Companies like I.B.M. have offered women scholarships to study engineering for years, and women engineers routinely get higher starting salaries than men.

There are 80 jobs in which women earn more than men - positions like financial analyst, speech-language pathologist, radiation therapist, library worker, biological technician, motion picture projectionist.

Without husbands, women have to focus on earning more. They work longer hours, they're willing to relocate and they're more likely to choose higher-paying fields like technology.

Male bashing is everywhere. It would be a mistake to view the current situation as another skirmish in the war between the sexes. Women have been doing the shooting, and men have been burying their heads in the sand, hoping the bullets will miss.

Men are fair, and they have learned not to personalize anger - they can disagree with you and argue to the bone, but afterward they still consider you a nice person with whom the underlying human relationship need not be altered.

Choosing safety is a choice of life over career.

The problem is that Americans care more about saving whales than saving males.