Women aloud

I don't know about you, but I love being a woman. When I sometimes read about sporadic female wishes to become male for a day, I want to throw my head back and laugh. I mean... why?

Is it so that you see how it feels to wolf whistle and be cut down to size, to drive around with your elbow out of the window, or maybe just to be able to propose? It's a leap year, so you can just go ahead. But then, you could go ahead anyway.

Every year I - and probably many others - ask myself how come, on the one day of the year when we are supposed to be celebrating womanhood, all we do is complain. The very concept of a woman's day denotes that men have 364 or five at their disposal, and that this is our only chance to make our voices heard.

A large percentage of media coverage on this day focuses on our woes: discrimination in the workplace, problems with juggling work and family life, the increase in incidents of female smoking-related disease, obesity, breast cancer. The only day a year that's meant to have us selfishly claiming our own has turned into a whinge fest. Oy woman! Get a grip. You've never had it so good. And I can talk. I am, after all, one.

If there's any shelving you're planning to carry out, I suggest that of any plans to burn very expensive Agent Provocateur bras. Stand your ground. Expect flowers from your man, and don't settle for less; most of all, make sure they're not mimosas.

I mean, mimosas look good on a tree, at a distance, but who would want to be presented with a bunch of little yellow balls and spend the rest of the week sneezing and sniffling?

It's either pure irony or part of some devious plan that the one flower commemorating this day is a pollen pollutant and an asthma and hay-fever inducer. Atchoo! Guys, stick to the gerberas: they're colourful, humorous and easier to find.

Us women have a lot to celebrate. Let's face it: in reality it was our mothers who had all the hard grind; the baby boomers were meant to continue studying, find themselves a good job, then rush off home so they had time to put on their pristine white apron and present us with cup cakes fresh out of the oven. We, and our dads, expected it.

Our generation can go beyond all this. Education for both males and females means that an untutored woman has as many excuses for her lack of knowledge as the next man. Blaming life situations just doesn't cut it because problems are a part of being.

The ETC has been running women returner courses for years now, and this has meant a new influx of post child-rearing women who bring in a totally new attitude to the workplace. Some of them can surf the Net and organise their pc files much better than their male bosses.

It gets even better. Whereas until a few years ago, telling a highly-educated man you planned to stop working once you had children was met with incredulous looks and quasi-derision, today it's perfectly feasible and acceptable. It's hardly a financial question any more: the Nineties have shown us that, financially, both spouses working may not be the well of gold we thought it would be.

What with organising maids who make more per hour than you do, childminders who really don't give two hoots about your child, expensive weekly trips to the supermarket, and eating out not for fun but out of desperation because you're too exhausted to cook dinner, staying at home has become easier and cheaper... and sometimes a whole lot more rewarding.

Only a few days ago, a correspondent wrote to The Times charting a plan for how women should organise their lives: cut down on the workload, spend more time with your family, and a whole list of ideas to which I had only one objection: the writer is a man.

These are the naughties, and women can financially and ideologically make their own decisions. There is hardly any excuse for being downtrodden, and men and women are working in tandem, in spheres both in and out of the house. A man who refuses to wash the floor, or pack the plastic bags at the till is not just macho; he's silly.

And no, men have not become emasculated unless we've allowed them to, or even nurtured them into it. We should be expecting more, and not less, of them. If we can strip and paint the front door, as well as turn out a perfect dinner for six with a four-month-old strapped to our back, then he - the dad, not the baby - should he able to fix a puncture and change a nappy.

The problem is that the poor dears take a long time to catch up. While we were busy chaining ourselves to the railings, and demanding a vote and a breakdown in male hierarchy, he was still being bought his morning coffee and Plasmon in bed.

Very few men are really masculine these days, which, let's face it, is a bit of a let-down. They're good at their job and that's where it stops. This has meant that while we were busy becoming experts at everything - our multi-tasking skills are unparalleled - men were too occupied complaining about the rise of us upstarts.

Most women, used to their dad being the man about the house, and fixing everything from their sink to the car engine, are constantly on the look-out for a man who's 'stronger than them'.

Maybe we've become a little too efficient for our own good. Exasperated sighs of "give me that... I'll do it!" are usually followed by mutters to our mothers and girlfriends later that "he can't do a thing on his own" when we've spent years making sure we don't let him within inches of a blue flame and a frying pan.

Ladies, every now and again, it's just nice to let the other do something you probably could have done yourself. If anything, it gives you a chance to put your feet up.

Being a housewife is not the boring, complacent and ignorance-induced job it was once perceived to be. Women work in the home out of choice these days. With my University education and work experience, if I had to choose between hours in traffic for my nine-to-five, colleague back-stabbing and doing everything in a panic, and waking up at eight, buying fresh food from the market, cooking fresh dinners and enjoying my children and husband on a regular basis, I'd ditch the formal wear for the cord jeans any time.

But that's just my choice. Many others have taken a different road, and good luck to them. They made their choice and, it they're happy to live with it, then it's their business.

The good thing about 2004 is that, regardless of our choices, we both make the bed and lie in it. Whichever option we go for, it will be socially acceptable because we make it so. This year, please refrain from dragging the only day available to us into a 24-hour cry of despair.

There's enough time to do it in the other 364 days allotted to men.