With the surprising news from the Home Office that men are just as likely to suffer from domestic violence as women, it is still my opinion that women have the worst of it.

This week, in particular, has not been easy for the fairer sex. Mind you, is it ever, you wonder, as you cope with the mundanities of life? Home can sometimes be a fountain of drudgery and endless sock-matching as they disappear into the washing machine forever, but for high-flying career women, too, it is a tricky existence. Never mind having your cake and eating it, you have to bake the damn thing yourself too.

And just when you think you have it sussed, just when you think that maybe, just maybe, you too can have it all: the chubby- cheeked family, the career, the Clarins face mask and other such necessities, along comes a headline-hitting crisis about a baby-killing nanny.

Across the land, feature writers on broadsheet newspapers furiously faxed out their funny/sad/horrific experiences with nannies and au pairs, recounting how the Swiss/Australian/French girls they took into their homes ate too much chocolate, tried to run off with their 14-year-old sons, and had an IQ barely above room temperature.

Not since the Louise Woodward case (ie not long ago) has there been such an interest in nannies and, subsequently, the whole issue of whether women should go out to work or stay at home to look after their offspring themselves.

It is a big decision leaving your children with someone else. We know full well that the majority of child carers do just that (ie care for children) but you can't help but have a niggling doubt especially if you don't know that person very well. You worry about all kinds of things: will they be able to cope? Will they really be all right, you wonder nervously, and most importantly of all, will they be safe and free from violence? And once you've stopped worrying about the child minders, you start fretting over the children.

What is the alternative? If you give up your career and rely on your man what happiness are you guaranteed then?

Huge Texan model Jerry Hall didn't exactly give up her career when she got it together with Mick 'Big Lips' Jagger but she did get into the habit of saying things like: "A woman without a man is like a fish out of water on a bicycle" (?) and spouting marital advice to all and sundry about how to be a good wife you have to be "a cook in the kitchen and a slapper in the bedroom". And she stood up whenever he walked into the room and was basically being totally devoted to him.

And look where that got her. He is even denying that they were ever married.

Things were looking bleak for our morale in general and then along comes a documentary from Pakistan last week about crimes against women and hey, I'm so depressed I'm ready to slit my wrists. Though I could just wait and let a man do it for me.

But still, despite the doom and gloom, hope springs eternal. I've just read that a man placed an ad for a wife in the paper and got 11 replies.

Nothing strange about that except he is 98.

Hmph, who needs Women's Lib when you've got drips like these?

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.