The future is female

(... you mean it isn't already?) Women may soon become the dominant sex, a senior scientist predicted yesterday.

Changes in the workplace and advances in reproductive technology will make distinctions between the roles of men and women irrelevant, said Baroness Susan Greenfield.

A shift towards officebased jobs will give women more scope to take on the traditional male role of bread-winner.

At the same time, medical techniques allowing them to delay starting families and to do so without a male partner will fuel the argument that 'men will no longer be needed'.

Baroness Greenfield, an Oxford University professor and the first woman director of the Royal Institution, made her comments in the lead-up to the BBC2 drama If . . . Women Ruled the World, to be shown tomorrow night.

With the rise of 'girl power', ladette culture and the trend for girls to outperform boys academically and socially, many could argue female dominance already has a foothold in society. Baroness Greenfield, who has made her name with a mix of academic brilliance and a striking taste in fashion, predicted a future that builds on this foundation.

'The future could be female for many reasons - perhaps the most obvious is that we will shift increasingly from manufacturing industries, requiring muscle power, to work with our brains in

front of the screen,' she said. 'Women, therefore, will no longer be disadvantaged because they are unable to tote the barge and shift the bale. More importantly, flexible working from home will not be so difficult to combine with looking after children.'

Official figures show 55 per cent of women with children under five already have jobs, putting those who stay at home in the minority for the first time.

Three out of five new mothers say they only return to work because they cannot afford to stay at home - but the Baroness believes this will change as working from home becomes more common.

She argued that the pressure on women to choose between a family and a career will diminish as new technologies allow women to freeze their eggs and save them for use later.'

American doctors recently announced they could effectively reverse the menopause by removing and freezing ovarian tissue which can be transplanted back into a patient years later.

Critics fear the technique could be used by women to delay parenthood until their 50s or 60s - just as men can do.

But Baroness Greenyou-field said such advances would allow women to better plan their lives, achieve more in their careers and, in conjunction with IVF, ultimately threaten to make men redundant.

'Imagine harvesting your eggs at the age of 18 or so when they are in optimum condition, knowing that you could then choose at what stage in your life might want to reproduce,' she said.

The Baroness admitted it was 'hard to see' how devices such as the 'Orgasmatron' in the movie Barbarella could replace 'fulfilling, loving and physical relationships'.

But she warned that new technologies could make us 'less inclined and able to communicate, and therefore happier in front of a screen rather than talking to, let alone loving, our fellow man'.

If...Women Ruled The World is set 20 years in the future. It tells the story of a teenage student whose mother is planning to have a baby alone at 52. Her story is set against the political backdrop of the first female U.S. president visiting Britain.