By contrast, I recently heard of a further education lecturer who withdrew from the interview for a job she would certainly have got because her husband, a primary head, couldn’t face the reality of moving even though he had initially supported her application.

For many women, this double standard is a real barrier to promotion. Added to the usual problems of house-selling and children’s education, it severely restricts the range of posts for which women can apply, particularly at head and deputy level.

Often they wait for appropriate jobs to arise in their own authority or neighbourhood. Men tend to apply more widely.

This is not a new problem in education. Many teachers are in two-career families. But as women become more ambitious, with more returning after a career break, many families will face Alice’s problem.

She is a head of department and wants to be a deputy. She could probably have found a lower-scale job in the same area as her husband’s new school quite quickly, but this would have set her career back.

She and James are prepared to cope with the inconvenience and cost of working 250 miles apart until she can get the right job.

“At least the motorways make weekend commuting manageable,” Alice says, and their children are old enough to be left for a couple of days when she travels to see James.

Often, of course, careers are not at equal stages of development. When I got my first headship, my partner Sue was prepared to take any job - and in fact moved into a whole new area of work. When her career demanded a move, I followed, although getting a suitable job took nine months.

It’s not just finding a job that can make people reluctant to move with their partner. Networks of friends and contacts have to be broken, pastimes and habits have to be interrupted, and this can lead to resentment if one partner does not have the benefit of an upward career move.

Two-career families have important questions to consider. Is each career equally important? Are the partners prepared to spend long periods apart? Is each prepared to move to support the other?

These questions are best faced when no immediate decisions are needed. Waiting until an actual choice has to be made can lead to arguments.

Other people must be prepared, too. Colleagues as well as family and friends.

“I remember how undermined I felt,” one woman head told me, “when people I worked with didn’t understand that Geoff was staying put when I moved south. They thought either we were breaking up or I was completely unfeeling.”

Three years later, they’re still weekend commuters. “It’s inconvenient in many ways, and our phone bill is astronomical,” says Geoff, “but we’re both working at jobs we love and we also have two different sets of friends and colleagues. ”

It can, of course, work out the other way. Because all joint entertaining has to be managed in weekends or holidays, it tends to happen back in the family home so that the only relationships formed in the new location are with work acquaintances.

But it does mean all the out-of-school work can be packed into Monday to Thursday nights and the weekends left free.

Children, of course, complicate the issue. Whether this kind of separation is practical will depend on their age and other circumstances. If not, then whose future should determine the move?

Women have been taking the “follower” role for a long time: now it’s men’s turn. The age of the “little woman”, prepared to up sticks and just follow her man, is thankfully gone or fading fast. Nobody wants her replaced by the “little man” meekly trailing after his stronger-minded partner, but unless a woman’s right to be as occupationally mobile as a man is acknowleged she will never be able to compete for posts on genuinely equal terms.

Mike Fielding is principal of the Community College, Chulmleigh, North Devon.