"The way things are going Ffion, I might be spending more time at home anyway"

The party has pledged to reduce tax bills of some married couples with young children by up to �1,000 a year, if they win the general election.

While the offer is open to men and women, it seems to be one way of reviving that much maligned domestic institution - the humble housewife.

The housewife's lot has not been a happy one of late, pitched as it is, against the combined influence of women's liberation and labour shortages.

By choice or otherwise, and many claim the latter, millions of British women have surrendered their dusters and pinnies for the nine-to-five in recent years.

Highest rate ever

Between 1971 and 1999, the proportion of economically active women in the UK increased from 56% to 72%, the third highest rate in Europe. At 12.5 million, there are now more "working women" in the UK than ever before.

Some men are setting an example in the kitchen

The housewife may still exist, but at this rate obscurity looms somewhere in the middle distance. Unless, perhaps, the Tories have their way.

Lynn Riley, secretary of the British Housewives League, is not holding her breath. Even if Mr Hague does overturn Labour's sizeable lead in the opinion polls, she doesn't believe he truly has her interests at heart.

"It's a help, a step in the right direction. But really they're throwing a peanut back to us," she says. "This is a sop to try to reduce the burden of taxation they imposed themselves."

Mrs Riley says governments have been running the housewife down since the 1960s, through economic disincentives such as cutting and eventually abolishing the Married Couples Tax Allowance.

'Liberation' at a cost

Mrs Riley has no truck with the belief women have been liberated by their careers. A survey last year by Top Sante magazine appears to back up her opinions.

Women are trading domestic life for paid careers

Of the 5,000 women who answered a questionnaire, 62% said they were overworked, 75% thought they were underpaid and 77% believed career stresses were damaging their health. Only 23% were happy with their career.

Women were not made for the cut and thrust of the office, or the "stifling boredom of the biscuit factory", says Mrs Riley.

"Being a housewife, bringing up children, nurturing, defending and protecting the next generation is in our nature.

"It's a thankless job with long hours and a lot of heartache. But if we all worked in a biscuit factory there would be no next generation at all."

Women's institution

Mrs Riley believes the notion of the wealthy, independent woman is one put about not by "real women" but those in the media and Parliament "who're earning �50,000 a year".

"How to be a Domestic Goddess? I'm still on chapter one"

And while women have thrown themselves into the world of wage earning, men have not reciprocated on the housework front. The latest survey by National Statistics shows women spend almost twice as much time doing household chores as men.

The housewife's pride received another dent when, last year, Labour's minister for women, Tessa Jowell, said "housewife" was a degrading term. In future, she suggested, they should be called "carers" or "full-time mothers".

Despite their flagging fortunes, all is not lost for the housewife says Mrs Riley, who has been impressed by the hype surrounding one particularly popular home bird, the best-selling author Nigella Lawson.

"I think she's fabulous. She's sharp, clever, conscientious. She's not ashamed of raising her children."

Home truths

Mrs Riley believes Ms Lawson, writer of the somewhat ironically-titled How to be a Domestic Goddess, is an example to women who don't want to be ashamed of putting home first.

Will the housewife make a comeback?

Americans have also been warming to their own new advocate of home life - Cheryl Mendelson, author of Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping Home. The 884-page volume, which tackles topics such as knitting and carpet shampooing, has been flying off the shelves of book stores in the States.

Whether this is the start of a new beginning for the housewife remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Mrs Riley and the 56-year-old British Housewives League will continue to fight for their way of life and battle against so-called "women's lib".

"A housewife is a liberated woman," says Mrs Riley. "Men have always done the brutish jobs and looked after us."