More than a quarter of a million British women with teenage children earn more than £50,000 a year, according to new research.
Research carried out for online bank Egg dubs them “Triple C supermums” – women with careers, cash and children.
The figures, based on a survey of 500 working mothers, put the average annual income for mothers at £21,221. The corresponding figure for fathers with children in the same age bracket was £37,000.
But nearly a third of British women with children earn more than £100,000 and one in six now earns more than her partner, including Cherie Blair, whose legal practice means that she earns substantially more than her husband, the Prime Minister.
Egg calculated that some 419,000 women in Britain earn between £30,000 and £40,000, 201,000 earn between £40,000 and £50,000 and 124,000 between £50,000 and £75,000.
Moving up the income scale, 51,000 earn between £75,000 and £100,000,48,000 are paid between £100,000 and £250,000, 16,000 women earn between £250,000 and £500,000 and 15,000 earn in excess of half-a-million a year.
The findings echo the situation in the United States, where the number of women on salaries of more than $100,000 a year more than tripled between 1991 and 2001.
But Shirley Conran, who famously coined the term 'superwoman' in the 1970s, described the survey as " codswallop".
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph she said "I would like to know who these women are. I don't believe it. I can think of no faster way of not having money than having children. Is this codswallop? I would say that is a polite way of putting it. It sounds like a bra size to me."
Andy Deller, director of banking and insurance at Egg said: "While men can famously only concentrate on one task at a time, even women who have high-flying jobs, it seems, can multi-task by raising children and running a home."
But a poll of 2,000 women by Top Santé magazine earlier this year suggested that this multi-tasking comes at a heavy price.
Six out of ten women said that they were so fed up by the struggle of juggling work and life that they would like to give up work altogether. Nine out of ten felt they were trying to fulfil too many roles, while two-thirds said that poor work-life balance was the key to their deep frustration.