This week, for the first time in years, I thought about Nicola Horlick. The “City superwoman” was plastered across newspaper spreads in the 1990s for juggling her six children and a high-flying career. The message in those days to young women was clear: not only could we have it all, but we must.
That may have turned out to be problematic in its own special way, but those now look like halcyon days compared with where we find ourselves in 2022. This week, the Times reported that the number of young women not working so they can look after their family has risen 5 per cent in the last year, the first sustained increase in decades. For women aged 25 to 34, it’s increased by a whopping 13 per cent. Among the “economically inactive” (those neither in employment nor looking for it), 28.5 per cent of women are not working because they are looking after family; among economically inactive men, it is 6.9 per cent.
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