21 AUGUST 2004, Page 23

A woman's true role

From David M. Benda Sir: To paraphrase a famous man, whose name I've forgotten, Michael Hanlon's piece (There's no time like the present', 7 August) has got everything right except for the inter

pretation of the facts, at least in regard to the pseudo-liberal West. His praising of the absolute equality of women with men as societal progress is one way of looking at it. The other is to lament the demise of the millennia-long segregation of tasks between the sexes. Before the rightful suffragette movement morphed into a fully blown-up feminism, women took the responsibility for what may arguably be the only job we humans should do well: the bearing and raising of children. Today, women aspire to, and often do, everything but. The scarcity of food could have been hardly enjoyable. Its abundance hasn't delivered the promised land either, Clinical obesity is predicted to lead to the shortening of the lifespan of today's young. Paradoxically, undernourishment still remains the only sure way of expanding the longevity of human life. The progress in medicine is indeed keeping alive those who would have perished as early as 50 years ago. However, it has also lowered the quality of the gene pool.

David M. Benda

Sudbury, Suffolk