Joan Bakewell: Women are on their way to taking over everything

Within a few years, women will be the major holders of wealth; they already gain more university places

Where will it stop? Is there any end in sight for the rise and rise of women towards total equality with men. This week a parliamentary committee urged the Football Association to change its rules so mixed teams of players are allowed beyond the age of 11. The rule was laid down in 1921, long before votes for women were commonplace in the West. Things have changed since then, but not enough.

In my day, our options were hockey or baseball. Many of us yearned to play football but knew it was out of the question. Nonetheless, we invented our own style of free-form rugby that resulted in many torn blouses and bleeding knees. Our scrums were as heaving and as sweaty as the boys'. We loved it. But it got us into trouble, sometimes even detention.

It's a joy to see today's young women enjoying the game. Last season as many as 8,000 female teams were affiliated to the FA. A year earlier, the BBC's broadcasts of the European women's championships attracted some 3 million viewers. Sport is among the last bastions of male chauvinism. Not only do men monopolise the country's favourite game, both on and off the football pitch, but I doubt it has ever occurred to any of them - players and managers alike - that it should be otherwise. Well, it has now!

The wake-up call for many young women was the charming film hit of 2002 Bend it Like Beckham, in which the daughter of a Sikh family defies them in her pursuit of football glory. In the hands of its distinguished director-screenwriter, Gurinder Chadha, it managed to challenge two stereotypes at once. But it isn't the only one.

This summer, the Iranian film Offside opened to coincide with the World Cup. It told of a group of Iranian women eager to be let into the stadium to watch Iran's qualifier against Bahrain. Instead, they are penned outside and must follow the game from the gasps and cheers of the crowd. Much was made at the time of how much an allegory this is of the lives of Iranian women. It also indicated that even in this, the most deeply traditional Islamic state, things are moving. Such a film can at least get made, even if it can't yet be shown there. Indeed President Ahmadinejad had himself intervened to allow women into Iran's football stadia, only to have his liberating move swiftly vetoed by Ayatollah Khomeini. But clearly the issue is on the agenda.

Wimbledon was also guilty of discrimination, keeping up the old tradition of paying its women less prize money than the men. France has this year made their prizes equal; America and Australia did so some time ago. The universality of these moves is not to be resisted. The FA, which has no women on its board and only one on its 90-strong council, is rumoured to be consulting widely, but it says that, among other things there could be a funding issue over providing separate changing facilities. How feeble a case is that!

There is of course a stronger case to be made about the different strengths and physical attributes of men and women. When argument about equality gets down to fundamentals, there is the universally acknowledged fact that women are different shapes and physiologies from men, they have breasts and periods, and men have muscles and penises. Men were miners and stevedores, mountaineers, warriors - and fathers - because they were made differently, and nothing would change that. Biology was a given.

The human race exists as it is because its form of reproduction was immutable and the consequent social organisation into families, hierarchies and dynasties could be modified only at the edges to accommodate the rising demands of women, for such fringe benefits as equal pay, equal opportunities. Now science is changing that forever. Not only are the numerous ways of developing athletic prowess producing women of strength and endurance to match men, we even hear from the labs that science can now create viable reproductive sperm using stem cells from embryos. Yet another absolute is shattered.

How will all these major but slow-moving shifts in the differences between men and women play out in social terms? Is the family over as an institution , and with it the nation state? Are feminised modes of behaviour about to take over international diplomacy and the bastions of commerce? Not yet, certainly, but there are signs. Within a matter of years now, women will be the major holders of wealth in this country; this year more women than men have gained university entrance. Margaret Beckett and Condoleezza Rice sit together at the top table. Perhaps we can look to a less confrontational future with women's supposed skill as reconcilers and peacemakers coming to the fore.

Twenty-five years ago, at the time of the Israeli massacres in the Lebanese refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, the then editor of Newsnight asked a female producer, a colleague of mine, whether given the horror and bloodshed, she would rather he send out a male producer. Her explosions of outrage echoed around the office as she packed her bags for the airport. Today, women reporters are braving the horrors of front-line warfare along with men. It isn't a form of equality to make the heart soar, but it is a reality. Not all women could do it; nor could all men. Like sport, it must depend on character, skill and enthusiasm. Gender need have nothing to do with it.

j.bakewell@independent.co.uk