Seems that many more women are getting upset at the increased imbalances between women. From Swedish economists suggesting that they give up socialism/communism and recognize capitalism helps women more, to others recently taking them to task. Is there a trend picking up?

Natasha’s pregnant, but others feel the pain

Brass neck is the phrase that comes to mind on contemplating the newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky. She is the woman who accepted £1m a year for a new job as “the face of Five News” and who, only six weeks into her contract, announced that she was 12 weeks pregnant. If I were running Five I would be beside myself with rage.

Undisclosed sources say her bosses are indeed dismayed that she will be out of action so soon after starting on this hugely paid and hugely publicised role. Apparently she is taking maternity leave in September, for “a few months”, although of course she will have the option of extending her leave and may never return.

Meanwhile, instead of the ferociously sexy on-the-ball babe that Five hired, Kaplinsky will be becoming larger and mumsier, she may have a nauseous or difficult pregnancy requiring lots of time off, and at some point her brain will be affected by the amnesia of pregnancy. This is a phenomenon that is now widely admitted, even by feminists (although it is equally often denied when inconvenient); there is even a nasty new fashionable word for a woman in this state - preghead. Luckily there is, of course, Autocue at Five News. And an expensive stand-in will have to be found.

The proper word for all this is exploitation. It is women such as Kaplinsky, appearing so flamboyantly unreliable and unapologetic, who make working life much harder for the rest of us - working mothers, childless women and, of course, all employers. To add insult to injury, employers are not even allowed to say so. On the contrary, a top man at Five has said that he is “genuinely delighted” and indeed he could have said nothing else. It would probably have been illegal - discrimination against women - even to hint at any other response.

I have not tried to count the weeks and figure out the moment of Kaplinsky’s conception; somehow it seems rather rude. It may be that when she signed her contract she wasn’t - quite - pregnant. However, she must have been when she started work and she may well have known it. In any case she must surely have been aware of her own hopes and intentions about having a baby, presumably sooner rather than later, unless this infant was a “mistake”. This strikes me as unfair to her employers, unless they knew and accepted this risk in advance.

When I was interviewed for a traineeship at the BBC, the panel asked what my plans for having children were and how I would combine children with work. It seemed to me then (and still does) a reasonable question. I was married and 27, which at that time was considered late to start having babies. However, the woman from personnel told me not to answer; she said the question was sexist and impermissible. It would now, like many such reasonable questions, be illegal although, oddly, it is legal (although entirely unreasonable) to ask people about their sexual orientation when they apply for Arts Council grants.

Sir Alan Sugar was right when he said recently that women should tell their employers about their reproductive plans. In doing so he made himself unpopular. However, it is surely unfair - and commercially disastrous - to expect an employer to take on, unknown, the risks to his business that new mothers are likely to impose on him. Perhaps Kaplinsky discussed this with Five; but the point is that women in their reproductive years have a legal licence to exploit their employers and fellow workers.

The fact that Kaplinsky will not be entitled to maternity pay from Five because she works as a freelance means only that her employers will not pay her a huge fee for work she does not do. They will have to find and negotiate with someone else, they will have to pay for massive publicity for someone else, having just met the bills for all the PR hoopla they bought to launch Kaplinsky. Then that other newsreader, having been starred up at their expense, will take the results to a competitor. They will have to endure the internal disruption that will follow the departure in only a few months of their star and with her the possible loss of her ratings.

It is depressing, from a woman’s point of view, that the pendulum has swung so quickly from one unfair extreme to another.

In the 1960s women were harassed and underpaid and their problems with childcare were overlooked. While there are plenty of low-paid women for whom that is still true, these days the boot is usually on the woman’s foot and she puts it in when she can.

Many women seem to expect extraordinary rights and allowances so that they can keep their jobs whatever the cost and inconvenience to their employer and to be equally paid when they are not always of equal value. Government and public opinion support them.

Yet I have several professional women friends, committed feminists, who dread hiring women for all the obvious reasons. The most pressing are their long periods of maternity leave and the extreme difficulty of replacing them temporarily in demanding service industries such as publishing and law with equally good people, who will then have to be dropped.

Last week there was an interesting controversy about women doctors in the pages of the British Medical Journal. A brave doctor claimed on the Radio 4 Today programme on Friday that three female doctors need to be trained to produce the same “work time output” as two male doctors (because of maternity leave, time off and early retirement). Furthermore, for the same reasons, women doctors cause disruption in the continuity of care and face problems in maintaining their practical skills, such as in surgery, with an interrupted career path.

All this is extremely difficult and I am very uncertain as to what, if anything, can reasonably be done. However, surely the most important first step in dealing with such intractable problems is to be free to admit what they are. When hiring women of childbearing age is more problematic than hiring men or other women, employers should be allowed to say so. They should not be forced to pretend that it isn’t so, while at the same time making special allowances for working mothers and offering equal pay for what may not be equal services.

The comments are very telling. Please follow the link in the heading of the article to read them.