Alison Wolf webchat Tues 11 June 1-2pm

Have downloaded to my Kindle and will ask a proper question when I have read it. What immediately springs to mind from the description above is to ask what different now. Surely many women from the (upper) middle and upper classes have always relied on poorer, less well-educated women to look after their homes and children? The era of the "stay at home wife and mother" is a pretty brief one in historical terms. Looking forward to reading it, though.

Mamie that's a good point plus there's a wider cultural context too. I've just finished reading "She Left Me the Gun: My Mother's Life Before Me" by Emma Brockes www.salon.com/2013/05/13/she_left_me_the_gun_her_mothers_shocking_past/. In it she writes (quoting her mother describing life in South Africa growing up) that "we were poor but there was always a never ending stream of even poorer women who were prepared to work for a pittance" - so the point for me is that if there's cheap labour, people will take advantage of it. My husband's family immigrated to SA from the UK when he was 10 years old, one of 6 children, and he clearly remembers that his mother thought she had died and gone to heaven when she discovered they could afford having a housekeeper/nanny, despite not being particularly well off. She soon joined the bridge club ...

So my point is that if there's help available and affordable, people will make the most of it, even if there is - strictly speaking - no need. The housewives in the film "The Help" set in the 1950s (I didn't read the book but saw the film) who sat around having tea parties and gossiping with "the help" hovering in the kitchen is another example of the same status quo.

Husband and I did all the housework (and gardening) here in the UK until my neighbour told me about the excellent Eastern European cleaner who comes to her once a week and is looking for another slot in the area ...

Am going to download this book to Kindle too.

The great advances in women's position in law and at work were made by those who had staff to manage their houses and look after their children while they pioneered the cause of female doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, and set off on expeditions into far-off lands.

I don't think the Pankhursts washed their own dishes or ironed their own smalls.

Whilst I think there's truth in the idea that feminism has not helped all classes and income brackets equally, I really don't think things are quite so simple.

Specifically I don't like to see looking after our young children classed in the same bracket as cleaning and cooking, and at the end of that list too.

I think feminism also needs to embrace women's role as mothers, and our work in raising and educating the next generation especially in the early years. Also women's role both in the home, in families, and in the community.

I think there's more than one way to be a feminist in the 21st century.
You don't necessarily have to be a "successful" CEO.
Personally I'm putting my family first in my energies at the moment, am interested in my children's developing lives and choices, and working in the community to support other families through early years education and care.

Feminism should be about choices and well-being for women.
All options can be equally valid.

So, a question for Alison ....

Do you think feminism has work to do on embracing women's role as mothers alongside their working lives ?

Society does not give enough value to the role women play as chief homemaker and child rearer in the household. Tax relief for the stay at home mum would be a great step forward.

I have working daughters and daughters-in-law who also manage to cook, clean, and raise their children, as I did and surely many of those poorer, less educated (but still working women) do. Question to Alison Wolf. Is it then only the size of your salary that determines if feminism has been successful ?

Well said alter ego and following on from chubbynanny:

Alison, do you think we need "masculinism"? Has there been a kind of 'role reversal' or a new pecking order established in that I often hear/observe young women who outperform their husbands in terms of income and career success complaining "... what he must realise is that I bring in most of the money" or "I expect to come home to a meal prepared ..." etc. So in a relationship, if money and success = power, where does liberation meet equality?

I found the book a stimulating read. Having read Margaret Hunt's Women in Eighteenth Century Europe, I disagreed with your basic historical premise that women have hardly ever been powerful outside of the traditional female occupations and that almost all women gave up work when they married. I think Margaret Hunt's extensive evidence from Europe and beyond proves that this isn't true; that women, especially widows, have frequently exercised considerable and extensive power in trade and business outside of the home and that huge numbers of women have always continued to work after marriage and childbirth.
As a graduate and seventies feminist who juggled home and a demanding career from the time my children were tiny, I expected to empathise to some extent with the women in your book. In fact I couldn't. Their lives bore no relation whatsoever to mine or to that of my high-achieving daughter who now combines a full-time career with a young family. I hated the descriptions of these self-satisfied, beautifully-groomed women with their pearly white teeth and Jimmy Choo shoes, engaged in the pursuit of money and power at all costs.
I had little sympathy for the terms in which their success was defined. I certainly don't hold the view that higher education confers special powers or that Oxbridge graduates are automatically gifted, talented and useful in the workplace. Living in France, I can see that the products of the Grandes Ecoles would certainly benefit from a bit more reality. I think a spell on the minimum wage with Florence Aubenas' Night Cleaners might help them relate a bit better to the people they seek to govern and manage.

