And when women weren’t working outside, shopping gave them a good excuse to sally forth, to get away from the monotony and cares of housekeeping. But with women increasingly joining the workforce, shopping is no longer the great escape.

Still, shopping seems unchanged as a social, recreational activity for women. They like to shop with friends, egging each other on.

For many women, there are psychological and emotional aspects of shopping that are just plain absent in men. Women tend to tally up coolly the pros and cons of every purchase. In fact they take pride in their ability to make the best possible purchase.

Possibly the ideal place to study female shopping behaviour is in front of the greeting cards rack. Women will devote quite a bit of time studying card after card — picking up, opening and reading — to find the one that speaks their hearts.

Incidentally, any wife watching the family budget knows better than to send her husband to a shopping complex with kids. Men are particularly suggestible to the entreaties of children.

Men spend less time looking, too, Often, it’s hard to get them to look at anything they hadn’t intended to buy. They usually don’t ask where things are, or any other questions, for that matter — they shop the way they drive.

You see a man impatiently move through a store to the section he wants, pick something up, and then almost abruptly, he’s ready to buy it. Men often forget their collar or waist size.

It’s only at computer hardware and software purchasing that you see men spending time unhurriedly; the way they once did with stereo equipment and car accessories.

British psychologist David Lewis has done a study on men’s stress levels while Christmas shopping. "The peak levels were equivalent to emergency situations experienced by fighter pilots or policemen going into dangerous situations," says he.

Lewis sent three dozen men and women of different ages to stores with identical Christmas lists. Each shopper was accompanied by a researcher who recorded periodic blood pressure and heart rate.

It was found that one out of four women had elevated heart and blood pressure rates, but every single man in the study had significant increases. Even before they stepped out the front door to head for the stores, more than 70 per cent of men started to show these symptoms. "For men, even the thought of going shopping was enough to send stress levels soaring," concludes Lewis.

Most of the men, when queried, admitted that they were likely to choose the first gift they’d see rather than spend more time in the stores than they absolutely had to. Going in to buy shirts, they just bought shirts and left.

Some women brought husbands along. And most of the ones who did so admitted later that they wish they’d left them at home. The stress levels for women with men along were much higher than for those who went alone or with female companions. Even those who brought their kids along recorded lower levels of stress than the ones who were accompanied by their husbands, more so where the latter display a disinclination to money getting spent.