Observations on emancipation

The investment banker sits at her City desk and buries her face in her hands: her two-year-old has just uttered his first word - "dog" - and the nanny has rung her to share the news.

The copy editor despairs as she hears her boss bring forward her deadline. She realises this will mean ditching her weekend plans: a lecture on slow food (her current interest) and meeting up with two of her best friends.

These case studies make the same indictment: the sisterhood has let us down. Where are the feminist campaigners to teach that the macho values of money and status cannot compensate for a fulfilling emotional life?

From the 1960s, women were taught that professional equality was the way to emancipation. Earn like a man, in short, and you could live like a man.

Fifty years on, equal pay still eludes us, but meanwhile middle-class women, those who did manage to land a big job and make a packet, find themselves facing a different frustration. They are earning like a man (the latest report from the Fawcett Society points out that there is now as much economic inequality among women as between women and men), but they don't like living like a man. No wonder. These women's professional commitment comes at the price of their emotional lives. Like the men they have caught up with, they are cash-rich, but asset-poor - where "assets" include relationships, interests and spiritual pursuits.

To "make it" in a man's world, they have adopted the workaholic lifestyle of men, and the same value system - better put in ten-hour days than try bonding with the kids; better go for that promotion than build your social circle; better be wealthy than well-read. The saying may be, "On their deathbed no one ever says, 'I wish I'd spent more time in the office'", but most men ignore this warning.

Yet women, at least those free from leading a hand-to-mouth existence, should not. And there are some signs, already, that they aren't. A recent survey showed that 38 per cent of women who graduated from Harvard Business School do not work full-time. These drop-outs do not exclusively cite family reasons for their change of lifestyle. An interest in travel, time to invest in friendships, a passion for collecting - the motives for their down-shifting are varied. Yet the philosophy underpinning them all is the same: we did not spend years working hard at our education in order to waste the rest of our lives at work. These women opt to be cash-poor(er) and asset-rich(er). In their high-flying world, this choice may merely entail forgoing the Caribbean holiday and plumping for a less expensive destination. It may spell the difference between a spanking-new MPV and a mid-range four-seater. But their priorities are none the less inspiring and can be played out in a more ordinary key. Forgo the promotion if it will mean less time spent on your interest in learning French; stay with a less profitable but more family-friendly company. Emancipate yourself, in short, from the macho values that the sisterhood took on board. Downshifting is by no means an exclusively female phenomenon. But women could lead the campaign by clamouring for a shift in our perspective. And make up for the silence of the sisterhood.

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