Equilibrium - 2054

In terms of gender relations, the years encompassing 1969 to 2054 can be broken down into four distinct phases.

The quiet revolution (1969 -2000) - During this period, males were still the dominant gender, as they had been for centuries. They controlled the political and economic spheres and wore trousers and flats shoes as symbols of their dominance. Women were either homemakers or employed in low status, low earning jobs, usually supporting male bosses. A very few number of women occupied high status occupations. Most women wore skirts and high heeled shoes and were encouraged to be pretty and submissive in tribute to male authority. In 1969, the world was still a man's world.

From the 1970's onwards women campaigned for equality. They had won the vote, they were allowed to stand for political office and had equal rights under the law. But they were still paid a third less than men doing the same job and although in theory women were told that they had the same opportunities as men, in practice prejudice against women was still strong and it was in this era that the "glass ceiling" blocked and frustrated women. Women were still treated as sex objects by men. Bra-burning feminists tried to change all that, but had limited success.

But through the 1970's, 80's and 90's a quiet revolution was underway, and it began in the classroom. It had been known since the 1960's that girls did better than boys at school and educators deliberately made exams harder for girls in order to maintain the illusion that boys were better students. From the 1980's, the genders were put on a level playing field and took the same exams. Affimative action to get girls more interested in science and maths was implemented. The girls stepped up to the plate and hit an instant and enduring home run. From 1988, girls consistently outperformed boys at every level of education, a lead that has never been relinquished.

As a result, more girls than ever went to university and by the late 1990's for the first time ever comprised the majority of university undergraduates. This fed into the workplace, with more female graduates than before getting well paid jobs. The number of households where the wife was the main breadwinner increased significantly.

Women also became more active in sports and athletics during this era.

Over the same period, the nature of the economy in the western world had changed radically, with the dramatic shrinkage of the manufacturing industries that had employed and generously paid a large number of men and an increase in service industries, which relied on communication skills, where women held the advantage. Former male miners and factory workers found themselves on the scrapheap, whilst their wives became the breadwinners. Going into the mines or becoming a skilled factory worker, all well paid jobs, were the fall back positions for those boys who were not academically gifted, but now those jobs had gone.

It was no longer a man's world.

Female Ascendant (2000-12) - The success of girls in the education system accelerated dramatically and of all girls taking exams they took 75% of the top grades of school and college grades compared to 65% of boys who took the exams. Girls outnumbered boys in universities by 6:4, with the drop out rate amongst boys higher than that of girls. Male graduates found it harder than their female contemporaries to find work.

Female graduates flooded the previously male dominated professions of medicine, the legal profession, dentistry, finance and accountancy. Male representation in those professions shrank rapidly as fewer male graduates filtered through.

In the education system and in the workplace, males were still relying on male privilege to hand them degrees and well paid, high status jobs on a silver platter, but suddenly, that was not going to happen any longer and it only gradually dawned on males that they would have to do better to earn degrees and jobs by merit alone, on the same basis as females, who were doing better than them in the education system.

In the home, increasingly numbers of households depended on the income of a woman, rather than that of a man, to survive. A significant number of men had become househusbands, financially dependent upon their female partner, and taking on the traditionally female roles of homemaker and child carer.

Women were becoming increasingly interested in sports, such as soccer, swimming, rowing and cricket. Men were becoming, conversely, less inclined towards physical pursuits, preferring to follow their favourite team on television in the pub. As a result, women were gaining competitive skills and physical strength and endurance, whilst men were losing their competitive instincts and were losing their physical superiority over women by sedentary activity.

The killer punch to male dominance came in 2008-09 with the worst recession since the Wall Street Crash in 1929. 85% of the jobs lost as a result of that recession were those of males. Males always fared worse than females in the recessions of the past, but this was something else, and in early 2010, women became the majority of the US workforce for the first time ever. The number of households where the woman was the primary wage earner rose sharply and, correspondingly, so did the number of househusbands.

As women pointed out, the "He-cession" had been man-made, for it was the recklessness and cavalier attitude of the male dominated banks that had caused it and women all over the world began to question the wisdom of entrusting the management of the economy to males.

The traditional gender roles were being reversed.

