MARTIAN AFFAIRS: Author John Gray's international bestseller Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus has spawned a global industry which this week came to Cairo. As workshops opened in the city purporting to help you find your perfect partner Al-Ahram Weekly took to the streets to discover exactly what it is Egyptians seek What women want Casanova and Don Juan are out. Machismo is passé. Amira El-Noshokaty explores what women are looking for in men Men be warned -- these days being an action hero won't get you very far. Egypt's women -- of all ages and backgrounds -- may often be stereotyped as wanting the ever elusive tall, dark and handsome stranger but in reality their needs are far more prosaic. Amina Abdel-Nabi, a 21-year-old student, is a case in point. She wants a man who is responsible, wise, understanding and dependable. Not a tall order one might think. Yet the men she meets are invariably a far cry from her ideal, congenitally incapable of balancing their professional and personal lives. She finds their double standards particularly infuriating and is exasperated with the demand that a woman must trust her man completely and that he, in return -- the "in return" is the bit that sticks in her throat -- will trust her. Such trust, she points out, extends to a blanket ban on talking to other men and the power of veto over her friends. And all this is exercised, of course, "for her own sake". Abdel-Nabi sums up the most universal of female complaints. "The problem with men is that they don't listen," she says. "And even when you make them listen, they don't understand." No wonder then, that John Gray's Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus was such a global phenomenon. It's about more than just the language barrier, it seems. The two sexes are planets, never mind poles, apart. Nineteen year-old Salma -- a prime candidate for a romantic hero one might think -- explains that above all she wants a partner in crime. A man who will be a friend first and a boyfriend after. She wants someone open-minded who is a good listener. And above all she wants a man who is not a "commitment freak". Alas, reality seems to be letting her down. "What I get are usually insensitive jerks," Salma says. "Once they know you like them they get confused and play hard to get." And game-playing is one thing women hate. Helena El-Kamel, an 18-year-old college student, wants a man "to like me for who I am, not a man who plays games". But she is wary of empty compliments and of men drawn to superficial beauty rather than, as Bridget Jones would have it, "inner poise". Similar feelings are echoed across the board. "I love you doesn't really mean I love you," laughs 27-year-old banker Riham. "I love you usually means I want to change you." Other women simply want a man who knows his own mind. Not easy, when most women believe men have absolutely no idea what exactly they want. "What I want from a man," 27- year-old office manager Mariam says, "is I want them to know what they want." Given that for the most part women believe men have no idea exactly what they want, her prospects look far from rosy. Other women complain that the trouble with men is they won't grow up. They may leave home but their attitudes don't change. What they received from their mothers they expect to receive from their wives. Meals must be cooked, clothes somehow miraculously washed and ironed. The fridge must be constantly full. As the saying goes, marry an Egyptian man and you marry his mother. Amani Areg, a 28-year-old divorcee, concurs. "Men are like babies," she says, "they don't know how to take care of themselves. And after the initial excitement of marriage fades they begin to view you in precisely the same way they view their mothers. They walk in the house, go to the kitchen, eat, flop on the bed. You come in and smile and ask how their day has been. They shrug, say they're tired. And a few hours later -- after screaming about some favourite shirt not being laundered, or the pair of trousers they simply have to wear not being pressed, they go out. And that's that." But there are men, and there are the boys, or so Mariam believes. "There are two types of men," she says, "leaders and followers. The former regard women as weaker beings and so assume a domineering role and impose their opinion on them. And the followers," she explains, "want to be mothered." Most, it seems, are commitment-phobes who shy away from marriage. This surprises few women. To put it crudely, why buy a cow when you can get the milk for free? And as Noha Osman, a 29-year-old assistant marketing director says, without the burden of commitment men are after just one thing: sex. Plus change. "There are lots of girls out there offering everything so why would a man limit himself to marrying one woman if he can get whatever he wants from several?" asks Osman. What women want, wrote Helen Fielding, author of the internationally best-selling Bridget Jones Diary, "is the ability to form a functional relationship with a responsible adult". The problem being that she's not quite sure "if such definition is applicable to one man".
