Would comparing International women?s day to a bright short-lived spark in a long male-dominated life be a fully unjustified irony? On that date, we suddenly find more to women than a widely publicized eye-teasing body otherwise fit for sex and childbearing. An occasion for women to steal the short-lived media stage and show that their head, widely mistaken for a punching ball, is in fact the seat of equally important grey matter.

The global probability for young women to die from ?cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war combined? is lower than from male violence!

(1) Domestic violence being the number one form of abuse against ladies in this world irrespective of racial, socio-cultural and class background.

Yet the weak sex, as so called and treated, is often said to be behind the success of great men as if the best she could do was to ensure the success of the opposite sex.

Can the compliment be reciprocated for the few great women the world has known up to now?

For instance, was Asif Ali Zardari an asset for wife Benazir Bhutto, the ?youngest person and first woman to head the government of a Muslim majority state in modern times?? (2) His suspected corruption and money laundering activities might have rather contributed to her downfall in 1996? Was he not indicted by Swiss judge Daniel Devaud in 1998 on charges of transferring money illegally ?

(3) Similarly, the sultry episode of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky at the White House might be more a liability to the presidential ambitions of Hilary Clinton than anything else. Yet her sense of forgiveness and loyalty might counteract adverse effects and work to her advantage concerning this incident.

Was Sanjay Gandhi a good adviser to his mother, PM Indira? Did Anthony not contribute to Cleopatra?s downfall?

These questions are not meant to prove the superiority of women over men but they call upon our sense of equity to have a different outlook on gender issues.

Why should a womanizer, for instance, be called a playboy while his female counterpart is compared to a bitch? Why is it that most cooks are women while the majority of chefs are men? Why is it that the awkward driver in front of us be de facto considered a woman ?

And, if proved to be a man, why should insult be added to injury by thinking his mother might have taught him how to drive?

A change in mentality from both men and women is urgently required to progress in gender issues. Is it not said that cathedrals are built in the head before the first brick is laid? Women and men complement each other.

As would say Lady Astor, they are ?different brooms? of equal worth, it belongs to us to see that they sweep the right rooms... Until then, we will have to live in a dirty world filled with the filth of inequity.

Alain JEANNOT (1)International women?s day 2007 website (2)Wikipedia. (3)New York Times.