That provocative if daft question popped up this week after scientists in Britain said they had created human sperm in the lab.

If there's no need for sperm, goes the thought, why do we need men? Imagine a world without all the testosterone.

Would it be more restful and peaceful, less bloodied by war? Would it be kinder, more consensual?

What about science and the arts? Take away men, and you would have no more Darwins, Michelangelos, Shakespeares, Mozarts. Could women equal their genius?

The male-vs-female debate is of a course time-honoured debate, though I have often found it rather sterile, with predictable stereotypes that are rounded up and fired, probably to ease some ancient resentment against the opposite sex.

In this case, though, the intriguing scientific question also raises an intriguing social one. What, in fact, is the point of men? An anthropologist might say that, in our palaeolithic past, men were assigned the role of hunter-gatherer because of their greater strength and speed.

Women, though, were required to be home-makers because of their physiology, as the bearer and nurturer of offspring. These genetic basics were imperatives for survival in a hostile, uncertain world. They became codified socially, reinforced by laws and religious edicts about gender behaviour and, more subtly, through child-raising.

The traditional gender codes went unchallenged so long as human society still survived by muscle strength. But cracks started to appear when machines started to do the jobs that, before, only men could do.

When it became obvious that, thanks to machines, women could do the same job as men -- as for instance when they became munitions workers in Europe in World War I -- the old order was confronted by a huge challenge. To my mind, the process snowballed into a revolution half a century ago, with the advent of the Pill.

Control over their own fertility unleased enormous empowerment for women, enabling them to choose when to have a family. They could at last look beyond a role as homemaker and envision a career. Eventually, legal and social changes helped to fling open doors to them in any number of professions.

Today, as we move into the post-industrial economy, the future for women looks brighter than ever. An economy that wants to be based on knowledge has to be gender-equal in order to survive, for it cannot afford not to use half of its intellectual assets.

Countries that do not allow women a good education that is equal to men's and let them have the means to use it are doomed to fall behind.

The advancement of women, though, raises the question: What about men?

Answering it has never been easy, especially for men and societies that were quite comfortable with the old hierarchy, the old rules and roles, in sexual relationships, the home and the workplace. In the most conservative societies, change seems to be interpreted as a mortal threat that can only be combatted by denial and iron-fisted enforcement of tradition. Yet even in western countries that were the first to experience change, adaptation has not been easy.

A common theme of books, films and songs these days is men who are unanchored, adrift in their relationships and uncertain about what they do, reflecting an existential unease.

In this blog, reporters and editors for global news wire AFP blog about the news they report and the challenges they face covering events from Baghdad to Beijing, the White House to Darfur. Richard Inham is AFP Health & Science editor.