I think we should all call ourselves feminists.

Marriages are failing, and mothers are raising their children alone. Many women would rather remain alone than marry a man who can't contribute anything to the family's income.

The launch of a space shuttle can still make you weep with amazement and wonder, if you happen to be watching it.

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.

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.

What the economy requires now is a whole different set of skills: You need intelligence, you need an ability to sit still and focus, to communicate openly to be able to listen to people and to operate in a workplace that is much more fluid than it used to be. Those are things that women do extremely well.

That's not a convincing argument. Public sector jobs are cyclical. Teachers get fired when money is tight, then rehired when things get better. Manufacturing jobs, on the other hand, aren't coming back. They're relics of a past age.