Hay Festival 2013: Working women are Cinderella in reverse
Many working women today turn into 'scullery maids' after getting married, says Cambridge sociology professor Jackie Scott.
Modern working women are treated like Cinderella in reverse, an academic has suggested, as she claims some get married only to turn into "scullery maids".
Professor Jackie Scott, from the sociology department at the University of Cambridge, said there was still a gender gap in terms of domestic work done by men and women.
Referring to a theory proposed by an Oxford University colleague, she joked the old-fashioned fairy tale of a scullery maid marrying a "handsome prince" for a life of luxury has now changed.
Instead, she suggested, women got married only to find themselves completely more domestic work than their husband, in addition to working outside the home as well.
Prof Scott told an audience at the Telegraph Hay Festival having a first child would have "very little negative impact on his labour market rewards but markedly reduces hers".
She added: "Now, I've got a colleague at Oxford who refers to the Allerednic syndrome, which is Cinderella spelled backwards.
"So in the old days, you might remember, a handsome Prince marries a scullery maid and turns her into his princess.
"Nowadays, the prince turns his princess bride into a scullery maid."
She added the description was "a little overstated", but added time-diaries kept by men and women in marriage, detailing the type of work they each carried out, backed it up.
"Highly educated women are becoming more like men," she said. "They are choosing not to have kids, or if they're having children they're often taking the minimum time out of the workplace, outsourcing childcare to other women with less earning potential".
Speaking to author and journalist Gaby Hinsliff, she said a "generational replacement" meant the situation was already getting better for women.
As well as a reduction in the pay gap over the last few decades, she said, Britain now had a population "more open to other ways of men and women dividing up family and work responsibilities".
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