Women have been turned into wage slaves by feminism, Fay Weldon, one of the pioneers of women’s rights has said. 

Ms Weldon, speaking at a book festival in London, said: “Once it was only the men who were wage slaves, and now it’s the men and the women too.” 

She added: “You do feel some qualms for these women who actually have to shove their children’s arms into clothes at five o’clock in the morning and get them off to nursery.” 

However, she went on to claim that feminism was “the least worst” option for women. 

“If you have no aspirations and don’t want to do anything except exist, then perhaps the pre-feminist world was better,” she said. 

She also argued that people “on the whole are happier than they were before, although everybody’s much more tired”. 

However, a study published by earlier this year indicates that women’s happiness has actually dropped over the past 35 years. 

The study, entitled “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness”, by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfer, found that, while women’s lives had improved over the past 35 years “by many objective measures”, measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men.