Is it a bird? Well, it’s certainly not a bloke. Is it a plane? No, but it’s
turbo-charged. That multi-tasking, effortlessly able creature soaring miles
ahead is a woman. What’s she got that men haven’t? She’s got the lot.
She is more likely to have a better degree in a tougher subject than her male
counterparts — and more and better A-levels, to say nothing of GCSEs. She is
a better, safer, less pointlessly aggressive driver. She is better at DIY,
too. According to findings last week, 38% of children learn their DIY skills
from their mothers, as opposed to 34% from their dads. She is even better at
handling pain, as anyone familiar with man-flu (or man-bronchitis, or
man-pneumonia) might attest.
To put it in a nutshell, she works harder and gets better results. She is
going to rule the world . . . but she doesn’t necessarily know it yet.
All hail, superwoman: for this week is her week. If she is a tennis player,
Wimbledon is finally going to pay her the same prize money as men. If she is
Tracey Emin, she is due to be one of only four women to represent Britain at
the Venice Biennale since 1950. If she is Anne-Sophie Pic, the French chef,
she has just been awarded her third Michelin star — putting paid to the
notion that men are the creative geniuses in the kitchen while their female
sous-chefs are quite good at chopping. Pic is the first woman for 50 years
to be awarded the distinction.
“I had to fight because I was both the daughter of the boss and a woman,” she
said last week. “Cuisine has been a very male chauvinist milieu for a long
time in France but things are changing.”
So it goes on: hail Stef Penney, the first-time novelist who recently waltzed
off with this year’s Costa (formerly Whit-bread) prize, beating established
heavyweights such as Seamus Heaney and William Boyd. If it didn’t sound so
absurd, you could say that women are having a moment. They are the new
master race.
Not convinced? Ask Martin Amis — not a man previously lauded for his
impeccable feminist credentials. Thanking Tina B r o w n recently for making
him feel attractive at a time when he felt like a geek, he said: “To spell
this out, I am not only a feminist, I am a gynocrat. That is to say, I
believe in rule by chicks.”
Rule by chicks? This is not unlike the ferocious old pugilist Norman Mailer
announcing that he wishes he were a little girl, skipping through the
flowers and cuddling ponies. What’s going on and where does it leave men?
FOR many men the idea of a high-achieving woman is half-hilarious,
half-alarming, and wholly and problematically emasculating.
“My wife earns more than me,” said one last week. “I pretend to be pleased for
her. But you know — inside, I’m dying. So’s my career, while we’re on the
subject. Unlike hers . . .”
The man’s wife said: “Does it b o t h er him? I think so. And it bothers me,
to be honest — I feel like I’ve taken my big scary scissors and cut off his
balls. He doesn’t actually know exactly how much I earn — I lied about the
figure and made it smaller. I don’t want a divorce.”
The battle is not quite won yet, obviously. But it is heading that way.
Take last year’s A-level results: girls outperformed boys in every subject
except foreign languages, with a higher percentage getting A grades — their
best performance in which, for the first time, more than a quarter of girls
were awarded top grades.
The government’s plans for half of young people to go to university have been
scuppered only by boys’ underachievement. By August of last year, according
to data published by the University and College Admissions Service, 30,000
more girls than boys had gained university places. The difference is such
that the proportion of women aged 18 to 30 attending university, which at
present stands at 47%, is likely to hit the government’s target of 50% by
the end of the decade. Boys, however, languish at 37% and show little sign
of improving.
Working-class boys are particularly affected; working-class girls, on the
other hand, are grabbing further education opportunities with both hands. In
absolute numbers, more women than men take first-class degrees; and while
the pay gap remains a reality for older women, girls aged between 22 and 29
earn 0.1% more on average than men. Granted, it’s not much. But it’s
practically revolutionary compared with past figures.
Slowly all the old stereotypes have been turned on their heads. Take women
drivers — long the butt of tiresome jokes. Last month it turned out that men
get five times as many road convictions as women — and that rises to 22
times for dangerous driving, according to the Home Office.
Men are seven times more likely to drive while drunk; they are four times more
likely to be careless drivers; they are five times more likely to have an
accident, and three times more likely to speed.
Women are more stoical, too. A 2005 health and safety executive report found
that men are three times more likely to take time off work for back pain,
while women just turn up and suffer in silence, even though 49% of women
complain of recurring back pain, compared with 40% of men. IF women are
outdoing men in so many different areas, why aren’t they ruling the world?
