Obsessively interrogating increasingly baffled couples about ever more banal details concerning their domestic arrangements, such as which of them chose the detergent used in their household,  Engle only succeeded in revealing not only her crude Philistinism, but also her total lack of imagination as a serious film-maker.

Once again, she showed just why sixties feminism acquired the bad name it rapidly acquired among all people of both sexes with a grain of common sense.

I will illustrate what I mean by drawing attention to one commission and one omission on Engle’s part.

Engle’s commission was the Philistinism that she revealed by her unfeigned incomprehension, when interviewing an Oxford educated mother, who had chosen to give up a promising career to stay at home to raise her children.

‘What was the point of your degree?’ she asked in total bemusement.

In reply, the un-phased interviewee rightly observed that what her education had equipped her to do was to pass on its benefits to her own children, a non-vocational benefit that was wholly lost on Engle.

Much more important is a massive omission of which Engle’s documentary series is guilty. So far as she is concerned, as are kindred spirits like BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour presenter Jennie Murray, the real continuing crime against women is the unequally large amount of domestic work and housework that falls upon their shoulders by comparison with what falls upon those of men. As Jennie Murray puts it:

‘The really serious stuff is how we balance relationships between men and women.

‘Until we cease to see housework and childcare as women’s work we won’t have true equality. It has to be seen as family work. Until then, employers won’t take women as seriously as men. That’s where the push has to be made.’

That is an opinion that yesterday’s programme showed Engle to share, although she has avowed it explictly elsewhere.

But the assumption that, to enjoy gender equity, men and women have to enjoy complete symmetry in terms of their careers and domestic labour completely overlooks the significance of the gender asymmetry that is cast upon them by biology.

Women have only so many years when they can bear children without significant risk to their health and to that of their progeny.

One major consequence of sixties feminism has been to encourage women to postpone having children until later and later, so that they can first establish their careers. One consequence of their postponing child-bearing has been their ever greater recourse to the use of IVF. This is a method of conception that poses ever greater risk to children and mothers alike the older women are when they receive that form of treatment.

Totally unexplored by the likes of Engle and Jennie Murray has been the human costs — to mothers, children, and tax payer — of the ever greater recourse that women make to IVF as result of feminism having persuaded them of the desirability, if not their right, of being  able to combine parenthood and a career, just like men.

Some of that cost has been revealed by a just-published report commissioned by the Twins and Multiple Births Association. Aside from all considerations of increased medical risk, it found that having to raise twins or triplets puts a massive strain upon couples, especially those who already have had one child. It increases their risk of divorce by 17 per cent.

But the downside of multiple births brought about by IVF goes well beyond that. As has been observed:

‘Multiple births… are far more dangerous both to fetuses and mothers. Fetuses may not survive the pregnancy, and if they do, their chances of being born prematurely, with all the attendant risks and costs, are significantly higher than with other births… These health problems may affect premature offspring throughout their lifespans. Multiple births also endanger the mother herself, who stands a much greater chance of suffering complications during birth.’

In 1979, only one in 100 births in the UK was of a twin or triplet. Now, that figure is one in 65 births, an increase entirely due to IVF.

One prime reason ever more children are being born in the UK as a result of IVF is the ever later age that women are waiting until before they try to have children, and the ever greater difficulty they experience in conceiving naturally the older they get.

Because of the known ever greater medical risk to both mothers and children of births of late conceptions, the NHS guidelines on fertility treatment set a cut-of point for free IVF treatment at 39 years, and they strictly limit the number of embryos they implant at any one time to minimise the risk of multiple births.

That policy has led British women over that age and desirous of fertility treatment to seek it abroad privately, where it is both much cheaper and much more reliant on multiple implants to increase success rates, resulting in a much greater incidence of twins and triplets than occurs as a result of such treatment in the UK.

As many as 590 British women seek IVF treatment abroad each year of whom, it has been estimated by Dr Francoise Shenfield of University College Hospital London, more than 60 per cent were aged over 40 at the time of their treatment.

According to another research study, 1 in 4 British women who had had a multiple birth as a result of fertility treatment had received that treatment abroad.

The ultimate cause women today postpone having children until they need IVF treatment has been modern feminism which has made women feel they have a right to everything in life that men do: careers and children.

Mother Nature is not an equal opportunities employer, and that has nothing to do with its having implanted in women a gene that makes them want to do the washing up. There is an important salutary lesson contained in the grim statistics given above that feminists would do well to reflect on before conducting witch-hunts about which spouse does it.

