Feminist? Qui, moi?

I'm a feminist but one of those unreconstructed ones that want women to be educated to earn their own living but are also amazed that some women can't sew or knit. If you're in the latter group - sorry.

Feminism was 'in' in the 1960s and the early 1970s. I was a feminist then. I didn't burn my bra (though some did) or turn lesbian for the sake of it (though some did). I just did my own thing: got an education, got a job, worked my way up the career ladder, complained about the lack of opportunities open to women .

Some women - not that many - got out of the house along with me, went to university or college and got decent jobs that met their ambitions.

Then it was presented to women that with the arrival of the contraceptive pill, tights and working, feminism was no longer needed. And feminism went out of fashion in the 1980s.

What had actually happened, according to a friend of mine, was that the 'interim' generation of women had taken over. Our mothers, born in the 1930s, frankly got taken for mugs: they worked and looked after the kids, kept house and did the shopping. In fact, every woman had two jobs. The men kept right on doing what they had always done: they just worked. One job. Whatever it was, it was much more important than anything a woman did.

The 'interim' generation of women also worked and gradually manoeuvred their men into a sharing role. Damned hard work, all that manipulating - and many a woman ended up knackered long before retiring age.

There's a new generation in town now. Women who work and expect their partners to share the burden of child-raising and housekeeping with them. They have nights out with their girlfriends and without their men. I notice when they come to a family night with partners and children, they don't even pretend to be 'on duty': parenthood is a joint responsibility and they expect their partners to step up.

At times, I resent these new women. They are feminists who don't realise the work earlier generations have done to allow them to be liberated. They scoff at the word feminism. But to an extent I understand what they are saying: why on earth should they be grateful to be in the position they are in? They work to be there. It's their right.

Most of all, I wish this new generation luck: they are the women who will take over the workplace and the boardroom any day now. They won't, as a friend of mine puts it, 'see the useless men in their road.'