Whenever I want a good laugh - I don't mean a cynical snort, a brief giggle, a tiny titter, a satisfied chuckle, a joyful chortle or a noisy guffaw, I mean a good laugh - I turn to the Women pages of the Guardian. And I am rarely disappointed.

Last week there was a piece about women's general failure to advance to senior managerial positions in the office. There often is. This time, however, we were spared the usual drivel about glass ceilings and Chinese walls, and given a more personal slant on the subject by Ms Rachel Cooke.

The author took serious objection to research by a female Australian psychologist, Glenice Wood, which supposedly showed that women were failing to rise to the top of their professions because they are too nice: according to the psychologist, said Ms Cooke: "They think they must be popular, attractive, sociable and deferential to win promotion when, in reality, their (mostly male) bosses just want to know if they can get the job done."

These findings were "unbelievably disingenuous", thought Ms Cooke: "You can bet your bottom dollar that most men wouldn't like it one bit if their female colleagues began behaving in exactly the same mulish way that they do."

The usual lofty distaste for office politics was expressed (some day, a newspaper's woman's page will genuinely surprise readers by printing an article by a woman defending office politics, which are as inevitable as party politics, but not yet). And a great deal of quite straightforward, simple anti-man feeling was expressed.

Ms Cooke believes, for example, that apart from the obvious assets that a woman needs to rise to the very top (including "an extensive wardrobe" and "a fantastic hairstyle"), she also needs a conscience "as small and wizened as a dried pea"; and she is quite adamant that men (in their mulish way) are far more likely to possess the latter attribute than women, who of course are much more sensitive beings.

If you're a man, you wouldn't want to get too upset by such insinuations. It's pretty much par for the course in this sort of article. And there is, as I mentioned at the outset, a good laugh (or two) to be had along the way.

In the conscience stakes, Ms Cooke tells us, for example, that she cannot think of "many blokes who empty the washing machine before they dash out of the house in the morning, or who mow the lawn, as I once did, in their pyjamas."

Sorry? Whose pyjamas? And listen, Joe, have you ever mowed the lawn in your pyjamas? And how did that lawn get in there anyway? God, that grass gets everywhere. It'll be in the washing machine next.

It is clear that Ms Cooke believes the chief executives interviewed by the psychologist were telling lies; that there is "an awful lot" of female talent going to waste - and that these men are responsible. Then it all gets deeply personal. In the women's pages, it so often does: why is it that some women writers seem to believe that generalisations can be made from personal experience?

Ms Cooke reveals that she lost her full-time office job some weeks ago and went back to writing at home: "It has been weird watching my horrible office personality disappear into the ether and the real me - that strange, hopeful, smiley girl I last caught sight of in the looking-glass about eight years ago - emerge once again."

This kind of thing, apart from being downright daft, is deeply patronising, and insulting to anyone who works in an office. In other words it insults both men and women, and it may actually be more insulting to women.

And personally, I would rather put up with horrible female office personalities - not that there could be any around here - than bump into any "strange, hopeful, smiley" girls who might suddenly shimmer out from behind the water-cooler when you aren't looking.

Ms Cooke goes on to tell us: "I feel nicer than I have done in ages: when people call me, I can spend time - get this - talking to them, rather than rushing to get off the phone. Nowadays, there is no one hovering at the end of my desk or a zillion emails to be read before lunchtime."

Well, great. But it's hard to see what the point of this is, apart from telling us that you become a "nicer" person when you are detached from the office. No doubt Ms Cooke is happier at home, but to me it just sounds like a bad case of overwork.

bglacken@irish-times.ie