The endless debate about women in the workplace continues with two very different stories this week.  First new research revealed that what women want in 2010 is a husband who’ll be the main breadwinner so we can stay at home and raise the children.  Apparently today’s generation is returning to the traditional values of home and family, with the men going out and doing the work.  Whilst our mothers, or even grandmothers, lived through a time when women fought for full-time work and better pay, today women with young children are going back to the very traditional division of labour in which they want the husband as the breadwinner.

In contrast celebrity mum-to-be Denise Van Outen ignited the debate in a different direction yesterday when she spoke out about how she how she wanted to work but felt that she had lost her judging job on a BBC show because she was pregnant.  In her words “I’m not ill, I’m having a baby.”

So should women stay at home or go out to work?  Who knows – personal circumstances or desires make the choice for most but at least women today have the option.  When Anne Diamond fell pregnant for the first time in 1987, there was total outrage that she planned to continue working five days a week as a presenter on Good Morning Britain.  As she explains ‘My pregnancy was even the subject of a leader article in the Guardian, along the lines of ‘what is the world coming to when a pregnant woman expects to continue with her high-profile job as though nothing has changed?”  It’s hard to believe but she was in fact the first TV presenter to be pregnant and to go on doing her job!