Sexism brought to book

A new book containing advice from an an age long before political correctness is published today.

Never Marry A Woman With Big Feet is a compilation of thousands of proverbs about women, recording how beautiful they are, how annoying they are, not to mention dangerous, and advising men on how to get the best out of them.

Compiled by Dutch academic Mineke Schipper, the book reveals just how universal the themes are when it comes to women.

They have been compared to dates, eggplants, cows, hens and bottles of medicine.

It is said they should be twisted if you want them at their best, shaken before use and, it is universally acknowledged, they are all the better for a sound beating. Above all, they should not be hairy, bearded or have big feet.

All over the world there are thousands of proverbs about women, recording how beautiful they are, how annoying they are, not to mention dangerous, and advising men on how to get the best out of them. No matter whether one comes from Mongolia or Morocco, Sweden or Sussex - there are certain ideas about women that keep cropping up; that they are stupid, for instance.

"A head of hair and no brain inside," is how the Mongolians put it, while the Germans prefer their insults to be more elaborate: "A woman has the shape of an angel, the heart of a snake, and the brains of an ass."

They are at least beautiful, however. In the words of the Chinese proverb: "A woman's beauty makes fish sink and geese fall from the sky."

But one thing the world does not seem to be able to agree on is just what makes a woman beautiful. "Women and greyhounds should have thin waists," say the Spanish, while in India they prefer them big: "A fat woman is a quilt for the winter."

Everyone seems to agree on one thing - that beating women is a good idea. The Kazakhs do ("If the wife is foolish the lash should be strong") and so do the Burmese ("Do not spare a bullock or a wife").

Even the English do - but the wise husband will take care not to raise a hand to his bride before the wedding. As the old Khakass saying from Siberia has it: "Do not use the lash before you have mounted the horse."

Professor Schipper said she has put some 4,000 proverbs into the book out of a database of nearly 16,000.

She first started collecting proverbs about women while living in Africa, then went international when she included some as part of another book and started noticing universal themes.

"Mothers are praised everywhere, wives are regarded as uncontrollable, and people are suspicious about widows because they could have killed their husbands," she said.

Never Marry A Woman With Big Feet is being published by Yale University Press on 14 April, price £25.