Single women in their twenties and thirties have it rough, we’re told.

They put in what adds up to 43 working days’ overtime a year and don’t get paid a penny extra. Their employers expect it of them. Even at weekends, there they are, poor things, answering e-mails and business phone calls. The (mostly male) Trades Union Congress (TUC) sees this as shocking, assuming women stay late at the office to please the boss and get promotion, and have too heavy a workload anyway.

I dare say this is true for some. But perhaps some young women just like the office? They’ve filled it with pot plants and frills and it’s a rather nice place to be. Miss lunch and you ingest fewer calories. Stay late and you avoid the rush hour, and you can turn the keyboard upside down and shake out the crumbs and enjoy all the other small pleasures office life affords. You can get everything clean and tidy and ready to begin again the next day. You can buy stuff on the internet, or write your blog, or tan your legs in the loos. It’s not a “promotion” kind of job, anyway: few are. And perhaps weekends are boring, or spent with your parents, when a business e-mail or phone call is welcome. If male colleagues like to leave on time the sooner to hurl themselves into the noisy fracas of the pub, then that’s their choice. It’s just not yours. For many young women, work is life and life is work, and why not? Most relationships these days start and end in the office. It may be that women without children don’t make the same distinction between office and home life that TUC men do.

Once a woman has children, though, life gets serious and exhausting; then let the TUC worry. She leaves work on time because she has to, not because she wants to, to collect the children from school or nursery. She works hard for promotion because the mortgage is up again and the credit-card debts of an earlier, carefree life have to be paid off. If she has to make a choice between time with the family and pleasing the boss, the family usually wins. With men, employment does. He’s a single-tasker. He’s hierarchical by nature: show him a ladder and he will want to climb it. A multitasking woman with a family looks at the ladder and thinks, no, alas, not for me. A rally-driving instructor once said to me: “The minute a girl has a baby, she stops being able to drive at more than 125mph. Becoming a father makes no difference.” I believe it.

The work/life balance, I would suggest, is a male concept. Women were born to work – some of it is paid and some of it isn’t. Men invented leisure. That is to say, the pub, football and television. Women find it difficult to do nothing; ceaselessly building and repairing the nest as they do. Men visit from time to time, bringing the odd twig, the odd worm, pass judgment and then fly off, the better to out-earn each other.

Go into a woman’s office and she has tried to make it like home. Even Martha Stewart, in her prison cell, designed a range of pretty prison furnishings. A man’s office tends to be status focused: in “my desk is bigger than yours” mode. There may be a photo of the wife and children to cheer him up. You seldom see a photo of a husband in a woman’s office. Your guess is as good as mine as to why not.

All over the EU, we are told, women work longer hours than men, are better educated and earn 15% less. Put that another way – men are better at skiving off, less likely to put up with being bored at school and will choose higher-paid jobs. Little in the world of work is fair. Women also live longer. The female of the species throughout nature outlives the male. Alas, today’s woman can look forward to 11 years of poor health at the end of her life: men only six at the end of theirs.

Nothing in nature is fair, either. A multitude of studies show that when women are menstrual, their cognitive ability and verbal dexterity drops markedly. That’s five days out of every 28 not on top form. Decades back, when women’s “cyclical nature” was cited by men to keep women out of the workplace and busy at home ironing shirts, it was perhaps wise to keep quiet about such findings. Surely, we are now brave, bold and well paid enough – even though not equally – to face such facts and cope with them? Society strives, and rightly, to achieve gender justice in the workplace, but let’s not pretend it’s easy. Equality is an uphill task.

Can the shocking 15% pay gap be the result of male oppression? Well, 40% of all EU women work in education, health or public administration, compared to 20% of men. These occupations are low paid – as extensions of traditional caring and mothering into the workplace tend to be. However, they are steady, practical and useful jobs – not mad like advertising, or grossly competitive as in the City, or high-risk like sky-diving. Women, one concludes, would rather be sensible than have fun. Or perhaps they just have to be.

The director

Joy Burnford, 32, is marketing director of the Management Consultancies Association and director of Sourceforconsulting.com. She is a self-confessed workaholic, whose working hours are from 7.30am till 11pm, plus time at weekends Our parents’ generation didn’t work in the same way we do. If I’m in a restaurant and someone is five minutes late, I check my e-mails or have a window for a call. I use each minute wisely.

I know men who work hard, but they can switch off more than women. I would definitely want to go back to work if I have children – I need the mental stimulation.

Women have a list in their heads of all the things they have to do. I feel as if I’m spinning plates all the time. Everybody is different, but feminine skills – gut instinct, multitasking – help me to make business decisions quickly. I’d have to say that I think this gets better results than a more male way of working.

Work is in my head all the time, and when I’m at home, I find it difficult to relax. Even if I have a cold, I carry on with work. I never really switch off, but as soon as I sit down at the end of the day, I fall asleep, because my brain has been constantly active.

The assistant

Louise Hinton, 28, works for the two managing directors of Capital MS&L, a financial communications agency. She says she is more than happy to work overtime I’m at my desk by 8.15am and the latest I’ve left the office is 10pm. If a company is listing on the stock exchange, you have to be there and do what it takes. I can be back at work by 6.30am before the markets open the next morning.

I’m not the only one who is here past 6pm – everyone works hard to build the business. It is exhausting, but I catch up with sleep on the train – you get used to the tiredness. I still see friends, and I wouldn’t do this every day if I didn’t enjoy it.

My generation was brought up to work. My school reports said I was a worrier, a perfectionist, conscientious. As long as you are working for a company that recognises a strong work ethic, you get rewarded.

I do think men have a different approach to work – it’s rare to see them on the admin side. Maybe guys do get away with things sometimes, because there is a girl behind them pushing them along. But I don’t work in that kind of environment – I’m told I’m a valued member of the team.

The PR executive

Katie Pearson, 32, is a PR manager for Hob Salons hairdressers. She often works at evening events after a long day in the office, but she doesn’t see it as a problem I don’t think women work harder than men, but we do tend to have 10 things on the go, and I have to have that skill in this job. At events, it helps to be tactful, charming, diplomatic – women are generally good at that. These days, women want to push themselves as far as they can go. We want to be taken seriously in the workplace and be equal.

I’m often entertaining or networking in the evenings. The social events are friendly, but I always have my work head on.

If an event came up at the last minute and I have planned a night out, obviously I would cancel my plans. I’ve been trying to plan a trip to Thailand for God knows how long and have put it off three times.

I grew up knowing I wanted a proper career. If I was going to have children, I’d want to come back to work and juggle it. I think my boyfriend would like more time with me, but he understands when I cancel social arrangements. Working hard is the norm.

Fay Weldon’s novel The Spa Decameron is published by Quercus at £7.99

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