Can the price be too high to stay at the top?
Sylvia Ann Hewlett has more cause than most women to fight for family-friendly working hours.
The Cambridge academic, who now lives and works in the US, was struggling through long hours at work, combining her demanding job with being a mother, when she found she was expecting twins.
She agonised over whether to remain in her job, where she was in line for an important post, or become a stay-at-home mum.
"Ten years of hard, grinding work had gone into my career and I was only 18 months away from the tenure," she says. "Given a cut-throat academic job market, could I really give up the possibility of lifetime job security? I decided to stick with my job."
But Dr Hewlett soon came to regret her decision, made in an environment where no quarter was given to personal concerns such as pregnancy. "Childbirth was seen as an expensive private hobby," she told me, during a flying visit to Cambridge last week.
Both twins died, born at a very premature 23 weeks: "I was ridden with guilt. If only I had given up work, if only I'd had the guts to risk my career."
Admittedly this was nearly three decades ago, but, surprisingly, not much has changed in the US public sector. "It's still not supportive, whereas there has been good progress in the UK," Dr Hewlett says.
She came to Britain last week to promote her new book Off-Ramps & On-Ramps which details how major private companies in the US have benefited from adopting an alternative approach to the employment of career women who also want to be mothers.
Dr Hewlett agrees that all such change is largely driven by the economic imperative, in just the same way flexibility is heavily on the agenda among Cambridge companies right now, all fighting over the few skilled people available to hire, and doing everything they can to hang on to those they've got.
The Off-Ramps & On-Ramps model allows both men and women to work, perhaps just four or five days a month during the crucial child-rearing years, then, two or three years on, stepping up again and working full-time. Read more.
