Well, well. It's a fact now. Women are getting more beautiful. Scientists at the University of Helsinki have discovered that evolution is driving women to become more and more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their cavemen ancestors.

Tee-hee-hee, I sniggered as I read the article in The Sunday Times of London. Then my eyes shifted to The Sunday Times of Malta. Good grief. There, on the front page banner, was surely the epitome of Neanderthal man himself.

The man in question had a jutting chin, snarling mouth, gnashing teeth, beaked nose with popping vein, flaming nostrils, receding mane, tufts of ear hair and an angry finger sticking up, complete with an untrimmed, long, yellowish nail. I was shocked by how much he looked like the Big Bad Wolf in one of my daughter's fairytale books.

Now please, for all I know Joe Mifsud, Malta's MFA president, lawyer and a vice-president of UEFA could be the sweetest, most swooningly handsome man in person, but that certainly didn't come across in the said photo. Perhaps he is slightly unphotogenic or perhaps, he just drives home the point of the study.

In our society, women are pressured to be beautiful; men, on the other hand, don't need to be - the pressure is on them to be successful.

According to the study, whereas men choose their partners for their physical attractiveness, for women looks are not as important as her partner's ability to look after her when she is pregnant and nursing - periods when women are vulnerable to 'predators'. In short, women choose with their minds while men choose with their, um, eyes.

Which is why women the world over are so body-image conscious. We go to huge lengths to maintain the illusion that we have a natural hairless, fragrant, buffed and sanded body. Not only that - if you visit any local cosmetic clinic, you'll be greeted by overcrowded waiting rooms. Try making an appointment with a plastic surgeon and you won't get one before next year. What a waste of money, when one considers that we don't really have to lift a finger to look pretty - evolution is pretty much taking care of it all.

The truth is that despite equality and all that, subconsciously men are baffled when a woman is successful and sits with them on the high table. They simply do not know how to behave, because success is supposed to be their field of specialisation.

This, of course, doesn't happen very often in Malta, because, as another study has recently revealed, Malta has the thickest glass ceiling in the EU, making it the hardest country for women to move up the professional ladder. Our important boards and committees and top management offices tend to be hogged by men.

So, let's zoom in on the international scene. Let's take Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, who often ends up as the only female among a bunch of male Presidents and Prime Ministers.

A couple of years back, during a G8 meeting, George Bush approached Merkel from behind and squeezed her shoulders. The video ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTSlOK2l78k ) clearly shows Merkel lifting her arms in surprise as Bush lets go.

Poor Merkel later had to contend with Silvio Berlusconi playing hide-and-seek with her on a visit to Italy ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPdr4LctMW0 ). Some time later, when she attended a glitzy event in a sexy outfit, she had to contend with male-inspired headlines such as 'Merkel's weapons of mass distraction' and 'Imagine: a female head of state okay with being a woman'.

Silly, unprofessional behaviour to say the least, but perhaps the real reason for the male confusion is fear. If women not only top the beauty chart but also the success contest, then perhaps evolution is trying to say something here: will there, one day, be a world without men?

I suppose we could ask Mifsud what he would make of that. In the meantime I'm basking in the glorious results of yet another study, this time by the London School of Economics. It revealed that not only women are becoming more beautiful but that good-looking parents are more likely to conceive daughters. Now, did I mention that I have a daughter? Tsk. Tsk.