Women cannot have it all without damaging side effects upon innocent third parties.

Why does Engle not choose to dwell on this negative consequence of feminism?

Otherwise, what was the point of her Oxford degree, I feel like asking?

Whilst I’m in favour of encouraging the curiosity of our budding de Beauvoirs and Burkes, surely, as time is of the essence in the these precious primary school years, this syllabus is best left at the school gates?  What’s more, could the inclusion of softer, skills subjects – philosophy, critical thinking, sociology and the like – exacerbate a problem that is beginning to reverberate through more traditional subjects: the impatience of internet-savvy, quick-fix kids?

Expressing concern at the annual Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) conference for a “celebrity-dominated society” in which “success appears to come instantly and without any real effort,” retiring head, Dr Dunford, evaded the real problem entirely.  Not only are children spending increasing amounts of time online, but, a seemingly common culture of bypassing strong subject content en route to endless outcomes, offers children the slimmest opportunity to develop a comprehensive understanding of the core curriculum, let alone anything they can later build on.  And the rate at which children are expected to fly through their three Ts (tests, targets and (league) tables), no wonder they’re getting irritable.

What’s worse, it’s deceptive.  Philosophy at five, and even at fifteen, probably doesn’t mean you can tell your Heidegger from your Hegel, but an end-of-term test and a certificate covered in sticky stars might suggest otherwise.  Rather surprisingly then, Michael Gove’s plan to recreate a traditional curriculum based on an established core body of knowledge was received with a degree of skepticism-apparently traditional teaching methods don’t make
for easy teaching experiences.  We are yet to hear of how these plans will be practically implemented, and of course the proof will be in the pudding, but I’m pleased to hear that the Conservative rhetoric is reversing the
restrictive maxim ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.’  The current ‘progressive’ approach doesn’t appear to be working, so let’s try something different and see if real progress can be made.

By Annaliese Briggs

The core message conveyed is a need to shift policy towards tackling the root causes of antisocial behaviour, as opposed to merely keeping a lid on the existing perpetrators. At face value this appears to be an uncontroversial approach.

The ultimate emphasis is to be on empowering local communities and encouraging social cohesion within neighbourhoods by involving everyone in decision-making when it comes to local policy.  This is to entail a number of strategies. Firstly encouraging the dissemination of ‘success stories’ in tackling antisocial behaviour. Secondly, challenging theories of ‘social correctedness’ and thirdly, cultivating the role of the media in circulating stereotypes.
In short, the report implies that the root problem is negative thought, rather than activity.  Yet, an incalculable oversight is made: it is taken for granted that current measures in place are adequate. 

This view was substantiated by Alan Johnson yesterday.  Whilst admitting that the victims of antisocial behaviour are ignored, he pointed the finger at the implementation of policies, rather than the policies themselves: ‘We have got all the powers in place to tackle anti-social behaviour.  What we need to ensure is that all the agencies, not just the police, are working together’. 

It can be assumed then, that Johnson is satisfied with the police’s response to antisocial behaviour.  However, a snapshot survey by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary found that officers do not turn up to 23% of antisocial behaviour complaints and more than half of the 43 police forces in England and Wales cannot automatically identify repeat victims of crime- one in five of whom are disabled- leaving officers ignorant of vulnerable people in need of help.  Underreporting is another issue: in spite of 3.6 million reports of antisocial behaviour being made in 2008-9- a figure which is already  alarming when juxtaposed with the total recorded crime statistic of 4.7million- officials believe the true figure to be twice as high.

So is Johnson’s benighted confidence a way for the Government to wriggle out of having to commit to further expenditure on anti-social behaviour if re-elected?   Or is it to dodge admission of further inadequacies, either pecuniary or practical, in the £100million Youth Crime Action Plan?  Either way, something is failing to figure here.   The root causes of antisocial behaviour, theoretically the Government’s current focus, are manifestly not being addressed and those on the ground are not being consulted at all.  Surely in order to tackle antisocial behaviour communities need to be consulted: start by ask them whether they believe current measures are adequate – or risk dividing communities irreparably.

Lara Natale

Proponents of an EMF emphasise that whilst EU officials had been aware of Greece’s failing financial situation for some time, there was no mechanism in place to prevent it from deteriorating. Calling on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to alleviate a EU debt problem is out of the question because the EU is keen to avoid suggestions that it can’t keep its own house in order. The EU rigorously defends its “no-bailout clause”, but supporters of EMF argue that it could “step-in” to offer loans to debt ridden EU states, thus preventing a similar situation in the future.

