Should she stoop to conquer?

According to recent studies, there are now statistically more female graduates than male. Hurrah! I hear you feminists cry. Girls are also getting better results in school examinations. Whoopee! I hear you bra-burners cheer. This may be all well and good in terms of academic ammunition against those of the male variety. But are you all still celebrating when I tell you that as a result of this intellectual girl power, there is now a severe reduction in the boy talent pool? Cue silence.

Some women may be perfectly content with a perfectly groomed piece of eye candy surgically attached to their elegant arm. Other women may be as happy as sand girls mothering a man who cannot string a sentence together, let alone a sonnet. But surely some women must be downright distraught at the thought of spending the rest of their days searching high and low for that apparently endangered species. A highly-intellectual-yet-dashingly-handsome-and-utterly-domesticated-not-to-mention-wonderfully-witty-with-a-side-dish-of-sex-appeal man. Surely this is not too much to ask?

Call me old fashioned, call me anti-feminist, call me a weak example of the Modern Millie, but I want a man who can teach me about the Northern Rock crisis, take me through Beethoven's 4th symphony and explain to me what on earth went wrong in the Middle East. Not a man who will teach me how to play Pro-Evo, take me through the off-side rule and explain to me why Branston Pickle Baked Beans just can’t quite compete.

Ok, so I may be being a little harsh. But it shows what a twisted world we live in when it emerges in an article called "The Miranda Complex" published by The Times that just like the successful character from America's top series and female on-screen style bible, Sex and the City, some fraught yet frightfully intelligent females are now going to such drastic lengths as to conceal their victories, promotions and pay packets for fear of putting off their next target.

My mum always used to tell me that the reason no spotty teenager came within a 3 mile radius of me was because XY chromosomes have an inherent fear of splendidly tall lasses. This did not, of course, stop me wearing four inch stilettos. Well perhaps the same is true of intellect. A mediocre male feels mentally second-rate and thus emotionally threatened by a woman whose IQ surpasses his own.

The sad reality is that many a high-flying lady now feels that she will send a potential partner packing if she so much as whispers her Christmas Bonus. For we women know how easy it is to bruise a boy’s ego, damage his hard-man act and land him with an inferiority complex.

But then again, I don’t blame them because what it all boils down to is good ol’ tradition. A universal, unwritten code of conduct which dictates that men should win the bread and women should cook it. Or that men bring home the bacon and women should baste it. It is human nature that man be hunter, woman be gatherer. Ugg. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with this.

What I do think is that in a society where ever more women are beating male counterparts to the top-dog jobs then perhaps it is time for this somewhat archaic rule to be cast aside. Macho men should try to savour the fact that their woman is as, if not more, successful than they are, whilst refusing to let her help fix the showerhead. They should stand on the table and shout about how proud they are, whilst grumbling that their dinner is cold. They should give thanks for a society replete with bright young girls with whom to produce bright little babies, whilst secretly praying it’s a boy.

But then again, this revolution in gender binaries won’t happen overnight. Maybe men need more time to get used to the idea. Maybe this is too much to ask. And maybe it would just be better for us females to declare simply half our salary, for machismo’s sake, and keep the rest for those January sales.