IT WAS the news that every trophy wife dreaded to hear. A new report from a group of economists has revealed that successful men no longer want arm candy. Instead, it says, they want intelligent, successful, hardworking wives.

While in the 1980s, the higher a man's salary, the lower the average number of hours were worked by his wife, now, a professional man's salary is 5.5% higher for every 1,000 hours worked by his wife, says a report in the UK, published in Labour Economics.

High-achieving men are choosing high-achieving women. Which means a new elite made up of powerful, alpha couples - and great disappointment for that demographic of young women hoping to snare a rich husband in the Ice Bar.

When Ethan Hawke married Uma Thurman nine years ago, it was seen as the union of two gods. But when they split after his alleged infidelity, he complained to The New York Times that she was a "really strong woman, " but that "someone has to make the hearth."

Now, we see sports stars such as Gavin Henson pairing up with über-achieving singer-presenter-superstars like Charlotte Church. We watch the playwright Michael Frayn applauding proudly as his wife, Claire Tomalin, scoops the Whitbread Prize from under his nose.

We see the reclusive squillionaire Charles Saatchi hooking up with the ebullient domestic goddess Nigella Lawson, while TDs (Olwyn Enright and Joe McHugh) marry each other.

So, are powerful women slipping on their Manolos and beating off eligible businessmen?

Not exactly.

"My colleagues and I have seen a lot of evidence of 'competing ego syndrome', " says Vanessa Lloyd Platt, a top divorce lawyer, whose practice has been "like Bedlam" since Christmas. "This is still a man's world where many men do not like the idea of their women getting recognition and equal earnings."

The perils of the male ego were made abundantly clear to Nicola Horlick, the woman who had it all: the thrilling job, the £20m, the gorgeous children and the happy, 21-year marriage. It was at a party in 2003, at the V&A to herald their new life in Australia, that her husband decided to tell her that he was leaving her for a young receptionist.

Last year, Horlick surprised herself by remarrying with Martin Baker, a financial journalist, thriller writer and biographer.

From his first printed interview with his future wife he was clearly in awe of her. But shortly after their wedding he said: "People will assume I'm the beta male to Nicola's alpha female, [but] I took my A-levels early and studied law at Oxford. I'm not as well off as Nicola but I'm better off than most." She responded loyally: "One day Martin's books will be fantastically successful and . . . everyone will rush for his autograph and ignore me." She might as well have expressed a desire to give up her career and run a small flower shop in the country.

Not all men have an innate need to be the senior partner at all costs. Recent happy couplings include the footballer Ashley Cole with the singer Cheryl Tweedy and the film and theatre director Sam Mendes with the actress Kate Winslet. Even the Icelandic president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, has hooked up with the glittering London socialite Dorrit Moussaieff, a property queen and Park Lane jeweller to the stars.

But Vanessa Lloyd Platt has a word of warning to alpha women. "In the case of a divorce, the harder a woman has worked and the more she earns, the smaller the settlement she will get, " she says. "In these footballer's wife-type settlements, the 'lazy wife', who has nannies to bring up the kids and spends all day at the nail salon, is deemed incapable of supporting herself and so will get a huge whack.

"The wife who has worked her guts out to get to a position of strength will get nothing.

"Unfortunately, in the matrimonial world the industrious wife will be penalised. It seems a little unfair."

HOME GROWN POWER COUPLES? A marriage of PR and media Caroline Kennedy and Tom McGurk She's the doyenne of Irish PR with an impressive list of clients including the Merrion Hotel, the Brown Thomas Group and naturally, her sister, the designer Louise Kennedy.

He's the gravel-voiced, forthright journalist and broadcaster, formerly married to Miriam O'Callaghan. Kennedy and McGurk married in 2003 and spend much of their time at their home in Carlow.

The performer and the producer Eamon Dunphy and Jane Gogan A former chairperson of Filmbase and founding member of Film Makers Ireland, Gogan spent seven years as TV3's commissioning editor before taking on the position of commissioning editor, drama for RT�? last year.