However, two obstacles are likely to prevent the EMF becoming anything more than a blueprint – legality and funding.

There is strong disagreement as to whether establishing a EMF would require a full-scale change to the EU treaties, or simply a unanimous decision by all 27 member states. Thomas Mayer the chief economist at Deutsche Bank AG has spoken optimistically of the “enhanced cooperation” clause in the Lisbon Treaty as a possible legal foundation for the EMF. However EU Commission President Barroso and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have insisted that developing an EMF would entail a Treaty change.

Funding such an institution is less than straightforward. The coffers could be filled by fining states that break the Stability and Growth Pact regulations, such as the threshold which limits Eurozone countries’ total public debt to 60% of GDP. Enforcing fines could encourage governments to start controlling their debt, but this does not require a new EU institution – the SGP rules are already in existence and they simply need to be enforced. Axel Weber, President of the German Bundesbank, similarly believes the EMF would be “a sideshow that will distract from the necessary consolidation of budget deficits in struggling countries”.

An EU-wide tax has also been suggested, but states are loathe to surrender fiscal autonomy in the best of circumstances, so such a move is unlikely to gain support.

The EU has a habit of thinking that any crisis can be resolved with further integration. It is difficult to believe, however, that the EU would embark on another round of ‘institutional tinkering’ when the institutional changes of the Lisbon Treaty are still being enacted (EU politicians are currently battling to control the makeup of the Treaty’s new diplomatic service – the EU External Action Service (EEAS)). It is likely that the EMF proposal will fade away, to be remembered only in the face of another economic crisis.

I wonder how keen the OECD would have been to make such a  call had the methodology it employed to compute the quantities of leisure enjoyed by the two sexes not been quite so obviously flawed.

Included as work, and therefore not as leisure, were all shopping, child-care, and time given over to the maintenance or embellishment of personal appearance. All these forms of unpaid activity are ones in which women expend considerably more time than men. They are, also, notoriously forms of activity in which many women engage for their own sake. Whenever so undertaken, they should be counted as leisure, not work: but they were not in the OECD report.

But the OECD report was guilty of a far worse methodological defect. It took no account of relative life expectancies of the two sexes. Computations of amounts of leisure were made on the basis of self-reports of men and women, hence over periods in which they were both alive.

However, the amount of leisure people enjoy varies over their life-cycles. They tend to enjoy more of it in the later years of life and of which women tend to enjoy very many more.

The OECD report acknowledges this methodological defect, by conceding that: ‘To obtain a true picture of leisure over the life cycle, longitudinal data comparing the entire life cycle would be warranted. However, such data are not available.’

Women enjoy on average several more years of life than men, years that, by definition, occur at the end of the life-cycle, when the ratio of leisure to work is high.

If the extra quantity of leisure that women tend, on average, to enjoy as a result of living longer than men were factored into the equation, I wonder just which sex would be found to enjoy less of it.

I also wonder why such a computation was not made.

It does not seem impossible, or even very difficult in principle, to devise estimates of the average extra amount of leisure women enjoy on average as a result of living longer.

Might the reason such estimates not have been factored into the equation been because of the adverse effect they would have had in terms of proving women victims of a social injustice in this domain?

Whatever the reason for their non-inclusion, it constitutes such a gross omission as to vitiate the entire report.

Lest it be thought that men owe their shorter lives entirely to their own less prudent and temperate life-styles, it should be noted that a substantial part of the difference in the shorter average life-expectancy seems down to biological differences between the sexes and not to behaviour.

As much as almost a third of the difference has been estimated as due to genetic differences. Given that the present life-expectancy of girls in the UK is 81.6 years and that of boys 77.4 years, it would seem women may expect to enjoy more than a year of extra life at a time of life when work commitments are least.

Not only that. That extra year of leisure is enjoyed by women when they do not seemingly have to put up with the company of the other sex, unlike men who never seemingly can look forward to such a period of life.

All told, I suspect that feminists would do best to bury this report. Otherwise they might draw the need to equalise leisure between the sexes to the attention of the equalities brigade. Should that happen, and the computations be done correctly, they may find on their hands a New Equality Bill that demands that, for the sake of equalising leisure between the sexes over their life-cycles, until the age of retirement women should have to work 1.5 hours for every hour that men do.