So my question is this:
In my view the world is essentially a messy place, full of uncertainties and compromise. Does it actually matter if these rarefied creatures you describe, ultimately become so fixated on their own success that they fail to reproduce and become extinct in a generation? Would the world not be a better place if they were replaced by women in positions of power who are not perfect, but who understand the compromises of managing limited budgets, work and childcare and who can relate to the lives of ordinary people?

There were 5 top female executives in UK now there are three. I think that's because women can't be bothered with sitting in silly meetings, and playing golf all day - they have more important things to do which may include home making and child rearing but are just as likely to include more fulfilling careers.

I absolutely hate the idea of "competing" with any man. Surely as women we should be embracing our own roles within society and not be made to feel inferior if we do not go down the high flying career route or heaven forbid decide to stay at home and look after our own children or grandchildren.
When I hear about women making it to the top of a business or corporation I think "yes, good for them" but at what price?

As a grandma I will always encourage my grandaughters to do well exactly the same as I encourage my grandson, but why is it that some people can only accept that a woman is successful or indeed happy, if she has got some fantastic high flying career and must be miserable as hell to be working in the supermarket or in some back office somewhere?

Hello Alison! What's your suggestion on how we can close the gap between the classes? Or are you saying there is no such thing as social mobility?

I haven't read the book, but reading the OP has made me wonder.. What do you think of men who cook/clean/take over childcare and stay at home? Are they less 'successful' than their female counterparts?

I haven't read the book either, I'm afraid, but I am curious about the title. I assume it's a reference to the XX chromosomes, but what exactly is the XX Factor? (I did gather from what I read that you're talking about women being very different from each other, so I assume this factor isn't something that we all share).

Hello Alison,

It strikes me that there have always been two types of feminism - what I think of as feminism in suits (women's networks, women in top jobs) and sisterhood feminism - which is about things like sexual violence, abortion rights etc.

Your book looks only at feminism in suits. But surely this crucially depends on the other sort of feminism? Isn't it the case that without that fight for fundamental quality, those women who are marching into boardrooms on their high heels wouldn't have stood a chance?

The women you write about seem to exist in a sort of moral and political vacuum where none of those sisterhood things matter any longer. Do you really think this is true?

You don't talk much about happiness in the book. I appreciate that you're presenting a lot of statistics rather than a commentary or polemic, but in fact there do seem to be a lot of values implicit in what you're writing - for example, you talk all the time about "top women" which implies a kind of approval. You talk about them "pulling away" which again sounds like you're endorsing them. You write blandly about elite institutions - schools and universities - as if they were genuinely meritocratic, rather than the beneficiaries of much greater resources.

We know that happiness is greater in societies where there is greatest equality. Denmark is supposedly the happiest country in the world. Inequality breeds envy, resentment and dissatisfaction and militates against collaboration. You don't seem very interested in the impact your top women are having on other women or the deracination they are experiencing from their societies.

I am a firm feminist and have worked all my life and have done pretty well. But reading your book, I felt profoundly depressed. The society you are describing is quite horrible and, it seems to me, liable to lead to quite a lot of unhappiness on all sides. The implicit assumption seems to be that money buys happiness and contentment - but actually, we know it doesn't.

What is your view on the place in your 15%'s lives of values of civic responsibility, community, contribution?

I haven't read the book yet - but I will do so with great interest. I suppose I am a feminist - in as much as I don't want what I can do and achieve to be governed by my sex - but I do worry that young girls these days are still being brought up on the myth of having it all.

The bottom line is that there are only 24 hours in a day and if you spend most of them at work you can't be that involved in the bringing up of your children and vice versa. Of course there are women in positions of power who have families - but if they are working 12 hours a day how much quality time do they actually spend with them? Yes you can HAVE it all 0 but whether you can enjoy it all and make the most of it all and be fulfilled by it all is something I am sadly skeptical about. I would welcome your thoughts.

Hello. I would like to know how you define 'middle class' these days?

Would you say the most successful women are the ones who act like men? Does being CEO or whatever really mean you have to ditch your femininity?

Have I missed it? I'll ask my question anyway... Do you think the government does enough to support equality for women? What do you think of the latest childcare debacle?