The Obama Administration, which had promised a new era, revealed that it was just another period of lame-duck presidency. Obama tried to throw money at the economic downturn, but was running on empty in terms of vision and ideas. The Democratic Party wisely jettisoned him in favour of Hillary Clinton, who had been Obama's more successful and statesmanlike State Secretary, waiting in the wings for the Presidential nomination. Clinton ran against Sarah Palin and won, and the USA had its first female President.

The Transition (2012 - 2029)

America had its first female President, but the impetus for change did not come from the Oval Office. The Senate and Congress were still largely populated by men, which inhibited the President's freedom of action.

Change was happening in the schools, colleges, universities, offices, shops and factories. Girls were still outperforming boys at every level in the education system. Educators now tried desperately to implement affirmative action in favour of boys. But they found that it was too little, too late.

Girls had conquered boys academically. Girls were also defeating boys on the sports field as they formed their own soccer, basketball, baseball and ice hockey teams and proceeded to demolish the boys' teams. Girls were generally fitter, more agile, faster both in body and mind and more focused. The boys tended to underestimate the girls and were more easily distracted.

Dejected and stunned, the boys left the field to their female victors.

Female sports would become the mainstream, whilst male accomplishment would be of secondary interest, as women's sports had once been.

Girls had proven their superiority to boys on both an intellectual and even a physical level. Boys, discouraged by their defeat, seemed to lack the resources to bounce back and recover lost ground. Retreat in the classroom and the sportsfield seemed to be the preferred option, rather than admit that they were inferior to their female peers and trying to be the best that they could be.

As men lost their jobs, more women were employed into the service industries, and more men found themselves ensconced into the role of homemaker. Women, focused on efficiency and productivity, adopted suits. Some women were already insisting that their male spouse adopt more feminine clothing and behaviour, and, as women held the power in the relationship, men were obliged to obey, albeit reluctantly.

Fashion houses and mainstream retail fashion outlets picked up on the trend towards the feminisation of male clothing and the masculinisation of female attire and produced suits and plain underwear and flat shoes for women and dresses, skirts, lingerie, high heels and accessories for men. It became acceptable for men to wear dresses and skirts. The transition in dress was not easy for the males, who were forced to recognise that they had switched places with the women and that females had become the dominant sex.

Women were completely dominant in medicine, the law and business and held the top positions. Men employed in those areas held the most junior positions, in support of their female bosses. Almost all nurses and secretaries were male and were required to dress in the traditional fashion for their roles. Politics and religion remained the only arenas where women were not in control, but it was only a matter of time before the fossilised politicians retired or died, and allowed a woman to replace him. The Church was irrelevant, for now, as securing temporal power was the key objective.


By this point, women had completely abandoned any tendency towards femininity, and males were being encouraged and conditioned towards adopting femininity. Younger males could adapt to the new reality, but older men, brought up to be masculine, could not contenance such a proposal. Those men who could not adapt to the new reality found themselves left behind, unemployable (since they would not adopt the feminine dress jobs employers now demanded of their male employees) and divorced by their wives, for non-compliance to her wish that he accept his new role as the more feminine partner in their relationship.

By now, it was the male who was becoming a sex object in the eyes of the dominant female, and pornography, media advertising and the sex industry, which had formerly catered for the tastes of men by exploiting women, went into complete reverse by catering for the needs of women by exploiting men.

On every street, it was now normal to see women striding about in suits, with short hair, hairy bodies and no cosmetics whatsoever. Men could be seen mincing about in high heeled shoes, in a skirt or dress, hosiery or bare depilated legs, carrying a handbag and wearing jewellery and make up. If children were seen, it was invariably the male who was looking after them. Young girls wore jeans, trainers and T-shirts and walked around as if they ruled the world (which, in a sense, they did) whilst their brothers wore crop tops which exposed their midriff and mini-skirts which showed off their legs and exposed a delicate hint of their lacy underwear. Boys wore their hair long and had their ears pierced from an early age. Boys tended to be docile and followed the lead of their sisters.

