Women want what?

What do women want: romance? To look like Helen Hunt? To bag Mel Gibson? To turn arrogant womanisers into puppy dogs? Men who can dance like Gene Kelly? Men who can read our minds 24/7?

Or would they rather have glamourous, influential careers? Men who engage with us intellectually, creatively and respectfully in those careers while simultaneously seducing us, yet refusing to exploit us? Men who like "making out" without any demands for full sexual intercourse until we are ready? A power struggle with a happy ending?

On the surface, we want all of the above, according to What Women Want. Take it with a grain of salt. It's only a movie, right?

Actually, no. What Women Want is ostensibly a fluffy, enjoyable romantic comedy set in the male-dominated advertising industry. But it is so obviously the product of demographic studies, marketing reports and focus groups that it's a piece of advertising in itself. And we women are the target market.

Overheard at the film's preview:

Woman says: "You know, that is what women want. To be more successful and powerful than their partners, without being resented for it."

Man says: "Don't worry, you're with me now."

Woman says: "You're brilliant - you can handle it!"

Man says: "That's not what I meant. I'm going to be fabulously wealthy and successful, so it won't be a problem."

That conversation, if you ask me, is closer to the reality than the ideal presented by filmmaker Mary Meyers in What Women Want, in which Mel Gibson double-crosses his boss/lover Helen Hunt, then is fired by her, then graciously accepts her invitation to live happily ever after even though he's humiliated and unemployed and she's top of the pile. So this is sexual politics 2001. And we still haven't answered the question Freud raised at the end of the 19th century, when he set the psychosexual agenda for the 20th by asking the question: "What do women want?"

Why did he ask the question? Because he saw women as neurotic, insecure and unhappy.

In What Women Want, Gibson (as the result of an accident involving cross-dressing and a hairdryer) develops the ability to read women's minds and discovers the same thing: that, beneath their competent exteriors, women are neurotic, insecure and unhappy. They are also two-faced at the office, appearing charming to men whom they resent (there's a grain of truth in that).

Women are, according to research, twice as likely as men to experience clinical anxiety. No wonder when, in a man's world, women are playing men's games that feel alien to them.

The irony is that management training companies are now teaching men to think like women because women with high emotional intelligence are turning out to be better managers than men. In What Women Want, Hunt announces on her arrival at the agency that "two heads are better than one, and five heads are better than two". In other words, co-operative, creative, lateral brain-storming will beat male hierarchies of command and control every time.

So far so good. Suppose more women do achieve positions of power, changing corporate cultures as they do so. What happens next?

Sex. Confusion. All that What Women Wants can advise is that it helps if the woman is more powerful than the guy and has a private office.

It would be wonderful to think that, in an enlightened workplace, women and men could sail through the storm of sexual politics as well as Hunt and Gibson without boundaries between the professional and the personal being blurred. The reality is many women - like the Hunt character - are so uptight about office politics that, faced with a Machiavelli like Gibson, they still act like deer mesmerised by the headlights. One survey revealed that men enjoy the cut and thrust of office politics but don't take them personally, while women obsess over office politics and take them very personally, which holds them back.

The most moving moment in the film, ironically, is an ad for Nike (actually made by the Weiden-Kennedy agency) in which women are told (through the syrupy voice of Gibson) that they should start running and stop worrying. The logo: "No games. Just sports."

The ad as mini self-help manual is a reflection of the construction of womanhood that Freud created when he labelled women as "hysterical" and neurotic. Likewise, the film which contains the ad plays seductively upon these insecurities.

The film even comes with an interactive website asking the usual silly women's magazine questions, like "How many times in an average day do you think about sex?" (never; a few times during the day; hourly: several times an hour; constantly) and "Which one of the following attributes would you find the most intriguing in a potential partner?" (lived overseas; is politically active; is an environmentalist; likes watching adult movies; has a black belt in a martial art; has a foot fetish; used to be an exotic dancer; studies yoga; shaves his head; is an accomplished cook; likes rap/hip hop; likes 1970s music).

No prizes for guessing which answer the majority of respondents have given so far: "accomplished cook".

Men don't do these questionnaires. It's women who are always self-examining and second-guessing and perpetuating the notion that we are neurotic and insecure by purchasing lorry loads of self-help books and magazines advising us how to play the game of sexual politics. In The Surrendered Wife, a bestseller by US housewife Laura Doyle, we are told that the secret to a happy marriage is to be a Stepford Wife: never question your husband (boss?), even when he's wrong.

The February issue of Vogue advises women who want to impress men: "Be devastatingly clever, and smart enough not to let it show."

In Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, John Gray asserts that men must appease women's supposedly natural tendency to chatter or weep at the drop of a pin (Freud's "hysteria", in other words). Women, he urges, must stop nagging (neurosis, again).

In The Rules - Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr Right, Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider tell single women in search of the man of their dreams that they must appear unattainable at all times. Sounds like office politics to me.

They advise women to be feminine, quiet and mysterious: "You may feel that you won't be able to be yourself, but men will love it." Never be yourself and you will never have to have to worry about being "abandoned, neglected, or ignored", they say.

The positive message behind the Hunt character in What Women Want is that she represents what, I think, a lot of women actually do want: to be confident, to speak our minds, to be ourselves inside the office and out, without constant self-questioning and fear of abandonment.

But the ultimate message is that there is something wrong with women, either mentally or physically, so we need to buy the self-empowerment product - be it a film, a book or a pair of new runners.

So while What Women Want, a film made by a woman, is being marketed toward women, it does nothing but condescend to us. Yet women have ensured it's a box office hit in the US - and we'll probably do the same here. I have to admit I loved it. We've got a long way to go, baby.

What Women Want opens on Friday

website: www.whatwomenwantmovie.com