Radio 4 are looking for suggestions for a 'Women's Power List', which comes accompanied by the ongoing debate about why there are still so few women that hold powerful roles. Or rather, so few that are publicly prominent and recognised. I was really shocked to hear John Humphrey's on the Today programme saying that they couldn't find a female expert to discuss breast cancer so asked a male expert to 'imagine' he was a woman. Luckily some women have taken the initiative to address this with a new website listing experts.

One obvious change that I never hear suggested is to reduce the crazy work hours of these senior roles. The macho culture of staying in the office for 10 to 14 hours is ridiculous. Its bad for our health, social life, relationships. And I'm convinced that long hours doesn't necessarily mean you are more productive. Granted when you have a very senior role you do have to work harder, as your responsibility grows and there are more decisions to take, but this shouldn't mean that you spend long days in the office every day. There is this amazing invention, the internet, which has removed the need to physically be in an office all day at certain hours. So why not work when you can, arranging it around all the other commitments life has? And if you are working from 8am to 8pm 5 days a week, and on the weekend, perhaps you are actually doing two people's jobs.

you don't need to look this to be superwoman

If you are in a senior role, you have it within your power to change this working culture, to lead by example, and to create a more positive working environment for those lower down the pay scale. This is the revolution that will enable more women to go back to work once they've had children, and for more men to spend time sharing childcare without the stigma that less hours means less commitment. Or for those that don't become parents, they should be able to finish work at a reasonable hour without having to pick up the slack for those leaving to pick up their kids from school.

A friend told told me about her (female) director who denied a part time working application for a new mother on the basis that 'I had to work full time whilst being a mother, I found it hard but had to make sacrifices, so why shouldn't you too?' Where's the sisterhood! If I ever get to a senior role where I can shape the working environment, top of my list will be making sure everyone is able to work around their life, not live around their work.

The curse of multi-tasking

At a party last weekend I was reassured by a group of inspiring women about taking a week to write one simple blog post because of baby distractions. Your brain feels fractured into endless simple, repetitive tasks. One had managed to write a chapter of a forthcoming book about how to be a writer on parental leave with all the unavoidable perpetual interruptions (while caring for her four month old).  Impressive!

The hard truth is that to do most things in life to any successful level you need stretches of uninterrupted time to focus or let the imagination wander. A painter, composer, designer, architect, carpenter, brick layer, they all require focus whether to make sure the walls stay up or the joins fit.

So it concerns me that women are always told they are naturally good at multitasking when this is beneficial to managing a household or caring for a baby, but translates badly into most work contexts.

Multitasking in the work environment – checking emails while trying to draft a paper, or sending a text while in a meeting – has been shown to reduce your IQ level and damage your efficiency.  It is common sense that trying to do several things at once often means that no one thing is done thoroughly.

I've observed so many times in offices how it is women who are left, or volunteer, to do the juggling of the administrative tasks while the men focus in on opportunities to concentrate that will further their career. I think it’s this cultural belief that women are naturally more suited to those multitasking roles that contributes to gender inequality.

I have done this myself so many times. I envy my husband who can sit at the kitchen table, enter his creative world and write a chapter while surrounded by dirty dishes and the phone ringing. I will always allow myself to be distracted by thinking about what to cook, who I need to phone and whether the floor needs a clean, before I focus on writing.

Perhaps the multitasking woman was selected for in cave times if it meant you could look after a baby and keep an eye out for danger. But cave dwelling is long behind us, and so should the myth of women being the only multi-tasker. 

If we are to see greater equality at work and at home then women need to get over being the ones that multi task the best, and men need to learn to become better at this when it’s needed – for domestic and child care. This multitasking myth simultaneously lets men off the hook – “I can only do one thing at a time” means the dishes and laundry pile up while the baby is being cared for – and keeps women from breaking free from the tyranny of a million tiny distractions.

On living a balanced life

At a party on friday night I was chatting to someone I had just met. He was a tall good looking guy describing his apparently perfect life; his successful career making feature films, a wife he loved and a healthy small daughter. Yet his wife had moved to Bristol and they met at weekends. They decided there was no point in her staying in London when he worked such long hours that he didnt see her or the daughter, passing each as they came and went in their busy life. This was a solution to him keeping his job and losing the guilt, and her having a less urban life that she craved. Yet she was now struggling with having to work and look after the child. They were having to keep working hard at high salaries to pay for their two houses and travel backwards and forwards from the two cities. Perhaps they will find this will work out. But it struck me that they were in this familiar trap of success.

