The dramatic strides which have women have taken over the past four decades into public life have taken their toll on family structures, the keynote speaker at the Women in Public Life conference said yesterday.

First Lady Bernadette Christie of the Bahamas said social and economic re-engineering will be required to strengthen the family unit once again and concepts such as "flexi-time" may need to be enshrined in law.

Speaking at the luncheon on the first day of the conference, Mrs. Christie highlighted both the gains - and losses - she believed women had experienced in the past 40 years.

"The role of women in Western societies has dramatically evolved over the past 40 years resulting in a fundamental transformation of our civilisation, though not necessarily for the better," she said.

"Whether it be at the controls of jumbo jets criss-crossing the Atlantic or standing astride billion-dollar conglomerates of global reach; whether it be as bishops of the church or as doctors or lawyers, accountants or bankers; whether it be as soldiers or sailors, police officers or politicians, automobile mechanics or construction workers, the traditional stereotype of the woman as a homebound mother, doting on her children and mate, with no life of her own, has been shattered forever.

"Today there is virtually nothing that men do that women do not do."

But, seemingly out of step with a conference highlighting the roles of women in the public sphere, Mrs. Christie focussed on the negatives of these social changes as well.

"The liberation of women has come at a great price and the shackles that have been cast off have, I fear, ended up just one generation on, around the necks of the innocent," she said.

"Whether we like to admit it or not, it is our children who have had to pay the heaviest price for the paradigm shift that has taken place.

"There is a simple, inexorable logic at work here: if women are out working all day, whether it be in some corporate office or in the local market, the traditional nurturing role they play in the lives of their children diminishes commensurately. There is no getting around that."

The reality for most women, however, Mrs. Christie noted, is that working outside the home is not a choice but a necessity.

"The harsh reality, of course, is that most women - in Caribbean societies especially - have no real alternative to the way they are forced to divide their time," she said.

"Single-parent homes in which the woman is the sole breadwinner have proliferated over the years and in many of our societies the clear majority of births are to unwed mothers who stay that way.

"The abdication of paternal responsibility has left more and more women to fend for themselves and their children.

"Economic necessity has therefore dictated that the mother find her way into the world to put food on the table and pay the bills because the burden is entirely on her shoulders."

Meanwhile, Mrs. Christie suggested, individualism has become the dominant ideology of our times at the cost of the greater community unit.

"In this treacherously competitive and complex work in which we live today, we have alienated ourselves from each other and from our own families and our social responsibilities to the extent that we spend our time and devote our energies in pursuing our individualistic quests for personal success and high achievement at the expense of the things that are infinitely more important: in particular, love for family and the nurturing of children - not as an abstraction but as a life's work at the centre of our lives as women," she said.

"This may seem a decidedly anti-feminist declaration to make but it is, I am convinced, anchored in an ageless truth.

"So, what are we to do?"

Social policy must be re-oriented towards the strengthening the family unit, the First Lady of Bahamas suggested, for example, through mandating the option of flexi-time.

"The concept of flexi-time needs to become a more universal feature of our economic culture and it may even be necessary to make it a feature of our employment laws to overcome resistance to it," Mrs. Christie said.

"We simply have to find a way that will allow working women to spend more time with their children during the hours of the day when it matters most.

"To the extent that these hours may represent a disruption of commerce is obviously something that we have to contend with."

Commerce may slow, she added, but "I'm not so sure that society as a whole ends up on the wrong side of the bargain".