All women are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Well, we knew that already, didn't we? Men have been saying it for millennia and they're always right, so it must be true. But, hang on a bit, it's not men who are saying it: it's our own kind. It's other women. Louise Candlish gets to the bottom of why we women are attacking each other

I offer myself as an example. I am a normal working mother. I am also, if a typical morning's experience is anything to go by, guilty as sin - and on three separate counts:

1. Wrong to work. So says a mid-market daily newspaper, although I already guessed this, the press has been saying for ages that my daughter will grow green horns and be served with an ASBO if I so much as glance in the direction of a commuter train.
2. Wrong to use childcare. Again, according to certain columnists, this is a recipe for delinquency (and that's if my child survives death by choking on a cheese string or turkey twizzler, which are, of course, all a non-mother would think to serve).
3. Wrong to be drawing on local council funding (in the form of a nursery grant, new children's playground, and so on). This is the view of a single neighbour of mine who is peeved that all she gets is her bins emptied.

Just as I was wondering if it might be safer to lock myself in the cellar and survive for a while on tinned stocks, the key point struck: my critics are female. What's more, all direct their criticism at me and not my partner, even though all of our choices have been made together.

And I'd feel just as wrong if I were a stay-at-home mother or a child-free careerist, single or divorced, undergoing IVF or sterilisation, getting a bit over- or underweight. All groups are routinely slated - by each other.

How did it come to this? Women attacking women and spending an awful lot of energy on it? Are we so satisfied that the battle for sexual equality is won that we can enjoy the luxury of 'Mean Girls' infighting? Whatever happened to the sisterhood?

Market research, that's what (beware the phrase 'According to a recent survey...'), along with a growing, almost obsessional, desire in society to discuss motherhood. Not parenthood, you understand. Motherhood.

The Superwoman and Domestic Goddess
I trace it back to the time when mums, quite rightly, backlashed against the media's glorification of the Superwomen. These are the women you still see occasionally in the glossies, sitting with their five children on the edge of a trampoline, taking half an hour off from running a hedge fund to help with a page or two of Chip, Biff and Kipper. (Interestingly high-achieving fathers of five are rarely pictured on trampolines, but in their offices). Soon rumbled was the fact that it is impossible to do everything in a day all that needs to be done, especially when you have to get in a couple of hours shut-eye, too. So, better than spreading oneself too thinly, surely, was to choose one thing and do it well. Some chose career. Some chose family. And lest anyone mistake 'stay-at-home' for 'stick-in-the-mud', some of the latter decided to make an art of it. Enter the domestic goddess and her itsy-bitsy fairy cakes. All hail the £2 babyccino. Rarely mentioned is the fact that the women who inspired this domestic deification - Nigella et al - have extremely demanding careers or - Bree et al - are in fact fictional.

Women can be enormously supportive of one another. In any typical close circle, which includes mothers and non-mothers, there is nothing but respect for the choices each has made. It is understood that choice is a synonym of sacrifice. But venture outside and you'll need a bulletproof vest (no wonder so many women choose to drive those 4x4 tanks). The sniping goes on in the media day in, day out. It informs public opinion. It divides and conquers.

Do we have a choice?
Forgotten in all of this is the matter of conscription: the vast majority of working mothers work because they've been called up. They must earn money. Equally, the vast majority of stay-at-home mothers don't work because the money they would earn if they did would scarcely cover their childcare. Yes, there are those who willingly gave up big jobs for 'the intimacy of a lifetime', as one author calls spending the day arguing with a three-year-old. But, for most, staying at home is nothing to do with smugly sewing name tags into Boden knickers.

It is those women lucky enough to be able to choose at all who have the time to make the accusations. They are ably assisted by the latest market research findings. In case you weren't aware, these 'findings' are a form of Chinese whisper. Quite apart from the fact that magazine surveys are not conducted by independent researchers, even the most ethical researcher might phrase questions to elicit a particular response or to prove an pre-agreed hypothesis. Secondly, it is the job of a good journalist or sub editor to pick away at the subtleties to get to the 'bones' of the issue. Thus, 'Do you think women perceive combining work with motherhood as complicated?' - the answer, overwhelmingly, is 'yes' - becomes 'Mothers turn their backs on work.' Not quite the same, is it?

A manifesto for all women
So, in the interests of simplicity, here is a new manifesto:

If you are a mother or not, working or not, pregnant or infertile, old or young, director or trainee, student or retired, and you are largely law-abiding and good-humoured, then you are fine by us.

All women are equal and none are more equal than others.

Now that's sorted, let's move forward - or should I say backward? They may seem like yesterday's issues, but as long as the male colleague next to you has a different figure on his payslip from yours, as long as two woman a week are killed in the UK by a current or former male partner*, we need to get back to the original war. Sorry to say, but it was never actually over.

*Source: Women's Aid (www.womensaid.org.uk)