Are men becoming obsolete? Take-charge chicks are surpassing guys in so many arenas. Cosmo explores how the growing divide is affecting the sexes.(Hot Topics)

Sick of waiting around for your guy to get down on one knee? Well, apparently you don't have to--at least not in order to wear a rock on your finger. There are now right-hand diamond rings you're supposed to buy for yourself. "Because beauty needs no excuse and neither do I," reads all ad for one such jewel.

What's going on here? "Even 10 years ago, a marketing campaign like that would have never even been considered," notes Susan Basow, PhD, a psychology professor and gender specialist at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. "It speaks to the change in female roles and the fact that more and more women are making the kind of money that pays for diamond rings. But I think it's probably going to make a lot of men very anxious."

She could very well be right. Marketing campaigns aside, there are many ways that societal shifts are making men feel, well, small (and you know how convinced they are that size matters). It starts early, in high school, where girls now get better grades than boys do. As a result, women now receive 57 percent of all bachelor degrees from American colleges and will likely soon be awarded more PhDs than men as well.

Such success in school has helped women make major inroads in practically every formerly male-dominated profession. "Women are definitely outpacing men, which is positive for them and for society," notes William S. Pollack, PhD, director of the Centers for Men and Young Men at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Women are now even doing things solo that they used to wait to do with a guy, like buying homes and having children--in 2001, 34 percent of all births were to unwed ...