Bono, woman of the year? The latest male saviour of womankind

Is there no end to Bono’s talents? He has sold 170 million albums, won 22 Grammys, does a mean impersonation of Bill Clinton, and now he’s better at being a woman than the vast majority of us actual women can ever hope to be.

Glamour magazine unveiled its women of the year honorees, which included the U2 frontman.

"We've talked for years about whether to honour a man at Women of the Year and we've always kind of put the kibosh on it. You know, men get a lot of awards and aren't exactly hurting in the celebration and donors department," said Cindi Leive, Glamour's editor-in-chief.

But having decided that men were doing okay in the not-being-consigned-to-the-footnotes-of-history department, the committee had a change of heart.

Presumably this was when it took a second look at its nominees – who include the five-time Olympic medal winner Simone Biles; the three founders of the Black Lives Matter movement; the former Islamic State captive and Nobel peace prize winner Nadia Murad; and the IMF chief Christine Lagarde – and decided they weren't sufficiently endowed with a Y chromosome to guarantee some headlines.

So Glamour did what big corporations, political parties, and Hollywood have been doing since the beginning of time, and handed the leading role to a man.

Justifying the decision, Leive said it was "incredibly cool and absolutely deserves applause" that Bono – an actual man – would choose to campaign on behalf of women, when he clearly had more important manly things to be doing, such as strutting about in slightly-too-small jackets, having dinner with famous people, and foisting his album on to the phones of millions of people who never asked for it.

Don’t get me wrong. I have a lot – okay, a bit – of time for Bono. Yes, he can be sanctimonious, narcissistic, and annoying in ways too myriad to mention, but he has done some good work, including spearheading a Poverty is Sexist campaign, and drawing attention to the fact that girls account for 74 percent of all new HIV infections among adolescents in Africa.

But are we really so short of actual human women doing interesting, courageous and worthwhile things that we have to turn to men or comic book characters, as the UN recently did when it named Wonder Woman its honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls?

Are we really so short of credible role models that we need to say to our daughters, “Darling, if you work hard and act with integrity, you can grow up to be a woman just like that man, or like that over-sexualised, two-dimensional superhero?”

As a cursory glance at, say, the US presidential election, the German government, the chair of the Federal Reserve or the leadership teams of General Motors, Facebook or Pepsi would show, a shortage of alternatives is not the issue.

Is it sexist to insist that being a woman should be a precursor for winning an award for woman of the year?

Leive seems to think so, describing it as an “outdated way of looking at things” – which is an amusing perspective from a magazine that recently published a list entitled “13 little things than can make a man fall hard for you” – bring him a drink in the shower, answer the door naked, and make him feel important by letting him solve your petty work problem, in case you’re wondering.

In case Leive doesn’t have a man on hand to solve this petty work problem for her, I’ll have a go. When you have to resort to such silly, provocative stunts to garner coverage for your “awards”, then it’s probably time to retire them and think about doing something that might actually change women’s lives for the better.

Relinquishing your obsession with our body sizes would be a start. Or joining a conversation about issues we actually care about – such as why women in “top bird” Bono’s own country are forced to travel to the UK for abortions.

Still, ladies, let’s look on the bright side.

Now that we’ve got a man and a superhero in our corner, we should be able to get this patriarchy thing cracked at last.