the theory is wrong? Could it be that women (and men) simply do not fit the nice, 'rational', 'scientific', 'progressive' descriptions of themselves?

James, Norfolk,

they just don't want to use the word "feminism," because they, like Joseph, have somehow been mislead to believe that mainstream feminism is about burning your bra, writing protest poetry about death to the paternalistic overlords whilst impaling men on spikes like a cross-gender Vlad Tepes in your spare time.


feminism is what feminism does,if feminism has a bad reputation that is because feminism has earned a bad reputation.
what is bad for a society will eventually be rejected by that society,

john, new south wales, australia

Start bitching? Ye Gods, women haven't stopped bitching! Since the dawn of time.

Tg, Deerfield,, Iowa

"Chicks of all ages spent the first half of the 20th century piling into marches against sexism, pornography, political disenfranchisement and pro-life legislation".
I disagree about what we were for or against. I marched for Pro-life legislation because I valued human life and did not want femanism to just start persecuting those who had no voice of their own. I valued motherhood, not the quick fix abortion. The easly femanists recognised that what was needed was for womens contribution, especially raising children, to be valued. Abortion devalues mothers, families, children and the unborn. I see the current rates of teenage pregnancy, violence, treatment of the elderly and disabled as being directly the result of the 'me first' femanists. I go onto the streets and outside abortion clinics and I find severely damaged young people, both girls and boys. This is the bad fruit that badly considered femanists produced.

Sue Eaton, London, UK

Great. It wasn't enough that women rob men of THEIR children and assets whenever they don't feel they are getting enough attention (I'm talking about no-fault divorce), but now we have to hear about women yet again being oppressed? If it's truly equality you are after then by all means start lobbying the family courts about moving the scale more in MEN's favor. And let's not forget about working those jobs where you actually have to use your muscle (not just the ones where you can file your nails all day while talking on a headset). Oh not THAT equality - just the equality that suits you. I'd like nothing more than to be able to stay at home and care for MY children whilst my female partner does the 8-5 year after year.

Javier, Dallas, TX (USA)

Apart from the obvious, why is it that all articles written about the misery/impossibility of women mixing careers and family are written by journalists. I'm sorry what you do might seem like work to you, but to the rest of us banging of some crap opinion piece once a week seems to be the ideal job for mixing work and family. Stop whinging or better still get someone who really has it tough to write the column.

Jason White, Paris, France

"We need to do what we are best at, and what we have denied for so long: we need to bitch. We need to bitch loud, and long"

I take it this was an attempt at irony. When did women like you stop bitching? Actually, I call it special pleading and you have done far too much of it. Women have been promoted over men for no better reason than the fact they are women in every walk of life and they have not made the world a better place. When women get their snouts in the trough, they are no less liable to grunt, gobble and trample thatn the men they are forever criticising.

Marion, Cheltenham,

Joseph: Valery Solanas and the SCUM Manifesto were hardly mainstream feminist movements. That would be like introducing yourself to Christianity by studying the writings of David Koresh or Jim Jones, or reading "A Friendly Introduction to Islam" written by Osama Bin Laden. Every movement has its fringe wing-nuts.

In my experience, young women WANT feminism (equal pay, the right to not be discriminated against), they just don't want to use the word "feminism," because they, like Joseph, have somehow been mislead to believe that mainstream feminism is about burning your bra, writing protest poetry about death to the paternalistic overlords whilst impaling men on spikes like a cross-gender Vlad Tepes in your spare time.

T. Roth, Danbury, Connecticut, USA

You know what Caitlin,

In a world where numbers speak louder than anything else, mums and potential mums are well spoken for by plummeting birth rates, hell, birth rates that're at all time lows - at least in many parts of Asia - and that refuse to so much as budge even point one of a decimal. (the total fertility rate or TFR for instance hovers round 1.25 in Singapore for instance, the ideal being 2.1)

And to think another study found that less educated women AREN't having kids too, not just the higher educated ones. Like it's saying even the 'baby making machines' (to quote the Jap MP) aren't up to scratch.

The women are speaking, just maybe not audibly.

Jen, Singapore,

Are you sure the Antichrist thing was said by Cardinal Biffi and not Biff, Jesus's childhood friend?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lamb-Gospel-According-Christs-Childhood/dp/0380813815/ref=sr_1_1/203-3995899-2945538?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173102946&sr=1-1

Sarah, Manchester,

Joseph - why don't you try reading some decent feminist writers like Simone de Beauviour before you write all feminists off as man-haters

Alice Wilson, London,

The last thing we need is women bitching more. There has been too much bitching - mostly about each other. The working women bitch about stay-at-home-mothers, the stay-at-home mothers bitch about working women, and the ones working part-time bitching about everyone else.

I feel cheated by the feminist movement from the 1970s, which seemed to me to be preaching that "just" being a mother and housewife wasn't good enough, you had to be something more. Women went from feeling that they had no choice but to stay at home once they married and had children, to feeling that they had no choice but to work and do something other than looking after house and children.

The original suffragette movement is more to my taste. They wanted the work that women did, whatever it was, to be recognised and given equal status with men's work.

Women should have choices, and a choice to stay at home and devote time and energy to children should be recognised as a worthwhile contribution to the country.

Fee Berry, Uxbridge, England

I think women are eternal optimists and always hope that, even if they are bowed down with running a family and a full-time job with no help, their sisters will get it right. It's futile, of course, especially in the UK with a family-milking government, high house prices and a society that despises children.

We don't have it so bad in the French provinces, but being married to a Frenchman is something else!

Sarah Hague, Montpellier, France

Unfortunately, there is no way to describe how one's life will change as a result of becoming a parent. The life changes are too comprehensive to be described and no one would believe you anyway. Anyway, the reason that I'm writing is, unfortunately, to disagree about feminism wanting to send men to another planet. Two things come to mind. The first is the saying that "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle". Not exactly mars, but not in the same room either. The second is Valery Solanas. There we (or you, rather) were killing us off. I have to say that I have tried to read the SCUM Manifesto several times but I've never been able to get through it.

Joseph, East Fallowfield, PA, USA

Caitlin reminds me of when my wife was pregnant with our first or second child and got big, the women serving in the butcher's shop reproachfully
exclaimed when I came in: "If men would have the children there would never be any." That was 45 years ago in Holstein. Now I am beginning to wonder what the wife had told them when she went shopping.

skeptiker, Stillwater, U.S.A.