“Despite the infinite ability of women to multi-task, be emotionally astute
and to psychically communicate with all the other women in the universe, we
remain permanently one step behind our male counterparts,” said Stevie
Tyler, a 23-year-old PR from London.
“The reason I put forward as to why, despite our clear genetic superiority, we
are still paid less, promoted less and are physically abused more is because
we allow it to happen. It’s our own fault.
“Despite all of the women I know being witty, intelligent, articulate and
outwardly confident, most treat themselves with a lack of respect which not
even the most chauvinistic would struggle to compete with. I am talking
about a lack of body confidence, trying to be a size 0 and not a size 12 and
going on diets involving chilli powder and water. We fail to rule the world
because we worry about what other people think of us.”
A working mother of two in her late thirties admitted: “I never say I went to
Oxford. I say ‘college’. I don’t want to put anyone off. And you should see
me in the office — I’m so meek, it’s like I’m another person. I do much more
than my fair share, and when I’m asked to do more still, I always say yes.”
Why the pretence? Perhaps it is because women are still terrified of being
penalised in professional terms for having a family life: too much insisting
on not missing bath time at home and you may find yourself out of a job
(although that would never be the reason given).
Much the same point is made today by a government inquiry headed by Trevor
Phillips, Labour’s new equality boss. It finds that women with children are
more discriminated against than any other group in society. If these women
were allowed to make the most of their talents, the country would be £23
billion a year better off.
“Yes, it seems girls work harder and get on by steady and dogged persistence,”
said Joan Bakewell, the writer and broadcaster. “But then they’re too modest
to take the credit for what they’ve achieved. Women should be less shy of
boasting about what they do. Then they’d get the credit they deserve.”
Go get ’em, girls.
Failing men
While women are forging forward with veracity and pace, men — young ones in
particular — are struggling
- More than 90% of the prison population of the UK is male, although female
numbers have increased
- Between 85 and 95% of offenders found guilty of burglary, robbery, drug
offences, criminal damage or violence against the person are male
- The suicide rate for men is 3.7 times that for women. The rate for young
males has shown a big increase in recent years
- Men are now more likely to be cheated on: 40% of females cheat on lovers,
and just 34% of males
- Average life expectancy in Britain is 77 for men and 81 for women
Yes women have all the advantages today be it in healthcare,
education,divorce,anything you care to name .Standards are
deliberately downgraded so that women can take over mens'
jobs,except of course badly paid dangerous work,there men have to take up the slack.Double standards,hypocrisy,A lying
media,an unscrupulous use of the law by the judiciary,it will all
come home to you in due course.
Women now make the rules and men have to play by them.
Women are now almost exempted by the law for any transgressions that they may make ,right up to murder
so I cannot see much hope for the future.The media hype it up all they can to belittle their own men who have a much lower life expectancy than women,especially since men have to fight all the wars with no hope of returning to anything.
I hope,when women do finally take over they will send the scribes and politicians out into the fields to work and get their hands dirty.Gynocracy is nearly here folks.
mike savell, eastbourne, east sussex,UK
Why am I even reading this? Everything the media produces now has the same message: I am worthless, I am filthy, I should go and kill myself. Maybe I should.
According to the BBC I am "a sac of guts and genitals like tapeworms" and a "parasite". Radio 4 says I am an "animal". According to Netscape women are the "master race". Now I can add the Times to my list. I have accumulated hundreds of comments online where people call out for a gynocracy and/or the extermination of my "kind".
So why am I still here? We are a minority in this world - you keep telling us that. You, the Times, have the ability to manipulate the feelings of the populace. You have already done so in this article. So what are you waiting for? Kill us all, if we are so undeserving of life. Set up the death camps. Many of us will gladly march into the gas chambers. Kill me and have done with it, just get it over with. I just don't want to have to listen to your smug voice any more.
SRegan, Hampshire, UK
Women have much less pain resistance than men. A study using heel-clamps revealed better pain tolerance in even the oldest male subjects than any of the female.
The statistics for driving have not been adjusted for mileage. Men average much higher than women, not least because the vast majority of professional road users are male (as with most dangerous, underpaid work).
I wonder how many of the male convicts were attempting to provide for a female partner and/or family. Were all these women ignorant of intended or ongoing criminal activity? Is it possible that some women actively encouraged or suggested it? There are many ways that a woman can apply pressure, directly and indirectly, but yet there is no accountability. The crimes that are nearly exclusively male are more examples of dangerous, unpleasant work that only men experience the desperation and pressure to resort to.
