The National Women's Council has described the change in standard rate tax bands in the Budget as an attempt to force women "with a stick" to take up work.

The council's chairwoman, Ms Grainne Healy, said the extension of the standard tax band for working couples while leaving the band for single income couples unchanged was coercive and discriminatory. "Simply, we're really at a loss to see how the Minister can say that this kind of measure should encourage women to return to the workforce."

In the meantime, Women in the Home, a forum for women who work at home, has said it is considering a legal challenge to the measures.

Ms Healy said: "It's as if the work women are doing at home is obviously of no value as far as the Minister is concerned. Forcing people into the labour market is not acceptable. These are not cattle we're talking about."

Condemning the measure as "ruthless", Women in the Home also claimed it was unconstitutional. "You just can't treat different categories of families differently and it downgrades the work of women in the home. It's anti-family, anti-children and anti-women," said the group's chairwoman, Ms Norah Gilligan.

But she conceded that the potential cost of a legal challenge would be a major factor in deciding whether to proceed.