Hay Festival 2013: Working women are Cinderella in reverse She added: "Now, I've got a colleague at Oxford who refers to the Allerednic syndrome, which is Cinderella spelled backwards. So in the old days, you might remember, a handsome Prince marries a scullery maid and turns her into his princess. Nowadays, the prince turns his princess bride into a scullery maid. She added the description was "a little overstated," but added time-diaries kept by men and women in marriage, detailing the type of work they each carried out, backed it up. "Highly educated women are becoming more like men," she said. They are choosing not to have kids, or if they're having children they're often taking the minimum time out of the workplace, outsourcing childcare to other women with less earning potential. Speaking to author and journalist Gaby Hinsliff, she said a "generational replacement" meant the situation was already getting better for women. As well as a reduction in the pay gap over the last few decades, she said, Britain now had a population "more open to other ways of men and women dividing up family and work responsibilities."