Dan Rich, Manchester,
For the record, why bother going to school if when you get out the other side you end up being told you can't apply for the jobs in question because "no white males need apply?"
Congrats, women are now doing better than men. All they needed was to revamp and make education female oriented, and enact laws saying women should get preferentially hired.
Vermin, Fife, WA, USA
Better Driving? Difference in definitions there.
Women : Better=Safer
Men : Better=Faster
More children now learn DIY from their mother? Well, could that be because a lot of children never even see their father or only on alternate weekends?
I do however agree that flexible working would make things a lot better for everyone - even help fix traffic congestion!
Andrew Davie, Huntingdon, Cambs
Oh and by the way, Josephine from St. Albans, the caveman days were the days of...the Matriarchy! Which is where we're heading pretty quickly.
Bram, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
So all these women are going to take care of me?
I can just lay down and be taken care of then,
I can't find work anyway so I might as well
get on a pension and have some woman take
care of me and see to my every need.
Good bye working world, shame you would not
take me, no one hires the handicapped anyway,
might as well live off the riches of these able women.
TigerMax, Tiggerville, New York
I utterly disagree with the smug, competitive tone of the article. Most disturbing, however, is the implication that women now apparently rule the world, and all that is bad that happens to men is the fault of women, and all that is bad that happens to women is our own fault.
The truth is that, globally, women only hold 6% of top corporate management positions and 1% privately owned land. The majority or riches and power are still held in the male hand. Men commit 90% of violent crime and 1in4 women experience some form of sex assault in their life.
Men suffer as women do, in different ways, but not so broadly and they do so at the hands of a system instigated, controlled and staunchly upheld by other, usually richer, men.
There needs to be a comprehensive rethink in the expectations of both genders to ensure that men are not left floundering for identity because they have been deprived of an arbitrary position of dominance. But not at the expense of the progression of women.
Joanna, Southampton,
A wonderful article. Sometimes I wonder about whether some men (especially examples like those before) have left their caveman days just yet.
Josephine, St Albans,
And so the men's marriage strike just got a little stronger. Keep printing these articles, more men will wake up to the disaster that is the modern womyn.
Thank you.
R. Kipling, London, UK
Yawn. Has there ever been a more conceited social group than modern feminist women. Achieving nothing but harping on about how fantastic they are and what failiures men are. When is this unjustified inflated junk going to end ?
Jack Torrance, london, uk
I'm amazed! What a hate-filled screed. More young men commit suicide than women - Yay! You go girl. If the reverse were trure we would be seeing stories about how the patriarchy is to blame and gov't inquiries launched to investigate and eliminate this "life gap" women are suffering from - but it's only men so "You go girl!"
Anyone ever stop and wonder why boys are underperforming and killing themselves? Being bombarded with an endless stream of sexist garbage like this article (which is also sums up the environment they face in school) from the time they are young boys might have something to do with it.
It is possible to build up women without tearing down men.
Kevin, New Glasgow, Canada
Yes dear.. you're absolutely right ... of course you're going to rule the world ... and I'm happy that you're such a good driver ... now can I watch the Rugby please?
Andrew Dean, Exeter, Devon
Pucci, I think you've been paying too much uncritical attention to the propaganda that the women's pressure groups put out. Unequal pay is not 'the standard'. Tell me, if it was the standard to pay women less than men, why wouldn't one company simply employ all women and thus out-compete all its competitors through the cost savings?
Equally, I've never even heard of a men's health group.
But all that asside, how do those points (even if they were valid, which they aren't) excuse demeaning men and celebrating their suicides?
Darren Blacksmith, Brighton, UK
http://www.myspace.com/mensmovement
Men's Movement, England,
Err to the blokes complaining - Discrimination against working mothers is on the rise, unequal pay is still the standard. Are you so insecure that an article celebrating a couple of achievements that should not have to be fought for make you revert to the old man hating argument?! Regarding breast cancer - the statistics are much higher, you also have to look at how well womens health groups are run as opposed to mens - where this is still embarassment in even going for a check up.
Pucci, London,
Erm, genetic superiority obviously doesn't come with superior compassion i must assume, as it's hardly a triumphant thing that men die four years younger than women !
This vaguely reminds me of the fact that almost as many men die from testicular cancer as women die from breast cancer, yet the balance of funding is so highly in favour of breast cancer it most certainly could be categorized as 'sexist'. When oh when will people begin to realise that articles like these are simply hate filled rants out to mock half the world population (Namely men).
