The advance of women choosing their own careers has brought huge gains for society — especially for women. But along with gains come losses. If you have a society in which you have completely equal treatment in the labour market, there will be lots of unexpected and unintentional consequences and we need to wake up to that.

Three consequences that have resulted from professional women entering the workforce are: the death of sisterhood; the decline of “female altruism”; and the impact of employment change on childbearing — or the disincentive that women now face to have children.

Sisterhood, where all women had a substantial number of interests and concerns in common, is over. In the late Sixties, when I was growing up, I was told that if you asked men and women what ten words they would use to describe themselves, women always put “women” at or near the top of their lists. Men never mentioned their gender. This is no longer true. Women no longer identify being a woman as the most important thing to them. Education has become the definitive quality within society now, whether you are male or female.

Amid debates over whether mothers should stay at home or return to work, what is often overlooked is the impact that female middle-class professionals have on other parts of society beyond the family. There has been an enormous effect on the public services and voluntary work: this is what I mean by the decline of “female altruism”. When you take a group of people out of a community — for instance, my mother’s generation were strong willed, terribly capable women who worked and volunteered in the community — we do not realise just how valuable that group is until we’ve lost it. We use “do-gooding” as a derogatory term. As a society we are too selfish. All incentives are to work, to have intellectual company, to gain kudos and earn money. Why would you stay at home if everyone else is going out? There is no reason to suppose that a whole generation of men will step in to counter this decline.

The decline of “do-gooding” reflects that we live in a deeply selfish society. Governments are too ready to see themselves as agencies to solve things and as a result we have seen the growing importance of government in the non-profit and voluntary sector and the professionalisation of almost all occupations.

In researching my recent article “Working Girls” for Prospect magazine, I was shocked by how little money people give to charity, how few people give, and the minuscule amount of time that we give to charity. We are so busy now that the average amount of time that men and women devote to volunteer activities is just four minutes a day. The situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I do wonder whether people will stop assuming that it is the Government’s fault that we are failing the elderly and the sick, and start to question if it is also their families and communities that are failing them. Why is it that there is nowhere for elderly people to go, and no one to help them?

This leads on to my third point: the very low birthrates for educated women. You gain a lot from having a family, but you give up a lot.

Today women are faced with choices: to have fun, put their education first and climb the corporate ladder, or stay at home to have children — and be poorer, more isolated and be labelled simply “a housewife”.

Yet people think they can have everything. We have to improve incentives for families. We can’t do that by shifting women out of the workplace. We need to make it financially attractive for educated people to have children. This will not sort out the issue of care and altruism, but it will provide a productive workforce in 30 years.

I married young and had three children young too. When they were born I thought I would want to stop working, but I worked part-time as I studied for my degree in the US and I paid other women to do the things that I didn’t want to do. A graduate student would look after my children while we lived in America. I chose to become an academic because of my children and I knew it would allow me to have a flexible career. Once we returned to the UK we had a full-time nanny, who was the reverse since she fitted her job around her family.

I don’t have a solution. I’m not saying women shouldn’t work — there are huge gains from women working — but we can’t have it all. A price has to be paid.

Alison Wolf is a professor in public sector management at King’s College London. She was interviewed by Michelle Henery.

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