The sex and power report sounds raunchier than it is.
It’s the title of a recent Equal Opportunities Commission survey which shows that fewer women are now occupying top jobs.
The report contains neither sex nor power, just the fact that 6,000 women have disappeared from the country’s top 33,000 posts, leaving men to run everything from big business to the courts and parliament.
Don’t worry. This is not going to be a feminist rant about discrimination.
The truth is that my generation of women fought very hard and proved that it was possible to beat discrimination and reach the top.
So why do women appear to have given up in the battle of the sexes? Maybe it’s just that they were smart enough to realise that the so-called “top” jobs were not worth the fight.

Women, especially the majority of us who are also mothers, have decided that the future of equality is actually about reinventing the workplace.
A generation of frazzled superwomen tried valiantly to do it all. Women even bragged about our ability to multi-task, instead of copying men and pretending it was patently impossible to work and bring up a family without one or the other suffering.
Many sacrificed their chances of having children by leaving it too late to discover that fertility wanes with age.
So it doesn’t really surprise me to learn that even at the highest level of the workplace, women are looking for a new way forward that does not mean the destruction of health, happiness and family life.
And the very bravest men in society are beginning to follow our lead. They are the 10 per cent of the British male workforce who have asked to go part-time in the last year.

Women have always had to find part-time posts which fit in around child-rearing, school holidays or in deference to the main breadwinner.
Working part-time is not an easy choice. Obviously you get paid less, and have to be happy to accept a less materialistic lifestyle. And then there are the pension worries. Plus there is a culture in the workplace which automatically equates longer hours with a better worker.
But in practice it’s easier to put your all into a three or four day week, and come back the following week refreshed and ready to really go for it again.
And enlightened employers know that staff who have a full life outside the workplace bring fresh ideas back into the office on a Monday morning.
In this modern 24/7 economy, we should work towards a future where the three-and-a-half day week becomes the norm.

So many jobs already need seven day a week cover – shops, telephone helplines, the hospitality industry, the NHS, the media even.
The obvious way forward would be for men and women to work three-and-a-half day weeks. Not exactly job-share, but kind of.
Think of the benefits for family life. Both partners could work the same shifts, and have time to spend together and with the children.
Or when children are very, parents could choose to share out the work and child-rearing roles equally to avoid leaving babies in nurseries when they are too young.
Of course many industries, especially those which have traditionally had a mostly female workforce, are already offering such flexibility. And they are the employees whose staff report higher job satisfaction because they are free to choose a work-life balance that works.
As a single mum and part-time worker, I know I whinge a lot.
But there is a part of me which knows I am really lucky. I love my job and I love being a mum, and sometimes I feel I get the best out of both worlds.

The whingeing starts when it all feels like an impossible balancing act.
But I have seen my highly-paid, top executive brother, working a 60-hour week and permanently wired into his Blackberry palm pilot (nicknamed “Crackberry” because  they’re too addictive to put down) checking emails even when he’s back home in Torquay at Christmas with his wife and four children. I might want his wage packet, but I know that as a mother I could never do those hours without hurting the children.
Yes, true, part of me rails at the injustice. While he has been steadily promoted, his wife gave up her career in accountancy to stay at home and bring up their four children, and is now struggling to get back into work.
And it’s not fair that women still get paid 17 per cent less than the male workforce for doing identical jobs.
But I still think women are on the right track. The good thing is that we are beginning to win a new kind of power. The power to choose. The power to say No. The power to know what we don’t want.
And when men in the workplace stop being scared of giving up their positions of power, stop thinking it’s all about the money, and are brave enough to invite women to step up and help them run the country; when they realise we can do a better job of running things when we work together, then women will happily start to swell the ranks of the top job lists once again.

AND while we’re talking about getting the work-life balance right. Book your summer holidays in England this year, because the weather experts predict that last year’s sizzler was nothing compared to what’s coming up.
As well as global warming, apparently we’ve got the El Nino weather system heading this way to thank for another scorching summer season, caused by above average sea temperatures in the Pacific.
I can’t wait!