IT TELLS you a lot about the state of our occasionally UnitedKingdom when a woman going to work becomes a big news story. A very,very big news story. It was, of course, not just any woman. It wasthe former Sophie Rhys-Jones, now the Countess of Wessex, and afterher pleasant Scottish honeymoon with Prince Edward she returned toher career as a successful public relations executive this week.
On the doorstep, as her bodyguard fumbled with the office keys,the Countess was surrounded by a contingent of journalists. Thanksto years of PR experience she maintained a radiantly royal demeanouras she answered the burning questions of the day. These includedthat most significant inquiry, 'Sophie, how is the marriage going?'
It is difficult to overstate how perverse this moment seemed.Imagine calling up someone you know intimately - your best friend,your brother or sister, your mum or dad - and asking the same thing.'So, John, how's the marriage going?' Or, 'Mum, how is your marriageto Dad? OK, is it?' If that is borderline insane, now imagineasking the same question of a complete stranger.If you went around the country asking people you had never metabout the state of their marriages, you would be arrested - ordetained under the Mental Health Act. But if you happen to be ajournalist and ask for a marital status report from a member of theRoyal Family, instead of being locked up you get your story into thenewspapers.Rather like the front-page photograph of the Queen - anotherworking woman - having a cup of tea in a working-class Glasgowhousing estate, royalty accomplishing even the mundane somehowbecomes news. Of course, there are those on the republican left whoregard the Royal Family as parasites, in which case the revelationthat the latest addition to the royals actually does an honest day'swork for an honest day's pay may indeed be a big news story. As forthe vast majority of Britons, well, some of us remain puzzled thatatthe end of the 20th century this kind of stuff makes the papers orgets on the telly, especially when it is replete with suggestionsthat there is something dash-it-all modern about a married womanoccasionally going to the office.But Sophie's tale obscures the fact that there really are manymore significant stories about the problems faced by women at work.A painkiller manufacturer, Solpadeine, carried out a survey of 1,500British women and discovered that nearly two out of three, 60 percent, regularly get headaches because of stress at work. One in sixhas burst into tears in front of her boss, and more than half of thewomen surveyed had worked through the night to meet a deadline. Onewoman in five even said that commuting to work was especiallystressful thanks to the body odour of fellow passengers.A separate, Government-backed study found that almost one workerin four suffered extreme stress in the office, with symptoms rangingfrom headaches and sleeplessness to excessive drinking.Then there was the landmark court case of Beverley Lancaster, whofought her former employers at Birmingham City Council for six yearsover work- related stress. They moved her from a back-room job as asenior draughtswoman to dealing with tenants as a housing officer inSutton Coldfield. By her own admission she became a nervous wreck.Ms Lancaster made legal history, and was awarded pounds 67,000 incompensation.After the hearing, in comments that will have been cheered bymillions of British workers who understand exactly what she istalking about, Ms Lancaster said, 'My employers should have listenedto me, but I was treated like a number not a human being.'Yet the most significant woman-at-work story of recent months andof many months to come is that of Hillary Rodham Clinton, a womanwhois a role model for coping with stress. Mrs Clinton, as everyoneknows, is positioning herself to go to work as Democratic SenatorforNew York state, the first wife of a serving President openly to runfor office.The Republicans are determined to paint Hillary, the girl fromIllinois, working wife and mother from Arkansas, and First Lady fromWashington DC, as an outsider to New York, a carpetbagger. Thesuggestion is that winning the Senate seat in 2000 is merely aconvenient stepping-stone to what Hillary really wants - a fullpresidential bid in 2004 or 2008. Well, maybe. But even with allthat against her, there is something about Mrs Clinton's decision towork for high office which all but confirmed Clinton haters findadmirable.One of the reasons why Hillary is so adored by so many people,especially younger women, is that she has become an emblem offamiliar problems. This goes way beyond what she once described asstanding by her man like some little woman in the Tammy Wynettesong.It is the sense that Hillary, a woman at least as talented asBill, put her career as a lawyer on hold to act as political wifeandmother while carrying out an impossible balancing act betweentraditional and modern women's roles. Mrs Clinton has frequentlyalluded to this, referring to herself as a 'transitional' figure.She straddles what women were once expected to be, what they noware,and what they may become. As she acidly put it in the 1992 electioncampaign, she could indeed have stayed home and had teas and bakedcookies.But the real fascination of Hillary Clinton is that she manages tobe loved and loathed across America precisely because she is asymbolof this transition, and of the deepest social divisions of the pastgeneration. As the commentator Michael Barone once remarked, Hillaryand her husband represent a generation that did not fight inmilitaryuniform as their fathers had done, and did not stay at home and lookafter the children as their mothers had done.Underneath the cool exterior that once earned her the nickname ofSister Frigidaire, Hillary may be one of the 60 per cent of womenwhoregularly get headaches from stress at work, but you would neverknow. Hillary does not look like a woman who gets headaches. Shelooks like a woman who gives them. Now, with her daughter atuniversity and her husband coming to the end of his presidency,Hillary Clinton is doing one of the most difficult things possiblefor any woman, relaunching a new career in mid-life. The catch isthat, unlike those following the Countess, in this case journalistsasking the question 'how is the marriage going?' may in fact be onthe right track.Now, of course, I may be completely wrong about British populartaste when it comes to interest in Sophie going to work as opposedtoHillary going to work. It may be that we have become infantilisedby years of royal trivia, our British diet of cultural junk food.And it may be that all over this country little girls still go tobeddreaming of one day marrying a prince, and never dreaming that theymight run for high political office instead. But when I look at myown daughter I suspect that Britain has changed, and that littlegirls really dream of what they may do rather than who they may be.The writer is a presenter on BBC News24
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