In the US in recent years, around a third of all open management positions have gone to women. My research over the last three years has shown that the trend is going in the same direction at all levels. And by the way, it's not necessarily that the rise of women is causing the end of men - it's more the other way around. An increasing number of men are failing during their education, losing their jobs and then not managing to get back on their feet, so women have had to step in. The driving force here isn't feminist conviction, it's economic necessity.

When women gain access to higher education and then suddenly start doing better at it than the men, that can really throw the prevailing social order out of balance. That's exactly what's happened in South Korea, which is a highly patriarchal society. They started educating women, and then they were no longer the women that society wants them to be. That caused a real cultural crisis.

Men are now also in the minority among the entering traditionally male-dominated areas such as law and medicine. Finance and politics are still firmly in male hands, but in many other areas it seems the proportions are shifting in women's favor. Boys are doing worse at school and university. It's only logical that this imbalance, which can be observed in most industrialized countries, will change conditions on the job market.

NASA projects often have romantic names that link into a long history of exploration and adventure: Atlantis and Discovery, for example.

One way the Tea Party has benefited female candidates - and the conservative movement generally - is by consciously steering clear of social issues.

It's a fact that within the space of a few decades, women have achieved a massive shift in the role they play - in the way they act in public, and in the way they have conquered areas of the working world that were until recently considered a man's domain.

Fixing things around the house was the last bastion of manliness. But now, even that is getting taken away. As women become more economically independent, they are starting to fix things around the house for themselves.