A few years ago in Riga, Latvia, I noticed something that surprised me: lots of men pushing prams. You’d expect this in Sweden but not so much in the former Soviet Union.
It signalled a trend: the rise of the global father. Around the world, in some very unlikely countries, men are taking a bigger role in childrearing (from a low base). Rather than the end of men, this is their reinvention.
Men are changing because their power over women is waning. “Gender inequality . . . has been on a declining trend over the past 60 years in most world regions,” says the new How Was Life? report by the OECD. Things have got better especially since the 1980s. Women are catching up with men in age at which they get married, seats in parliament, property rights and education. Even Saudi Arabia, the last country where only men are allowed to vote, has promised to let women vote and run in next year’s local elections. The bookmakers’ favourite to take the world’s biggest job in 2016, Hillary Clinton, is a grandmother. True, global sexism remains extreme by almost every measure, except compared with all of history.