(AUSTIN STATESMAN) 10 June 2007:

Recent surveys of wants and desires are showing that men and women are becoming more alike. Sure, Mars and Venus still feature, but it’s as if the orbits are getting closer.

In centuries gone by, when work was mostly about gross physical labor, it was natural that men would be those who went to do it while women ran the house. Now that work is mostly about brain power and mental skills there’s little to stop women working and earning as men do.

What this in turn means is that men are freed from the burden of being the only provider. The interesting result of that is that what each sex wants turns out to be pretty similar: yes, interesting work, but also a decent home life, time with the children and so on.

It might be that, hundreds of years after the Industrial Revolution, we’re finally all able to be human again, instead of just worker bees.