While one would might think that the option of being able to take a year-long paid maternity leave would be supported by women’s organizations, you’d be wrong, at least according to the head of England’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission who thinks that such a policy will make women of child-bearing age unappealing job applicants. “The thing I worry about is that the current legislation and regulations have had the unintended consequences of making a woman a less attractive prospect to employers,” Nicola Brewer, head of the U.K. Qualities Commission said, according to Reuters.

In a Times piece, writer Alice Thomson had a slightly different take:

“A century of women’s lib appears to have been negated; maybe it would be kinder to teach our daughters to sew, play the piano and cook, to help them to enjoy their home-making careers. Or maybe the concept of a glass ceiling is as old-fashioned as a chastity belt. Some employers may not be employing ‘women of a certain age’ any more, but increasingly it is women who are deciding they don’t want to work flat out once they have had children. They are redefining themselves as mothers who work rather than career women who happen to have children.” (July 2008)