Yes, it’s a woman’s world… and I’m not complaining

A new ITV play series starts on Friday under the title It’s a Woman’s World — stories about women of different ages from teens to old age. But is it really a woman’s world we live in today? We asked the 54-year-old Earl of Arran a newspaper director and journalist, known to his Fleet Street friends as “Boofy.” Here, Lord Arran, who is in The Celebrity Game on Friday, explains why he answered “Yes”

OF course it’s a woman’s world. Here, like everywhere else, the plain truth is that women can get on without men. Men can’t get on without women.

It has nothing to do with sex or romantic love, or any of that nonsense. It is just that men are, by nature, dependent; women are independent. A man without a woman is a pitiful creature.

I am not talking, of course, about young men. The high-spirited young bachelor is the happiest thing on earth.

But later on in life, every man needs a companion. Someone to lean on and be nice to him.

And, oh, the sadness and loneliness of the widower! I know many merry widows, but I have never yet known a man who was not utterly lost when his wife died.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that in a marriage the man does not usually and rightly play the dominant role.

But though the husband is, or should be, the boss, he is always desperately dependent upon his wife. He gets fidgety if she isn’t around. I feel utterly lost without my wife. Women can make do quite well on their own.

Of course, I am speaking about happy marriages — and four out of five in this country are still happy marriages.

In unhappy marriages the man goes to the pub or the club, or becomes a politician. But even being in high political office doesn’t make up for the loss of a happy home.

In England we men successfully disguise the fact that we are run by women. The American men, however, who exaggerate everything, openly and ostentatiously flaunt their subservience to their wives. Theirs is an odious matriarchy.

Indeed, their only “freedom” is once a year to go to a business “convention” and commit adultery just to show they’ve got it in them.

I do not myself complain that this is a woman’s world.

Man is the racehorse; woman the cart-horse. She is the brood mare. She don’t think much, but she pulls her weight. She is reliable. I am sure that we are safe in her hands.