And people wonder why marriage is in decline while divorce is skyrocketing !
Jay, coventry,
Up the girls! I do agree with the point made in the article referring to women being too meek to take credit. Self deprecation is a humane, witty quality but some women do venture into self loathing in order to appear unthreatening to other women and men. Me - Im a gob on an attractive stick (not weight terms) and proud of it!
Pucci, London,
Yawn. Another pile of man-hating rubbish. The only reason females do well in school and workplaces these days is because thed education system has been made female-friendly and positive discrimination ensures women can get jobs they are not qualified for over qualified men.
Duncan, England,
I think its rather sick to publish a triumphant 'Go get em girls' article in which one of the pieces of 'evidence' is that men are almost 4 times more likely to kill themselves. Is this really something you wish to celebrate?
Most of the 'evidence' that this article uses to bolster its claims of female superiority, do not stand up to even the most basic logic. For instance, women are better at DIY than men? Why? Because 38% of children learn their DIY skills from their mothers compared to 34% from their fathers. Given that, for various reasons - including women divorcing the father, or the child never having the opportunity to meet their father - you would expect more children to have to learn those skills from the mother, simply because they spend more time with them. This could be the case even if mother's DIY skills were practically non-existent. It telling you NOTHING about the levels of skills that fathers or mothers possess in this area. Yet its given as evidence for women, as the headline claims: "Outperforming men" in the area of DIY.
Darren Blacksmith, Brighton, UK
I love the title. Why can't more titles be like this - pow, bish, bosh...kerblammo!
CM, London,
Master race? Genetic superiority? Where have we heard those kinds of phrases before, I wonder?
Malcolm, London, UK
You would think we'd have stopped denigrating suicide victims in the 19th century but in the Times, a suicide victim is a 'failure' (as long as he's male). Likewise, shorter life expectancy and greater fidelity are both represented as examples of men's 'failure'.
Poor educational attainment, higher suicide rates and low life expectancy are all problems that need addressing. But they will not be addressed in a society whose media dismiss these problems as 'failure' by men themselves.
Malcolm, London, UK
Jason of Grimsby, We chaps must be careful what we say in public. For a hundred years and more we have carefully constructed a virtual world in which women are superior to us in almost every respect. As a result, one day soon we will be free again.
We have abolished our manufacturing industry so as to encourage girlie things like management consultancy and 'caring' - isn't it true that the girls are so much better than we at bossing people about and telling them how to live? We have amended our examination system so that the girls can improve their results astronomically. Our schools are so dumb that no boy wishes to be seen dead in one. We gave them the vote (give 'em enough rope ...). We have invented technology that even girls can use (but not understand - we're not that stupid). Best of all, we've made them legally more equal than us. There's been nothing as good as this since we first tamed the horse - that enabled us to gallop off to the pub!
Don't spoil it, old man.
Stuart, Chester,
Interesting, but don't you remember the way men used to treat women before the feminist enlightenment? Because the use of phrases such as 'our clear genetic superiority' is reminiscent of the old chauvinist rhetoric. Or doesn't it matter the other way round? Equality, not superiority.
Nick Dovey, Birmingham, UK,
'She is better at DIY, too' - '38% of children learn their DIY skills from their mothers, as opposed to 34% from their dads' this does not prove that females are better at DIY but tend to teach their children DIY skills rather than the father.
'The reason I put forward as to why, despite our clear genetic superiority' this is absurd.
Jason, Grimsby, UK
So you're bragging that men commit suicide more often than women are you? And laughing at the fact that boys are struggling in feminized education institutions?
And you modern women wonder why so many young men regard your sex with utter contempt these days.
I wouldn't spit on a woman if she was on fire.
Duncan, England,
i would be interested in the results for offenders found guilty for prostitution, i think it would have the same percentage reflection of say, burglary for men. I wonder why that is? , maybe because burglary is at the moment a male domain, we should make sure that in the future woman are given equal opportunities in burglary and men in prostitution.
gary, lisbon, portugal
God bless your innocence. With all of the inequalities and injustice commonplace in the world today how could you be so consumed with women's performance in society? Statistics can be invented to prove anything. Try and use your media voice for something a little more constructive.
Sarah Hargreen, London, UK
perhaps women out performing men is because women have had to fight harder for their rights and have developed a drive to succeed.
Who knows?
Steph, London,