Byline: David Williamson
LED Street Light LU04-112WIt's not all handbags and gladrags: we've taken an in-depth look at the reality of life in Wales for women today. WM's David Williamson counts GCSEs, checks your bank statement and speaks to your boss: here's what he found
All the recent research suggests that being born a woman in Wales is not a passport to a life of affluent ease.
Wales has for generations battled industrial decline, ill-health and poverty while struggling to preserve a distinct yet relevant culture.
There are 97,300 more women than men in Wales.
While this may be a convenient fact if the sex wars ever degenerate into Owain Glyndwr-style battles, it also means that Valentine's Day in Wales is demographically-weighted towards being a lonely experience for many.
The good news to cherish while watching amorous couples cavorting on the pavements of the principality is that your younger sisters are less likely to be in this predicament because of a reversal of the gender trend among the nation's children so that boys outnumber girls.
However, pensioners hoping to be swept off their feet not by a strong Atlantic gust but by someone who resembles Omar Sharif may be disappointed for the foreseeable future. There are 158,600 fewer men of pensionable age in Wales than women.
The next greatest challenge to the nation is to harness the power of the Welsh brain. Having DNA which can be traced back to Wales normally results in wild over-achievement among the Welsh diaspora. Yet the Welsh are sluggish when instructed to excel academically - less than a third of women of working age have a reasonable GCSE or equivalent.
But what should provoke the women of Wales to throw vases and axes in fury is the intolerable fact Mens Cufflinks that while their qualifications are of a stratospherically higher calibre than the nation's men their pay packets are farcically smaller.
Only 15.7% of men aged 35-49 have a GCSE-style qualification but 28.8% of women do. This pattern is true among all age groups over 25 but women's wages are not vastly higher than men's. Instead theirs is a pay gap which makes a mockery of any women's liberation movement.
In Wrexham, most men bring home pounds 448.30 a week; women only pocket pounds 327.60. Female wages throughout the nation are on average pounds 93 less than men's.
embroidered patches Today, Welsh women have gracefully made the National Assembly famed in political science departments in universities worldwide by winning half the seats.
But as psychedelic guru Timothy Leary remarked in a lucid moment, 'Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.'
It's a desperate shame, then, that the women most obviously destined for positions of leadership flee from Wales as though they were heading for a Karen Millen sale. Almost one in three of the women born in Wales who leave the nation to live elsewhere in Britain have a university degree.
Countries such as Ireland have proved that a nation can fight challenges and win without disowning a rich cultural heritage and customs which have traditionally prized people above possessions.
Thinking that something similar in Wales is not a crazy notion,Welsh women - statistically the smartest people in this tiny land - might be t
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