What is even more rare is that the accused in both cases are not low-caste men, but members of the cultural elite. In the first, a group of unnamed students, among them "youth leaders", are accused of gang rape at a Rajasthan University hostel in Jaipur. In the second, a Jain monk is accused of raping a woman visiting her son at the monks' hermitage in Bhinmal. Within the justice system here, the influence of these men has already made itself felt. The authorities were reluctant to press charges against the "model students" until a group of women activists formed the Anti- Rape Movement, exerting political pressure, and implicitly threatening the reputation of the university. Goa: Two rape cases, both in Rajasthan, have been making laborious progress through the Indian courts in recent weeks.

This, in a country where social stigma makes even the reporting of rape difficult, is in itself unusual. She works, she has children, she gets the odd date, and sinks the odd souffle. I just wish she'd stop wearing that brown lipstick.Incidentally, Penny Hughes, who left that pounds 250,000 job at Coke to have a baby, is back at work.Louise Chunn is features director of `Vogue'.See Real Life, page 4. It's very British - and very female - to play up one's own failures and down one's achievements; although that kind of behaviour isn't going to get you a pay rise, nor convince your partner that your job is as important as his, and that he should stay home with the sick child for once.Now that so few of us can easily define what elements it takes to be a "successful" grown-up woman today - and so know what everyone else is supposed to make of us - maybe it's time that we checked the role models and, having done so, set our own flawed but largely livable existences on a pedestal, in the style of the American sitcom Cybill. But the full eight-balls-in-the-air Chipperfields special is now seen far less as a pinnacle of achievement than as a slog to be side-stepped or delegated."Their "excellence" might throw us into a fit of self-doubt, but it doesn't mean that what they're doing is wrong. And - brilliant career, family, marriage, etc notwithstanding - they would probably say something similar about Cherie Blair.Mary Riddell of the New Statesman claimed the reason she didn't rate women like Cherie Blair and Nicola Horlick is that they were "anachronisms" from a previous decade: "juggling is inevitably a part of most women's lives. Not so much because of Bill's infidelities, but they wouldn't want her legs or hair or dress sense.

To work, nurture, support, feed, care for - and look like they'd spent all day in the Harvey Nichols Aveda spa. Today's women expect a lot from the women they wannabe and increasingly find themselves failing to measure up to the fantasy.Smart thirty-something achievers today wouldn't choose Hillary Clinton as a role model, for example. Sweetly topping the polls, however, with twice the number of votes than other contenders were the girls' own mothers. Sadly, the survey didn't tell us just how their mothers defined themselves - housewife superstar? corporate raider? - though it did add that most of the girls thought that combining motherhood and work was perfectly normal.Grown-up women, who have left the sixth form far behind, are hard-pressed to choose whom to emulate: Boylan's chasm of choice is still awesome. And then we resent them for beingcapable of turning such acrobatic twists while keeping all these balls in the air.Men can fantasise that they score like David Beckham or serve like Pete Sampras without asking that their hero also be clever, or nice, or good at DIY Women want their heroines to be the whole package. The options are so many and varied, but we do seem to think women have to make a fist of them all, like Jane Asher, who appears to be hands-on mother, business woman, novelist and actress, seductive wife and probably good in the garden too.