It's my right to work, too

I can't believe that this is 2001 and I find myself defending working mothers. You can't fail to have noticed. Mention the phrase working mother and the claws hook out. Just look back over the last few weeks. There's Wendy Mayall, chief investment officer at Unilever, dubbed an 'ice maiden'; Yvonne Ridley who was captured by the Taliban while reporting for the Sunday Express; and Kym Marsh, 25-year-old member of pop band Hear'Say. All have been portrayed as selfish, career go-getters, the implication being that they care more about themselves than their children. Put a man in any of their positions and no one would take any notice.

Add to that the recent working-mother bashing from Tessa Boase of the Sunday Times claiming people like her have to work harder in the office to make up for working mothers rushing home to change nappies and attend school plays and you begin to feel there's a national case of victimisation against working mums going on. Worryingly, there seems to be a shocking number of ignorant/jealous women around ready to bash their sisters.

So let me just state here that in my 12 years in the working world I have never encountered a working mother who asked colleagues to staple together a wizard's hat or lounged around the office, feet on desk, browsing the newspapers. Real professionals (Cherie Booth QC and mother of four, for instance) don't do that. Nor have I encountered resentment from childless colleagues claiming to be taking the slack from a working mother. More common is pity that, on top of working just as hard as they do, we're going home to domestic duties while they go out with their Bridget Jones mates. I've only met childless women who are sympathetic to the juggling act. They realise it could be them, too.

In my circle of working mums, some do have more pressure to get home on time than others. If your child attended a nursery with a heavy fine system wouldn't you be working like the clappers to make every second in the office count? Nursery fines for arriving late to pick up your children in London range from £1 per minute to £70 per quarter of an hour.

What the enemy of the working mother doesn't see is that these mums - for instance, my architect neighbour with a six-year-old; my friend who is a marketing manager of a pharmaceutical company with two kids aged one and two; and a director of a 40-person PR company who has two children aged two and five - make better use of their time than many of the childless. When did you last see a mum down the pub at lunchtime? Or stand around the office bemoaning relationship troubles or cabbage diets? Or complain about a hangover?

And if you looked into the matter, you'd probably find that the mothers among your colleagues are doing mountains of work you never see. Replying to work emails by remote access at the weekend, fitting in paperwork when children have an afternoon nap, or doing budget reports on the laptop at eight after the kids go to bed.

I know how Kym Marsh felt when she said how devastated she was at claims she had abandoned her two kids for her career (they have been living with Kym's parents in Wigan while she was working). She retorted that pursuing fame gives her kids the best chance of a happy upbringing. As a mother of a two-year-old daughter myself, it is easy to feel sensitive to the constant barrage of working-mother bashing going on. It is as if society and the media have said: these women are fair game. They abandon their kids by putting their own interests first, therefore they must take the stick. If you can't take the heat, get back in the kitchen.

If I was given a pound for every time people such as my mum-in-law have said: 'Jeannette is a truly working mother and we must accept all the consequences that come with that', I probably wouldn't need to work again.

Nor do I enjoy meeting people in industry who routinely ask: a) do you work full time? b) what are your childcare arrangements? c) do you have a very understanding husband? It's patronising and has absolutely nothing to do at all with how affective I am at my job. My husband never gets asked these questions.

So why do we have to pick over Yvonne or Kym's childcare arrangements? Is it just so people can gather ammunition to fire at them for getting enviably far in their careers? Women who knock them are ignorant. Men who knock them are insecure. Insecure that a woman not only does a high-powered job (sometimes better than them) but combines it with motherhood, too.

My daughter Hanna has not yet turned into a monster with four eyes because her mother works. And I doubt that she will turn into a teenage delinquent, however hard outsiders try to knock my confidence about working. Nor do any of my working friends' children have behavioural problems either.

Unlike other forms of prejudice - racism, ageism and sexism involving single women - there doesn't seem to be any significant body pointing out the discriminatory nature of such taunts against working mothers. It is apparently quite acceptable for a paper, even this one, to publish a reader's letter saying: 'Failure to make an unbroken attachment to a loving parent, preferably the mother, leaves a child's mental health at risk. But if we received a letter from a BNP member along the lines of 'tell pakis to go back to their own country' it would go straight in the bin.

Some women of an earlier generation 'gave up everything' to stay home and look after the kids and now feel resentful. What nobody seems to remember when they are criticising working mothers is the unhappiness, depression and lack of self-esteem many housewives then suffered. Nor do they take into account the effect on children of living with a manic-depressive who hasn't fulfilled her professional potential. Happy and confident parents make happy confident children. Not that I've anything against staying at home to look after children if you have the luxury to choose to do so. A day off at home with my Hanna is pure heaven. But you have to be pretty wealthy (especially if you are trapped by London property prices) to be able to choose a career break. Of my London friends, I don't know anyone who can afford to do so.

For years, mothers like my own have pushed their daughters through school, university, professional training etc, impressing on us the importance of financial independence and the power over your own life and that of your children by working. None of my friends could choose houses near good schools in London without two incomes.

So if you hammer away at us, telling us we shouldn't be here and that our kids are going to be 'mentally damaged', what sort of a workplace will you be left with? One that runs the country in the interests of men? Imagine the regressive effect on newspapers if they had to go back to being staffed 90 per cent by men? Or if all public buildings were designed by men, all pension funds were run by men, all drugs were marketed by men, all singers were blokes?

And look at Cherie Booth. Thank goodness she does what she does and hasn't given in to the working-mum bashers. Imagine law courts entirely staffed by men? Britain needs more, not fewer, female judges and, it is to be hoped, Cherie will one day take up a senior position in the judiciary. As the mother of four children, she has exactly the type of experience we want our judges to have.

As a mother, she will not have to ask: 'And what is Hear'Say?' The days when public-school-educated, elderly misogynists looked down from their blokey ivory towers have thankfully gone. Do we really want to return to them?