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The latest social trends report from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has shown a dramatic rise in the number of women who are marrying younger men.
In more than a quarter of marriages now wives are older than their husbands, almost double the number of such couples in the early 1960s.
At the same time, the percentage of men taking wives younger at least five years younger than them has dropped to around 50 per cent from nearly nearly two-thirds over the same period.
According to Professor Patrick O'Donnell, a specialist in the psychology of interpersonal attraction at Glasgow University, said that increasing gender equality is challenging traditional ideas about male-female attraction.
However he said: "I am quite surprised that the rise is so marked."
Prof O'Donnell said: "There is a lot of debate about this issue. As women gain in economic equality, they no longer marry for economic protection in the way they might have in the past - leading them to marry older men. So instead they marry purely on the grounds of attraction and means they tend to search for younger more beautiful people. The idea that women would go for older men purely because they find them attractive is a fallacy."
Prof O'Donnell said that a similar trend had already developed in Scandanavia, where greater social equality had meant they had gained greater economic status.
According to Relate councillor Denise Knowles, both men and women can see much to gain from such a relationship: "For many women, the career has been the big thing and they now want to investigate other options, but they are looking for somebody to have fun with, but also who doesn't necessarily want to have children. There is also the idea that they want somebody who is young enough not to feel threatened by the woman's career, so they encourage that person but not enter into some sort of competitive.
"For the younger man it was not simply the case of pursuing a 'mother figure'. An older woman can come across as being a lot more confident about themselves and this can be very attractive to a younger man. It can mean that they enter into an equal relationship."
But Mrs Knowles warned that older women marrying younger men faceparticular challenges: "There are pressures from outside the couple: there can be prejudicial attitudes from family members who have very preconceived attitudes about such relationships.
"But there is also the fact that women are still responsible for the majority of house work, and so the woman can find that while she is the main bread winner, she also has to come in at the end of the day and clean the house.
"Also you have to accept the fact that one of you is going to become infirm sooner than the other. It may be that the person doesn't want to become a carer."
But Phillip Hodson, fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, said that there was a case of role reversal: "This has a lot to do with women's increased position as a sex. They are doing better than men, more powerful job, better education. They are therefore able to be more demanding, and essentially doing what men used to do: go for the younger, more beautiful models. It's a slight twist on the sexism issue."
The ONS report show that the woman was older in 26 per cent of couples who married in 2004, up from 15 per cent in 1963.
Other trends revealed an increasie single-parent families, according to a report out today.
Nearly a quarter (24%) lived with just one parent last year - treble the proportion recorded in 1972.
• THERE are many celebrity couples in which the woman is the senior partner of the relationship.
Actress Susan Sarandon has 12 years on her actor husband, Tim Robbins, while Madonna is a decade older than director Guy Ritchie.
Younger coupleswho are planning to marry also reflect the trend: model Kate Moss has five years seniority on rocker Pete Docherty.
However it is former Dynasty star Joan Collins who blazed the trail for women marrying younger men. Her current husband, Percy Gibson, is 32 years younger, but in the past she has married men who were 15 and 25 years younger than her.
However, when it comes to love knowing no boundaries Malaysian couple Wook Kunder and Muhamad Noor Che Musa perhaps take the biscuit: when they married last year, she was 103 and he was 33.
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