Boys and girls by this time found it to be completely normal for girls to be trousered and totally confident and assertive, whilst boys wore the skirts and were gentle and submissive little flowers. Girls, as a result of their masculine upbringing and as a result of athletic programmes at school in favour of raising the fitness and physical strength of girls, programmes which were not available to the boys, became physically stronger than most boys and could easily put a boy in his place either verbally, or, if the boy was particularly outspoken, physically. Girls were constantly taking parts in all kinds of sports, whilst the boys were completely marginalised and reduced to either being merely spectators or waving their pom-poms and wiggling their mini-skirted bottoms as part of an all male cheerleading squad.

By the 2030's, what was once unthinkable was now reality. The traditional gender roles and dress had been completely reversed.

Gender War (2030-53) - In the western world, women were in complete control and males had become feminised. In the east, places such as asia and the middle east, male-dominated society had been largely untouched by the radical changes that had taken place in the west. The leaders of the asian states, appalled at what had been done to their brothers in the west, protested by launching trade wars against the west.

It was, they said, a perversion of nature for women to hold power and they reacted by embargoing western goods and products and by refusing to trade with any country where women were clearly the dominant sex.

This action threatened to put the world economy into crisis. This was completely unacceptable to the USA and the incumbent President, Alexandra Houston, delivered an ultimatum to the leaders of the eastern powers. Either resume normal trade relations or face war. In a strongly worded speech, President Houston condemned the actions of the male-dominated, ego driven leaders of the eastern powers and stated that this was a prime example of why men should never be allowed to hold public office.

The eastern powers did not back down and hostilities ensued. Unlike any previous conflict though, the female dominated western armed forces were engaging the male dominated eastern armed forces. The battle of the sexes was literally taking place on actual battlefields as men and women fought each other in hand to hand combat and with weapons.

In general, the female soldier, sailor or airman of the west was fitter, more intelligent and more efficient than their eastern counterparts, and the western powers enjoyed some early successes, but the terriotory of the eastern powers was simply too vast for any campaign to be a short one. The war rumbled on for years and the west lamented when young women were brought home in body bags and cheered when girls were awarded medals for bravery or were seen leading captured male soldiers of the opposing side off into captivity.

The war lasted some twenty years and was more a localised war than an actual world war, but the result was never really in doubt. The western powers overran India, south-east asia and southern China but by then, the war weary populations of the east rebelled against their masters. The leaders of the revolts were women, long -term campaigners for equal rights, and these women became the new rulers of the east once the male rulers had been deposed. The west pumped in substantial financial aid to the new governments of the east in support of their policies to empower women and feminise men. It would take considerable time, but the status quo between the genders that existed in the west would be mirrored in the east.

The complete role reversal of the genders, once confined to the west, had now become world wide.

Equilibrium (2054) - Now that the dust had settled from both the battle of the sexes and from the gender war, it was back to business as usual in the female dominated west. The vast majority of survivors from the old world where men ruled were long since dead and those who were left were regarded as curiousities. Female students used them for oral history for their dissertations.

Most people alive in 2054 could not envisage a world where women were not the dominant sex. Everyone knew, and were taught, that women were far more intelligent, fitter, stronger, more emotionally stable and had better leadership skills than a mere male. It was completely natural that women held all of the most important jobs and were the undisputed heads of their households and held all of the nation's wealth.

It was quite unthinkable that a man should hold any position of authority. It was well known that the judgement of all males was too clouded by testostorene and male-ego to be relied upon. After all, history was littered with all of the wars and economic crises that men had caused, bringing misery to millions. Under sensible, level-headed female guidance, the world would never experience war or economic crisis again.

Skirted and prettifed males were confined to the only tasks that they were fit for. Keeping a woman's house, looking after her childen , and, for those who worked, supporting women bosses as secretaries, cleaners and nurses.

Female rule had become completely accepted by men, who were taught in the classroom of the superiority of the female over the male and as witnessed on the sportsfield where female athletes performed feats of strength and athletic prowess that no male could equal.

Man, who had once felt his masculinity threatened by a woman who earned more than him or could do something better than he could, had been forced by circumstances and by conditioning to abandon masculinity and to adopt femininity. By 2054, male femininity had become the norm and the male had accepted his inferior status.

The transition of the male into femininity had been painful and uncomfortable, but by 2054, had become an established fact and the new gender roles had become stabilised and were regarded as being completely natural.

With women and men now in their proper roles, the future for mankind was bright - and it was female.