Women are as smart as men - so why don't they show it?

But women, in my experience, don't think they're stupider than men. They do seem hell-bent on presenting themselves that way, though. Who would look at a woman's magazine and conclude we are possessed of superior intellect? Other than in the areas of shoe and bag selection, where the female of the species has developed a kind of super-ability, we look like a bunch of trivial ninnies, obsessed by relationships and wrinkles.

We know we're made of smarter stuff. We just choose not to display it. And younger generations of women act even dumber. This may, in part, be down to existing in a culture that can't seem to get enough of Stephen Fry, while female brightness has a negative value. But I think it's more to do with our own collusion in the dominant message of the day - that looking right is more important than what's inside.

I'm not suggesting we need to operate like frumpy bluestockings to be taken seriously. The facts about female academic achievement speak for themselves: girls consistently outperform boys at every educational level. Except in maths, which simply shows that our brains work differently.

There are other areas where men have the upper hand - parking, map-reading, the offside rule in football. Emotional intelligence isn't one of them - women are better than men at reading a situation - but the flipside of this is astonishing emotional stupidity among my sex.

Women, myself included, find it harder to strip the emotion from a tricky work situation. Yes, it's partly due to being newer to this workplace game than the guys but it's also because we're shot through with fluctuating hormones. Can we please just admit that and stop shouting "sexist" if anyone else points it out?

And I'm up for a full-scale argument if any one of my girlfriends wants to challenge the notion that highly intelligent females waste vast amounts of time and energy picking over the bones of the most minor relationships.

Nonetheless, women are clever. And we're doing well professionally. So we should expect to see both genders achieving equally in the workplace, complementing each other's innate abilities. But that's not the case. Men still do better. Women are still "managed out" of good jobs when they become pregnant.

Why do bright, capable women let this happen? Because men are strategic. They use phrases like: "when women have babies their brains turn to mush". They know precisely where to aim the killer punch - at our self-esteem.

In situations such as this, it's strength of character and assertiveness that women need to survive. Our IQ score is irrelevant.