That's men for you Padraig O'Morain's guide to men's healthI don't know why, but I have always tended to think of dentists as male. The idea of a woman seeking your views on world politics while filling your mouth with hideous instruments as you gurgle pathetically has never seemed quite right.
But last year more women than men signed up for courses in dentistry so before long it will be a woman who examines your teeth. It is all part of the female future.
If present trends continue we will have more female doctors, lawyers, vets and dentists as new graduates enter the workforce and old chaps retire.
And it is not only in Ireland that this is happening.
An English language Swedish newspaper, The Local, recently reported similar trends in that country under the headline "Swedish women to overtake stupid men".
"There will soon be a large collective of uneducated, low-paid men who don't have any friends, and are unmarried and alone - as well as uninteresting for women looking for a relationship," the newspaper quoted researcher Ingemar Gens (a man) as saying.
We are also getting fatter than women and apparently we are less intelligent than them, according to Gens.
Soon the only high-flying men-only area left will be the Catholic episcopacy.
Not a very jolly picture is it? Here are all these women running the show taking all the good jobs that we kept them out of for decades and decades, while we sit around getting fat and waiting for some woman to make an honest man of us.
Will they, do you think, still make the dinner and do the housework when they come home in their top-of-the-range phallic symbol cars from their spacious offices? Or will they expect us to get off our backsides and throw a pizza in the oven?
But there are upsides to this. For instance, women have babies. It's only in the past couple of decades that industries and organisations run by men have become friendly towards this fact.
Can we expect organisations run by women to take a more human approach? Can we expect them to embrace the needs of workers, male and female, to spend time caring for their families and to work flexibly if necessary to achieve this?
Let's hope so - though women who do not have children, it seems to me, can get quite impatient with the child-tending needs of colleagues who are working mothers. Perhaps things might not change as much as you would think, which is a pity.
Nevertheless, the ascendancy of women should lead to some marginal improvements in attitudes towards family issues in the workplace.
And of course while the Big Woman is off running the world we chaps, as soon as the housekeeper has arrived and we have put him to work, can climb into the SUV, pop down to the gym to sweat off some ounces with the female personal trainer. Later we can meet the lads for coffee and a chat in the shopping centre before we head off to collect Tristan from the Montessori.
And when herself comes home exhausted from her battles in the corporate war zone, we would have a nice gin and tonic ready for her and The Irish Times open at the Simplex page on which we will not have filled in any of the answers. And then we will make the dinner, leaving her in peace to relax after her long day's work. Tristan will be kept in his room until she is ready for some quality time with him.
In other words, we will do all the things for them that they now do for us.
If you do not like this scenario and if you want to keep running the world, there is an alternative. According to Gens in an interview with the NVL Dialogweb website (www.nordvux.net/), the only exception to the rule that women will take over will be in the Islamic countries.
So if you don't want to go with the flow here in the West perhaps you should begin to make the necessary arrangements.
pomorain@irish-times.ie
Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.