What do women want? According to Catherine Hakim, senior research fellow at the London, School of Economics, it is not what her feminist colleagues think we want. For decades, Hakim says, they have been trying to prove that women aspire to the same things men do, and that wicked patriarchal laws and attitudes are to blame whenever and wherever they fare less well.

She used to believe the same, but now her own research has forced her to accept that she was wrong. Only a quarter to a third of us want careers. There are just as many of us who want to devote our lives to our homes, children and husbands. Why has this important fact been suppressed? Academic feminists, she charges, cannot believe that other women do not want careers as much, as they do.

So when a women talks about wanting to be a dependent wife, feminists jump to the condescending conclusion that there is a man somewhere pulling her strings. Even when they are forced to admit that the puppet population is too large to be entirely ignored, they work hard to underplay its significance.

Partly this is because they know that the feminist cause will be weakened if it becomes clear to the public that not all feminists agree. But there is another, more sinister reason, she says: they slant their data to support their political-agenda. They are committed to getting equal rights legislation through because it suits their interests as career women. It does not concern them that this might not be in the best interests of homemakers.'

In a stinging article in the British Journal of Sociology, she set out to ruin the con by exposing five feminist myths on employment. It was not true that more and more women were entering the work force, nor was it true that women's commitment to work was the same as men's.

Contrary to common feminist wisdom, part-time workers did not see themselves as exploited, and most were not longing to go into full-time work. Repent! ' Repent! Get out of the power and persuasion. business! she commanded her academic peers. ŒGet back into the truth business where you belong'.

The response has been swift and harsh. The March issue of the British Journal of, Sociology contains two separate articles by a total of 11 other academics rejecting her claims. They accuse her of using only the data that support her case and of using some of this data incorrectly.

Even where they do agree with her findings, they refuse to read them as evidence that women without career's are perfectly happy with their lot. Her own conclusions would be more convincing if she had used studies that examined the some women over time, say Jay Ginn of the National. Institute for Social Work, Sara Arber of Surrey University, Julia Brannen of the Thomas Coram Institute at London University and seven others. And where, asks Irene Bruegel, of South Bank University, London, does she get this idea that in feminists think all women want careers? It is common knowledge that "for most women, work is toil, done out of necessity, not self-fulfillment.