Women have won the war for equality but it has left many of them imprisoned and exhausted, a pioneering feminist has claimed.

Campaigner Erin Pizzey, who founded the world’s first refuge for battered women in 1971, claims the idea of women happily combining a career and a family has proved to be a myth.

The 70-year-old said women’s ‘freedom of choice’ to have both has left them with less spare time than they had before.

But she added that many now did not understand what they had lost.

Speaking as part of a BBC programme about the role of women in the workplace, she said many are mothers who are having to juggle jobs at the same time.

She said: ‘There’s been a subterranean war between men and women which has been won by women and they don’t actually understand what they’ve lost.’

The campaigner added: ‘I don’t think anybody foresaw that what a freedom of choice would do is imprison many.

‘Many women, they don’t have a choice now, they have to work, they have to work hard, and I just see an exhausted generation of women trying to do it all.’

Her comments feature on the first episode of BBC2′s The Trouble With Working Women, which is to be screened in June.

The programme looks at why men still dominate the top jobs and on average earn £369,000 more than women across their career.

Miss Pizzey’s comments come days after the publication of Labour’s Equality Bill which gives employers legal powers to discriminate in favour of women and ethnic minorities.

Erin Pizzey pictured in 1976 outside the High court with campaigners battling to keep women's shelters open in Chiswick

The Labour deputy leader hopes to boost the proportion of female and ethnic minority staff, as well as pushing more of them into senior roles.

But the Equality Bill, which brings together nine major laws, has prompted grave concern that white men could miss out unfairly on jobs.

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Last year an academic claimed that many women wanted to raise families rather than pursue careers.

Dr Catherine Hakim said: ‘The myth that all or most women would be just as careerist as men, if only they were given the opportunity has been exploded.’

Pizey recently spoke out about the court case which saw her receive an apology and damages over claims made about her in Andrew Marr’s book.

She took action over claims in the BBC journalist’s book for his TV show A History Of Modern Britain which suggested she was a terrorist sympathiser.

Marr had written that Pizzey had been a ‘cadet enthusiast’ in the Angry Brigade, the militant anarchist group the detonated bombs around 1970′s London.

A peace activist and champion of women’s rights, she told how she cried on hearing what had been written about her and was never a member of the group.

She took legal action against publishers Macmillan for defamation. Macmillan offered her an unreserved apology and agreed to pay substantial damages and costs.

During her career, she has campaigned to liberate women from their abusive husbands.

Pizzey, who has never described herself as a feminist, fell out with many in the women’s movement because she did not share many of their views.

The middle-class Christian said many feminists were obsessed with destroying men and marriage and said for many it was like a ‘born again’ religion.

She has previously claimed women need to stop competing with each other with things like dieting and cosmetic surgery.

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