One of the first profiles I was commissioned to do as a young cadet 20 years ago was on the newly appointed chief executive of a division of one of the big four banks.

It was a weighty assignment but also significant for me because of how it would resonate throughout my career.

Early in the interview, I congratulated her on her achievement and deigned to say that her appointment to this role was an inspiration for other women because it indicated a great shift in corporate and societal attitudes to women. Her response was unexpected and not altogether understood.

She said “things have not changed for women. Society doesn’t make it easy for women to achieve success in business and nothing will change until women change the way they bring up boys to be men.” She attempted to clear the fog in my gaze by explaining that women themselves were to blame for how difficult it was to get ahead in their professional lives.

It has taken some time for me to fully appreciate what she was saying. My generation of working women were encouraged by our mothers to study hard, achieve a tertiary qualification and strive for financial independence. The problem is that boys were not simultaneously being prepared for this brave new world.

Parents are their children’s first and most powerful role models. It’s what we do and how we relate to each other that forms our children’s attitudes to themselves and to the opposite sex. If dad goes off to work before the kids wake up and comes home after they go to bed and measures his time spent with the family in minutes then that’s how his son might see his future role. If mum does all the housework, cooks all the dinners, prepares all the school lunches, organises all the sporting activities while also maintaining a full-time job then she is complicit in a retro culture that says dad still works only at work and mum works at work and at home. It is an unsustainable existence.

Just this year, two of my girlfriends have quit their executive roles. These were jobs they enjoyed and their employers valued them. In both instances their children had recently started school. Both women explained to me that they believed that one parent should be home to help the children with their homework and with the daily anxieties born of complex playground politics. Both women told me that “he wouldn’t do it”. “He” is that other parent who is never mentioned in all the academic research about how working mothers affect a child’s development. There’s nothing scientific about this finding but it’s fairly widespread in my circle of 40-ish friends; they were comfortable leaving their babies/toddlers to be raised by nannies but everything changes when the children go to school.

I take a keen interest in every study that is published about women in the workforce. Over the past 20 years, the one that continues to upset me more than any other is the finding that both stay-at-home mums and their working counterparts do 99 per cent of the housework. Contrary to popular opinion, when a mother works she does have it all … all the burdens of home that is. This includes the burden of guilt about the lack of time she has to devote to her children. This is made worse by the constant research papers that must surely be designed to exacerbate that guilt. Recently there have been a spate of studies showing that the children of working mothers are overweight, unhealthy, unhappy, watch too much television etc. Where are the fathers in all this?

Then there are the studies that ask whether a woman has “chosen” to work or whether her family’s economic circumstances require her to do so. Is anyone asking why the men have “chosen” to work? There is an assumption here that if the woman is working then the “choice” she has made is to not spend time with her children. Why is it shameful for a woman to find joy and fulfilment in her career? I’ve lost count of the number of times I’m told that working full-time with three children under five “must be hard”. No, actually. The truth is that being at home alone with three children under five is much harder. Why should men be the only ones given the community sanction to enjoy their jobs unfettered by the gnawing feeling that the children are missing out on something. If both mum and dad are in the workforce, why is it that mum is the only one ever asked “how do you do it?” I’m apparently a “supermum” but strangely no-one seems to think my husband is a “superdad” even though he does so much more than me around the house and for the kids.

No-one expects the men to contribute at home or with the children. Why is that? Why aren’t we giving men the right to “choose” to stay home to care for their children? Why isn’t that job being valued as much as those the men “choose” to do outside the home? Why is raising children a “women’s issue”? Why does a woman’s life become so unrecognisable after she has children while her husband’s life barely changes? Why aren’t these issues being studied by the boffins who think it’s important to tell women that their “choices” are wrong? Until we start to see parenting as a team sport rather than an individual pursuit, women will suffer. Why are we so obsessed with protecting a 1950s notion of masculinity that we’ve put outrageous demands on modern women?

It is still considered somehow demeaning for a man to “choose” to wash floors, clean toilets, do the shopping, spend time at school plays and provide assistance in the classroom, planning and preparing meals, doing the laundry and taking the children to swimming lessons. It’s not that women are more capable. They seem more willing to do it even if they’re not necessarily happy about it. If they complained who would listen? Isn’t this something that should be studied? Explanations about Mars and Venus are a nonsense propagated by a generation of pseudo-psychologists. There is no justifiable reason why women should do more around the home than men.

I watch men go out drinking after work … I watch them stay at work longer than they need to often to escape the bedlam of bedtime routines at home. Men shirk responsibility and use work as a convenient excuse. Golf, tennis etc is now an essential part of business life. Men need a few drinks at the pub to unwind. Men constantly put themselves first. When do women find time for themselves?

A recent government initiative in the UK to rollout parenting courses across the country found that only one in eight parents who signed up was male. Men who might see themselves as valuable contributors at work are simply not striving for that kind of recognition at home. Just like the female executive at the bank told me in 1990, this is as much their wives’ and mothers’ faults as it is theirs. Many women are enablers. Equality must start at home if it’s to be achieved in the workplace. If men aren’t demanding flexibility at the office, the women who work alongside them won’t get it either and it shouldn’t then be a surprise that women will continue to feel frustrated by a society that expects so much of them and so much less of their spouse.

A whole generation of women are sacrificing their careers for the love of their children. Those who share the workplace with their husbands will often be found at midnight sweeping floors, doing the laundry, baking or sewing the costumes for the school play. I’m quite sure that our mothers didn’t want us to be educated with a view to us becoming over-qualified housekeepers but did they really think that when we were at the office, their sons would suddenly develop an affection for the vacuum cleaner?

Working women are juggling so much that it’s hardly surprising that they spend virtually no quality time with their children and even less with their husbands. This might explain today’s alarming divorce rate. Instead of heaping more guilt/expectations on women, why don’t we start asking more of boys and men … rebalancing the scales of household responsibility might actually make for a happier family. Of everything I’ve done in my life, I’m proudest of my family … especially my husband who chose to be the primary carer so that I could pursue my career ambitions without feeling guilty that neither of us had chosen to put the kids first.