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The pendulum of advantage is steadily swinging in favour of women in the current century. A hundred years of the global fight for gender justice may have helped, but the reason why women will have a clear advantage — whether it is jobs or social prestige — is the decisive change in the environment.

Women will do better simply because they are currently the best equipped to succeed in the emerging business, socio-political, and economic environment. Men will have to work harder to succeed because the skill sets which gave them supremacy over the last 10,000 years are useful only in some jobs.

Before I expand on this statement, let me explain why men became so powerful, and how current skill sets made them the dominant partners by far in the gender power struggle. These skill sets will change as gender roles change, but there is no doubt that men are ruling the roost now precisely because they had the right resources for it.

Innate skills develop over centuries — in communities and genders — in response to specific conditions. For example, physical aggression and risk-taking were critical for success among men in hunter-gatherer societies; cooperation, emotional intelligence, and verbal communication were necessary for child-bearing women to ensure survival. Male aggression and patriarchy were also critical for human progress when the unknown world had to be colonised, conquered, and populated to establish the dominance of homo sapiens over all species.

Today, the situation is exactly the reverse: the world is overpopulated and we need cooperative behaviour to save the species and tackle the global challenges we face — whether it is sharing resources, tackling global warming, or redistributing power equitably.

Men, with their hierarchical thinking, competitive behaviour, and aggression are less equipped to provide solutions in this world in the foreseeable future. But women are right there, equipped with precisely those qualities that are needed for success and solutions. Let's look at some of them.

Take business and jobs. The major trends are clear. There is a shift away from manufacturing and agriculture to services. In services, there is a shift away from hard jobs (like military and police service) to areas like education and health as the third world sees an explosion in the young population and elders live longer. The shortening of the product-business life cycle due to hypercompetition in the marketplace is making businesses keen on lower-cost jobs and 'temping' — that is, more flexibility in work hours and pay.

In qualitative terms, employers are also looking for softer skills in staff — like the ability to work in teams, carry people along, communicate effectively, and build networks. In short, EQ (emotional quotient) rather than merely IQ. Daniel Goleman makes the point in his path-breaking book, Emotional Intelligence, that EQ is a better indicator of success than IQ alone and nowhere is this truer than in the job market today.

This situation is tailormade for women. They are paid less than men and are used to being in and out of jobs — making them more attractive as potential employees. They work fewer hours in general (on the job, that is, not job-plus-home combined), and hence understand the needs of 'temping' and part-time work. In the US, the burden of job losses is falling disproportionately on men as the old smokestack industries totter and healthcare and education services expand.

It's happening in India, too. The big, expanding industries are media, entertainment, and various kinds of services and small businesses, where women have a natural advantage. In a patriarchal hierarchy, there is also a temporary double advantage for women: male bosses tend to hire more women for reasons of vanity. They also tend to give them more flexible hours, thanks to continuing gender roles at home. Few men have the option of taking six months off to bring up children even if they want to.

To top it all, as a disadvantaged sex, most women do not enter a job with entitlement and rights in mind. They come with the right attitudes, the willingness to learn — something slightly more difficult to find in male workforces. This will, of course, change as women's numbers in the workforce grow and men respond to the challenges, but that is some time away.

Even in areas like politics, religion, and social life, the old masculine approaches — with their territoriality, exclusivity, and identity consciousness — are self-limiting. We need new approaches that are more inclusive, fuzzy around the edges, and allow for greater variations in spiritual and religious practices. National borders need to get soft in a new, migratory world, and politics definitely needs a feminine touch to balance the picture.

Women have nowhere to go but up. A counterpoint, though: the opposite of up is not down for men. The rising graph of women will mean more opportunities for men — but outside their traditional areas. All it needs is a renewed willingness to learn and change. It may be painful but not impossible.