So women may need a "house husband" if they want to reach the top. At least according to Helena Morrissey, mother of nine (yep, you read that right), who is chief executive of Newton Investment Management.
As founder of the 30% Club, she's campaigning for 30% of director posts to be held by women by 2015. The group held its first meeting this week. Only 13% of the board members of FTSE 100 companies are female.
All this reminded me of a recent conversation I had with a colleague. She is a very impressive, hard-working and bright women who is 20 years older than me and who has had what I would term a very successful - and ongoing - career.
But, to my surprise, she told me that she had hit her "own" glass ceiling after the birth of her son. He reached the age of one and a half, she told me, and she couldn't remember anything about him as a baby. Why? Because she was working too hard. And because of this, she downsized her job to one which meant she would, occasionally be able to spend time with him. (She still worked full-time, by the way, but in a less pressurised environment and I think she feels she never quite got back on the top-tier.)
It would be great to see more women in top positions in the cabinet, industry, employment in general. And I'm sure there are many, many women with huge ambitions for the most high-flying jobs. Some of them, perhaps, face discrimination because of their gender (although I think this is far less common than it once was). But I think that others, like my colleague, choose their own glass ceilings.
I often feel that I have the ambition I always had - to be successful, to be a decision-maker, to be someone. But I will admit that, now I have two young children, I don't want to work all the hours possible and I do want some flexibility. I choose to work part-time and it's not great for my career, but that was a decision I made - it wasn't someone else waving a stick at me and halting my progress. True, I did spend some years telling people that I "used to work on Newsnight" as I thought it made me sound the way I used to think I was, ambitious, clever, and impressive. But times change and our lives change. Once I had children I knew I wanted to see them.
I think I am lucky to have a job and wish there were more part-time options out there. But that doesn't mean I think I am particularly discriminated against. If I chose to work full-time, I think work would be easier in many ways. I'm not sure that family life would be...