You've just got to love Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman and her strongly held opinion that men cannot be left to run things on their own and that a men-only leadership is a "thoroughly bad thing".

ActualIy, I tend to agree with her, although I'd be interested to hear if she is so venomous about the prospect of a woman-only leadership too. I have some sympathy with her views but not because I believe the banking crash wouldn't have happened if there had been a few trouser suits and high heels sitting around the City's boardroom tables.

And while we're at it, I don't accept that wars simply wouldn't happen if women ruled the world.

While Harman's zealous feminism smacks a bit of unsophisticated student union politics in the mid 80s, if I cast a critical eye over my own small social circle, her beliefs ring true. If you extracted the women I know from either their jobs, at the office or at home, or indeed both, and left everything to the rest of us, it would be carnage.

Within weeks businesses would be disappearing at a quicker rate than the recession is already swallowing them up and there would be leagues of malnourished children going to the wrong schools in filthy, ill-fitting clothes.

You see, in my experience, men, although I know there are many admirable exceptions, just aren't good multi-taskers, and how many times have you heard that? It's genetic, I'm convinced of it. Either that or for some reason I always gravitate to a bunch of disorganised and thoughtless blokes who find details irritating and let their testosterone do the talking all too often.

Anyway, Harriet's posturing kicked off quite a couple of weeks for women flexing their muscles, from Sambuca woman in Crete to Katie Price (whose antics would almost certainly have had Emiline Pankhurst spinning below ground) and it ended with a notable victory for Bristol's favourite adopted daughter, Jane Couch.

Now she really can flex muscles. Jane joined another female Labour minister, Tessa Jowell, in celebrating Olympic bosses' decision to allow women's boxing into London 2012. Jowell called it a "historic" decision, Couch said it was a "day of justice".

Their pleasure was not shared by that old curmudgeon Frank Warren, the boxing promoter (a man).

He reckons there's a bit of a freak show mentality surrounding women's boxing, which is a bit rich coming from a man who, thanks to boxing, is well, a bit rich. The only objection Jane Couch can have though is that for her the decision has come about 15 years too late because she would, undoubtedly, have been a real gold medal contender and a household name with all the goodies that brings with it.

Incredibly, when Jane started out she wasn't even allowed in most boxing gyms but her determination eventually won the authorities over, guaranteeing her more than 40 professional fights and a legion of fans along the way.

As a result of the decision, Jane's profile should rocket over the next couple of years and hopefully her inspirational story will encourage many more of Bristol's women to get fighting fit and not, you understand, for closing time on Saturday nights in the city centre. Harriet Harman, Tessa Jowell and Jane Couch – now there's some triumverate.

I know which of them I'd want in my boardroom, and I'll give you a clue – she's not a politician. Well not a paid one anyway.