To me the ultimate sign of success, as I define it, is being able to spend most of the time doing the things you love, and that includes being paid to do the things you love, being paid enough to be able to take time to do things you love that dont pay! Having time to play the piano, write your blog, spend a day helping a friend, making curtains, spending time with your child or partner.

Making curtains!

Gustavo bee-keeping

Flexible working is an essential ingredient to redressing the appalling in-balance of women in senior positions in the workplace when they have returned to work a mother. This is not just about ensuring women can balance a senior job and being a mother by providing good part-time jobs. Its also about ensuring men also want to take part time jobs to be a father too. It hadnt occured to the film-maker father that now he was in a senior position at work that he could negotiate reduced hours. Yet I bet he would be used to negotiating better pay at work or promotions.

We have never been more wealthy now in 2011. We have far higher expectations of comfort levels and technology to make chores quicker. Yet I cant understand why more people aren't aiming to work less hours a week as part of their vision of 'success' that they work towards. Its not just a parenting issue, but a question of having time in your life to do your hobbies, to be a friend, to volunteer, to grow veg, or just to enjoy the seasons. This inevitably also means living on slightly less. But that's not necessarily a sacrifice, just a question of being more careful and clever about the money you do have - by making and growing more of our gifts, home decorations or food. All things that apparently everyone wants to be doing more, but doesnt have the time. Hence Jamie Oliver's 30 minute cook book being a roaring success.

Gustavo and I are both now working part time, not because we are sharing child care, but partly a response to pragmatic circumstances working at charities with limited budgets, and mainly due to a desire to have other time to work on side projects, to work with neighbours growing food on our estate, and to tend to his bees. I supposed Cameron would like to think we are a model Big Society couple as we are both setting up social enterprises part of the time we are not in our paid jobs. But really this seems to us the only way we can really live a balanced happy life. It means we can take a risk with a social enterprise without sacrificing our careers. And I can start writing again without worrying if its a viable career option, but just because its what I like to do. We've only just begun this part time life, and are definitely having to be more frugal or creative (depending on the energy levels!) and cant go out as much as we did. So lets see how it works out. But so far I am finding it hard to imagine wanting to go back to full time, if I am lucky enough to be able to keep finding good part time jobs.

I'm going to keep a track on inspiring stories of people who are living on part time jobs. I have read about a few men in law firms setting this trend. Here is one for starters.

The New Economics Foundation recently published a report about the 21 hour week, arguing that it would help tackle unemployment - more jobs to share - as well as help reduce environmental impacts (less travel to work?), and better health - less stress, more time to exercise and cook and grow food.

I have a friend making a documentary about the 21 hour week. Will this be a future trend? Lets make it happen.

True Romance

One of the perks of part time jobs meant that on Valentine's Day we could take off for a lovely long walk in Hampstead Heath, browse a book shop with a coffee, duck into a pub at 4pm, and then relax into a film at the cinema. Lucky our choice was well rewarded. True Grit was a fantastic treat; to watch a film beautifully made, and a good tale well told. Although I love Jeff Bridges, and he was so enjoying playing Rooster Cogburn, he's really a supporting role to the fantastic Mattie played by Hailee Steinfeld. It was so great to watch a female character stealing the limelight, not because of her youthful looks or cynical wit that comes with age, but because of her intelligence, strength and sense of justice. I love the character and wish there were more like that.

Its funny that Gustavo and I met on Valentine's Day because we now mark that as the day we met, despite the fact that neither of us care that much about the concept of a valentine's day. Romance is a daily surprise to me and something I will try to write about without being gushing or bragging but because I think its something to celebrate and enjoy. And because its actually pretty rare to encounter in its pure, genuine form without some form of cynicism.

I've been inspired by the protests, from the success at protesting against forestry sell off to the Egyptian youth overthrowing their President. And it strikes me there is a common thread between pure passion for justice and pure expression of love (whether at the world or a person). Its a really refreshing change from decades of the dominant culture of cynicism. Dont get me wrong, there is a place for that, and for questioning and for laughing at absurdity and people who take themselves too seriously. But this surely must be balanced with passion for the truth and innocence? I think we need more of this innocence, of idealism.