Neglect husband

Furious debate has erupted in Sweden about a former beauty queen's attack on the country's drive for a genderless society, which she claims has
turned men into "nappy-changing" sissies and women into frumps who "neglect their husbands' needs".

Comments posted on the internet by Anna Anka, a former Miss Sweden living in California with her husband Paul Anka, the singer and songwriter, provoked howls of outrage from women. There were also cheers from men who agreed that the Scandinavian push for gender equality had gone too far with the recent emergence of males wishing to breastfeed their babies.

"Swedish dads are tragic with all their nappy-changing and equality," wrote Anka, 38, the star of a TV reality show about Swedish women married to wealthy Americans. "Dads in America do not prepare dinner and do not iron, they work and provide for their families." In America, "men are men and women are women".

She added that it was the woman's role to keep the man sexually satisfied. "If she does not, then she only has herself to blame if he is unfaithful," said Anka, whose husband is 29 years her senior. This was a red rag to a bull for feminists. One called her "an insult to women". Another saw her as proof that "there is something seriously wrong with the Swedish gene pool".

Not everyone was hostile, however. "Bravo! Finally a sensible Swedish woman," wrote "Jack Sprat". Swedish men had allowed themselves to be "castrated ... The Vikings must be turning in their graves".

Anka moved to America in 1995. She was later hired as Paul Anka's personal trainer. They had a son, Ethan, in 2004, and were married three years later but Anka does not appear to have always practised the wifely support and submissiveness that she preaches. True to her viking roots, she hurled a chunk of ice at her husband during a dispute in their California mansion last year.