Never a fan of women-only clubs or prizes, I have muchenjoyed this week's great Orange Prize debate, not least for the intervention of A.S. Byatt (whose novel Possession is, for my money, one of the finest ever written). She crisply informed us that she had instructed her publishers never to enter her for a women-only prize, on the ground that in literature it wasn't necessary.

The row was ignited by Tim Lott, who damned the unfairness of the prize and went on to bemoan the fate of the 21st-century male, taught to read largely by women who then promote women's writing.

I agree with him about the prize being unfair and, as the mother of a son, I have some sympathy with his view that men today are stereotyped by women. Certainly, when I look at my children and their friends it is the boys I pity: the girls outclass them both academically and socially.

However, I was told a revealing anecdote the other day by a friend with older children - one boy, one girl, both in their twenties. After a dinner to celebrate her daughter's new job, held at a restaurant where it is famously hard to secure a table, the waiter slipped her son a card, with the murmured injunction that he should call the number “if ever you want to bring a girlfriend here”.

The point, said my friend, was that her son - intelligent, charming - accepted this entirely as his due. Equally her daughter - intelligent, charming - accepted that nothing was her due and that by implication all must be fought for.

By chance, the kerfuffle over the Orange Prize (which has already made itself look deeply silly by choosing as a judge the singer Lily Allen, not known for her prodigious reading or writing) coincided with my day off. And in a very small way, I think my day off illustrates the eternal dilemma of women and their struggle to be taken seriously.

In my fantasy, a day off takes the following form: wake up late, read in bed, have leisurely breakfast, take brisk walk, have facial, spend afternoon being Perfect Mother baking cakes or painting, make delicious supper, relax with husband, wine and DVD. The reality was this: the morning was swallowed up by the school run, chores and an emergency dental appointment for one of the children. Came home to find that our elderly cat had vomited on our bed. Remade bed, collected second child from school. Arrived home to find cat writhing on floor. Soothed cat, and child, while simultaneously wrapping tinfoil around latter to achieve spaceman look for performance in drama club play in 15 minutes' time.

What to do - go to vet and save cat's life? Or go to play and save youngest child's dream? Called vet. Not available until 5pm, so off to drama. Returned, took cat to vet. Spent £100 and 90 minutes establishing cat not dead yet. Back home, explained to youngest that cat is 105 in cat years and had tricky discussion about Heaven. Prepared supper. Now 7.30pm. Husband walked in. “I'm exhausted,” he said. “What a day.”

When women are young and unencumbered by domesticity, we are free, in a way we were not in the 1950s and 60s, to pursue our careers. We demand, and often get, equal pay. We demand, and often get, equal promotion. If we are clever we may manage to “have it all” - snag the man, have the children and hang on to the job. It entails stamina, determination and a lot of money - you can't keep the career without paying a fortune for childcare - but it can be done.

Then something happens. The children get older and, perversely, need rather more of your time. Your parents get older and may need caring for. Pets get older, ditto. And you get older. The glass ceiling looms into view and your head hurts from hitting it. Your stamina and determination are starting to wane. Your husband, being a man, will be reaching his career peak and putting all his energies into work. Suddenly you find that instead of being Superwoman, Having It All, you have turned into Superglue, Holding It All Together.

This is why women are the only group who, as Gloria Steinem observed, grow more radical as they grow older. It is the iniquity that gets to them: the seeming injustice of watching men prosper while they stagger on, keeping the home fires burning.

The Orange Prize, though well intentioned, is no solution to any of this. Women-only quotas, however, may be. In January this year it became compulsory for Norwegian companies to ensure that women made up 40 per cent of management boards. Norway now leads the world in women board members - 38 per cent in public companies, compared with Britain's 20 per cent. This has led to a debate between those who think that such legislation is the only way to change male domination of business, and those who argue that it merely results in inadequate women being promoted (to which one response is, what about all the many inadequate men who are promoted?)

Meanwhile, women have two choices: either to seethe with resentment at the glass-half-emptiness of it all, or wholeheartedly to enjoy the half that's full.

A report this week said that those with religious beliefs are likely to be happier than atheists or agnostics. A study had suggested that regular churchgoers appear to cope better with life's adversities.

For myself, I find that the older I get, the less religious faith I have. Instead, my faith is my family - and I suspect it's a faith that many women, irrespective of their spiritual beliefs, share. Bringing up children and holding a family together requires practising most, if not all, of the Christian tenets: putting others before yourself; being compassionate; acting for the greater good; being self-disciplined. I believe that the church community fulfils a similar function.

And so, of course, do the best companies. Those will probably be the ones that accommodate women (and their childcare arrangements) in senior positions.

John Lewisgate is no big deal

While the Fed bails out bankers who have mismanaged their jobs and their bank's funds by greedily latching on to sub-prime debt, and while Sir Alan Greenspan (who some would argue failed to spot, let alone address, the looming sub-prime danger) is fêted as an eminent sage, we petty underlings must content ourselves with sneering at our hapless MPs and their John Lewis list.

There is obviously something wrong with me, but I just don't see what all the fuss is about. If you earned £61,000 and were required as part of your job to have a second home in another part of the country, wouldn't you want help in furnishing it? Wouldn't you think that you couldn't go wrong with John “never knowingly undersold” Lewis? Why is it wrong to claim for a bed in a second home required for your job and not wrong to claim for a hotel room used while you are away on business? I don't see how that is at all in the same league as, say, paying your son out of public funds for work when he is meant to be at university. Or, say, being paid an enormous bonus while all around you are facing negative equity and unemployment...

Golden legal eagle

Talking of money, the Mills-McCartney divorce case is estimated to have earned the firm of Sir Paul McCartney's divorce lawyer, Fiona Shackleton, £3 million. She is clearly a brilliant legal brain and dignified, too - she remained composed despite her dousing by Heather in the now infamous courtroom water-throwing incident. She's not rock-chick material - someone really needs to rethink her jewellery and those Eighties jackets and skirts - but next time Sir Paul is thinking of getting hitched, he could do worse than run his intended past Fiona first. Money can't buy you love, but it can buy you a great lawyer.

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