She's well respected in the industry and her partner Dunphy is no stranger to drama himself, both on the screen and off it.

The designer and the rock star Ali Hewson and Bono It can't be exactly easy standing in Bono's shadow, but from the outset Hewson has carved out her own niche with her work with Greenpeace, the Chernobyl Children's Project, alleviating poverty in the developing world and, most recently, as the founder of the Edun label, the socially conscious clothing company she started with Bono and designer Ronan Gregory. The company's mission is to help increase trade and create sustainable employment for developing areas of the world with an emphasis on Africa, providing a business model that others can replicate and follow. The clothes are pretty gorgeous too.

The music promoter and the charity fundraiser Denis Desmond and Caroline Downey They met at the first ever Slane concert in 1981 and now the couple, who run MCD productions, are said to be worth in the region of a cool Euro91m. As the country's largest music promoter, Desmond is best known for the Slane, Oxegen, Bud Rising and Heineken Green Energy events and owns a percentage of Mean Fiddler, DF Concerts, T in the Park, V and the Academy Music Group. He also owns 50% of fast food chain Abrekebabra.

Downey, meanwhile, as well as running MCD, is the organiser and producer of the hugely successful annual Childline concerts.

The couple live in Killiney with their three children.

AND THOSE ACROSS THE WATER? » Authors Michael Frayn and Claire Tomalin competed for the 2002 Whitbread Prize. She won, with her biography of Samuel Pepys, but said diplomatically: "My husband celebrated more than I did."

»Icelandic president Olafur Ragnar Grimsson is married to the London socialite and Park Lane jeweller Dorrit Moussaieff.

She is rumoured to have made £45m profit selling property in London's Canary Wharf.

»The fashion designer Nicole Farhi says that her husband, the playwright David Hare, whose work includes Amy's View and Stuff Happens, does help her to design clothes. She simply thinks, "Would David wear this?"

»Carol Smillie presents BBC2's Changing Rooms, but she has no alterations or makeovers planned for her husband, the restaurateur and businessman Alex Knight.

They live in Glasgow and have three children.

»Impressively, film star Natascha McElhone wasn't tempted by a marriage to an actor. Her husband is the craniofacial plastic surgeon Martin Hirigoyen Kelly, who set up the charity Facing The World.

»Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark and TV producer Alan Clements set up the Wark Clements TV production company, merged it with Muriel Gray's company and then sold it in 2005 for £2.5m.

»British runner Paula Radcliffe is married to Gary Lough, a former British 1,500m international. Last week they had a baby girl.

»Singer Charlotte Church and Welsh rugby international Gavin Henson seem to be a match made in heaven. Charlotte wears the trousers in the relationship, Gavin wears the hair gel and fake tan.

»When millionaire crooner Chris Martin married Hollywood superstar Gwyneth Paltrow, they named their daughter Apple, to show how down to earth they are.

»Christiane Amanpour is chief international correspondent for CNN; her partner, James Rubin, is an international affairs correspondent and former adviser to John Kerry.

»The recent marriage of Girls Aloud singer and the face of Coke Zero, Cheryl Tweedy, and footballer Ashley Cole has created a multimillion partnership. Their wedding pictures alone fetched £1m with OK! magazine.

»Kate Winslet's first husband, Jim Threapleton, was perhaps not quite alpha enough. Now she is married to the film director Sam Mendes (Road to Perdition, American Beauty) instead.

»Zadie Smith and Nick Laird met at King's College, Cambridge, and admired each other's work. Ten years later, she is a bestselling novelist, he a successful poet and novelist.

»Charles Saatchiwas the founder of the world's biggest advertising agency, Saatchi and Saatchi. Now he is the owner of the Saatchi Gallery, married to the domestic goddess Nigella Lawson.

»Playwright and author Harold Pinter and historian/novelist Antonia Fraser married in 1980, and they later co-founded a political 'salon' aimed at combating Thatcherism. She calls him "my first reader."