Examentrainers

		'One thing you have to face up to , however successful you may be, you can never really become
		"one of the boys". Men never seem to realise that a woman is actually a member of the same species,
		a fellow human being.'
		So runs a rather sad little footnote to an otherwise lighthearted (and helpful) book for aspiring
5		women careerists, Success Without Tears, just published. The writer, Rachel Nelson, herself a former
		top manager describes how even the top-most women get cold-shouldered out of office camaraderie,
		such as pub outings, and are snubbed by hordes of male colleagues.
		She casts doubt, too, on the value of getting through this frosty endurance test. She herself didn't
		like the top once she'd got there - there was more ritual than fulfilling work. What's more, she points
10		out how very few women reach boardroom level - three per cent, in leading British firms.
		Since sociability, work-fulfilment and reward - rather than empty status - is what women
		(according to a recent survey) work for, can the latest feminist ideas to emerge from America be right?
		Has Women's Lib got it all wrong? Should women stop trying to play men's futile games and aim for
		their own brand of success? Has eagerness to match men outside the home led women up a blind
15		alley?
		The British sociologist Ann Oakley believes so. In a recent article in New Society magazine she
		presents same discouraging figures in favour of her argument. The unemployment rate for women,
		for example , increased by 53 per cent between 1976 and 1978, as compared with 9 per cent for men
		- although during this period masses more women were being taken on, as well as being sacked from
20		work. Her figures, coupled with Rachel Nelson's, suggest such boundless mountain-ranges of prejudice
		that women can be forgiven for feeling like giving up. Faced with the fact that only 5 per cent of
		professors, architects, and 2 per cent of chartered accountants are women, should we all retreat, as
		Oakley now proposes, into a 'sexes-are-separate world' in which we concentrate on specifically
		feminine roles and demand due respect for these?
25		The ones she has in mind are largely domestic, and consist of a self-sacrificing service to family and
		others. Nothing is gained, she asserts, by women competing in male fields, 'since female activities,
		resources and values are ignored.' And she asks whether 'having and rearing children, and a sense of
		emotional connection and responsibility for others, are capacities that women must be liberated from
		in order to become human - that is, to become equal to men.'
30		But men and women have never been as rigidly divided as Ms Oakley supposes. Throughout history
		there has been no conflict between productive work and emotional commitments. Your work - farm
		or craft workshop - was your home too, and you reared your children into your work. Just as men
		enjoyed no exclusive separation from the responsibilities and child-rearing activities of the family, so
		women enjoyed no exclusive freedom from the public and productive work of a community.
35		And so, since the married woman's role, as it has been gradually reduced in modern times, is less
		than satisfying to the complete human being, we should opt for a world in which there would be
		more workers in public life, but far shorter working hours, far longer holidays, many more periods
		of paid leave for concentration on family, children, enjoyment, home, education, community and
		environment, as well as far more flexibility to move between the worlds of work and home for both
40		sexes.
		Lyn Owen in The Observer, September 23, 1979

* Reith: a former B.B.C. chairman in whose memory there is a series of radio talks every year.