Further to a long-running and sometimes heated argument that the adults in this household have been dragging behind us for many years, this from Steve Maich in Macleans magazine:

Neil French, an advertising director, a Canadian, Maich calls him a "legend in the ad industry" with "more money than the Almighty himself" apparently said that women "don't make it to the top because they don't deserve to". Because, Maich paraphrases, "most are unwilling to make the personal sacrifices of time and energy required to be the boss".

Statistics tell us that women are very under-represented in the upper echelons of the workforce. And this is where we argue vociferously here at home, because statistics cannot tell us exactly why this is. Steve Maich has a theory.

"Today's working woman is presented with an inescapable dilemma: if you sacrifice your family, in any way, for the sake of your career, then you're a lousy mother. If you sacrifice career for family, then you're letting down the generations of feminists who fought to give you a shot at a decent career. To deal with this impasse, modern society has served up a set of handy myths built around the idea that no sacrifice is necessary. There are 50 hours in every day. Emotional energy is limitless. And with proper planning and enough effort one can have a fabulous, lucrative career and an idyllic family life. If this balance eludes you, then you've failed, and should buy more self-help books. Anybody who dares challenge the myth is a misogynist." (the full text is here, if you're interested)

I personally think (and I'm willing to discuss, have been for years) that part of the problem lies in the question of the value of work. As far as the human race is concerned, what is worth more, really, than the capacity to reproduce? Heck, if men did it, they'd figure out a way to get paid for it. Probably set up ways to sell their offspring. EBaby, maybe. Men make the rules of the game, the rules were set many years ago: work is only important if it MAKES MONEY. The business world is set up in such a way that anyone who wants to succeed has to be able to (as men traditionally have been able to because women were holding down the fort) drop everything and go to long meetings and fly off to see clients and suppliers. If no-one's left at home to do the laundry and take care of the kids, things soon begin to fall apart... As Maich says, "we've established a system in which employers must make up for the lack of gender equality in the home."

Legal equality, as my law professor used to say, is not the same as substantive equality. Although we have every legal right to pursue high-echelon management jobs, we have choices to make. Men don't have to make these choices between work and family. No-one expects them to.