THE age-old battle of the sexes reared its ugly head in several press releases which landed on my electronic desktop this week. They made for interesting reading. The one I liked the most was about a poll in which women voted men the better drivers. It is

THE age-old battle of the sexes reared its ugly head in several press releases which landed on my electronic desktop this week.

They made for interesting reading.

The one I liked the most was about a poll in which women voted men the better drivers.

It is something I have been saying for a long time.

Now, research undertaken by The British International Motor Show has revealed that ladies feel men are more comfortable in the driving seat.

When asked to rate drivers on a range of factors, women consistently scored men more highly than themselves.

Far be it from me to disagree.

What I may well take issue with is the result of another piece of research which claims that women in Eastern England are more tech-savvy.

It's not women with greasy rags hanging from the back pockets of overalls taking over the world sort of thing, but I cannot believe that the female of the species has a better understanding of technology than males.

Come on, we have been tinkering around with trains and dismantling toys since the moment we have been able to hold a screwdriver and squirt an oil can.

So how is it that 57 per cent of women are prepared to fix a broken gadget or machine compared to 44 per cent of men who, apparently, in many cases admitted to hitting the devices several times before walking away.

Sometimes, a good whack does the trick, as everyone knows.

The willingness to have a go at fixing things is in part explained, says the research, by the fact that just over half the women questioned said they read the manual, compared to only a third of men.

But what good are manuals? They are just full of boring facts. It's obvious how most things work, so just plug them in and get on with it.

Most worrying of all was another survey which came to the conclusion that whereas a man's home used to be his castle he is now more likely to find himself working for Family plc - with the woman of the house as CEO.

It means they are managing their homes with business acumen, using their families as the workforce in their domestic empire, concludes the research.

Nine out of 10 women thought they were better at designing and managing the home, 71 per cent believed they were better at hanging pictures and two-thirds said they were better at painting than men.

However, that did not stop the majority of women saying they would quite happily delegate painting and decorating, plumbing and cutting the hedges to the menfolk.

But how is that so different to the way things have always been? Except in one important detail in my house - the foreman has suddenly been promoted to chief exec.