For obvious reasons, it’s entirely appropriate that a book entitled The Underachiever’s Manifesto never really became a huge seller. Written by an American doctor named Ray Bennett – not the kind of doctor whom I’d necessarily want if I had a life-threatening illness – it vanished soon after its debut, in 2006. Now, though, its publishers have finally got it together to release it as an ebook in Britain, so you can download it. I mean, if you like. Don’t push yourself. After all, you’re already doing great. As Bennett himself points out, “Being alive is by far your greatest achievement.”

Subtitled The Guide To Accomplishing Little And Feeling Great, Bennett’s short treatise seems at first like another of those jokey-but-unfunny gift books they sold by the tills at Borders, back before Borders itself stopped achieving. But it soon becomes clear there’s more to it. “The achievement lobby is powerful,” he notes early on, “and underachievement is, surprisingly, not as easy as it should be. Our world is so full of unrelenting messages about being the best you can be that it may not even have occurred to you to try for anything less.” Yet ”how many careers are coupled with disastrous marriages? How many talented, hard-working people smoke too much [and] exercise too little… How many fitness-crazed [people] tear up their knees running marathons?” Underachievement, the way Bennett uses the term, begins to seem less like an appealing option for the lazy-minded and more like a path to a superior kind of achievement.

Partly, that’s just because moderation’s often best. (Bennett’s “underachiever’s diet” involves avoiding bad fats and keeping treats occasional; his “underachiever’s workout” entails walking, doing something with your upper body and getting enough sleep.) But the deeper point is your life is an enormously complex web of interacting variables, and it’s impossible to know how, when you focus on maximising one or two of them, you’ll end up distorting the others. “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” wrote the naturalist John Muir – an observation that’s become a mantra for environmentalists, but which applies to individual lives, too. Tug too hard on one thread and the whole thing unravels.

This column has previously extolled the virtues of “deliberate mediocrity” as a strategy for beating perfectionism. But Bennett’s stance evokes the idea, most often associated with Taoism, that knowing not to reach too far might be the essence of freedom. Forget the “stretch goals” beloved of business gurus. “Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill,” notes the Taoist sage Lao Tzu, in Stephen Mitchell’s modern-day interpretation of the Tao Te Ching. “Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.” Recognise where the limits lie, by contrast, and you’ll have room for manoeuvre. “In knowing how far you’ll be able to reach,” explains Bill Mason, a writer on Taoism, “you’ll have perfect freedom to choose just how far within that range to reach.” Bennett quotes Picasso: “You must always work not just within, but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two… In that way, the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.” I don’t know about you, but I think I could settle for underachieving like Picasso.

• oliver.burkeman@guardian.co.uk; twitter.com/oliverburkeman

Nicolas Sarkozy promised a parity government in 2007, but failed to deliver. Five years later, newly elected president François Hollande has just done it. For the first time, France boasts as many women as men in its 34-member cabinet. It may have looked gimmicky at first; it does however feel as if a hurdle has been finally passed, or a weight has been lifted off our shoulders. Gender equality can be done after all. See, easy.

And to live these moments in Cannes, on the first day of the 65th Cannes film festival where no women directors feature among the 22 film-makers whose films have been selected in competition somehow highlights Hollande’s achievement.

I have personally never belonged to the positive discrimination hordes. You should appoint people for their competence, not because you need them to reach quotas. The appointment of Rachida Dati as justice minister by Sarkozy in 2007 looked in that regard a rather calculating and cynical choice. History showed she didn’t measure up to the task; her appointment was a disservice to feminism.

However, I have been increasingly appalled by gender disparity in the workplace, and in politics in particular. When you look at Hollande and his prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault’s choices for the French government, few raise questions of competence and legitimacy. There seem to be few “gimmick” appointments and no Sarkozy-like beauty contest (the former president was famous for favouring slim and fit people, and if possible, good-looking). In fact, Hollande’s parity achievement feels normal. At long last.

For decades, there was a factual reason for gender disparity at the helm of the state. Few women reached higher education and when they did, in schools like Sciences-Po, Normale Supérieure and ENA, among France’s grandes écoles producing the Republic’s governing elite, they were simply outnumbered. Gender disparity in high spheres wasn’t a male conspiracy, only a mirror of higher education demographics.

Today, you could be forgiven for thinking that figures have now finally levelled and that Hollande’s achievement only reflects new demographics, but it is not quite the case yet. Looking at some of the figures, we’re getting to parity at Sciences-Po, but women still only represent a third of students in ENA’s early 2000s numbers. This is the reason Hollande’s decisions feel both normal and yet extraordinary as they both anticipate and give momentum to a soon-to-be-realised prophecy. When there is parity in higher education, there will be no reason or any excuse for gender inequality in government.

Inconsistent and confusing labels on best-selling sandwiches on the high street are making it difficult for shoppers to make meaningful comparisons and choose the healthiest options, a consumer group has warned.

Retailers such as Tesco, Aldi, Caffe Nero and Greggs are criticised by Which? for failing to print so-called ‘traffic light labelling’ on the front of packs which claims that portion sizes and nutritional content vary so much that consumers could be eating three times as much fat and double the amount of salt as the same sandwich bought elsewhere.

Which? researchers looked at the calorie, fat, saturated fat and salt content of three of the most popular pre-prepared sandwiches – chicken salad, egg mayonnaise and bacon, lettuce and tomato (BLT) on sale at supermarkets and coffee chains.

But they found that fat and salt content varied widely while inconsistent labelling across stores meant that healthier sandwich options were not always obvious. The traffic light labelling system uses a colour-coded wheel of red, amber and green symbols to indicate levels of salt, fat and other nutrients but is not compulsory in the UK. Six out of the 15 retailers it compared include the traffic light system, but the rest do not.

Of the inconsistencies singled out by Which? are a Morrisons chicken salad sandwich contains 11.7g fat (amber/medium) compared with one from Waitrose which contains 6.0g fat (green/low). Waitrose uses traffic lights, whereas Morrisons doesn’t. A Lidl BLT has 3.36g salt (red/high) but one from Boots has 1.5g salt (amber/medium). Again, Boots uses traffic lights while Lidl doesn’t. And an Aldi egg mayonnaise sandwich contains 22.3g fat (red/high) and one from Asda contains 10.1g (amber/medium). Asda uses traffic lights, Aldi doesn’t.

This week, the government’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) launched a consultation on nutrition labelling in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Which? executive director Richard Lloyd said: “With obesity levels reaching epidemic proportions, it’s more important than ever that consumers know exactly what they’re eating. Many retailers are already using traffic-light labelling, but the rest need to catch up and do what works best for consumers. We want to see the government insist that all food companies use traffic lights on their labels, so there’s a clear, consistent system that makes it easier for people to make informed choices about what they eat.”

A spokesperson for the FSA said: “New EU regulations on food labelling were introduced at the end of last year that require manufacturers and retailers to make many changes to their food labels. While providing front-of-pack information is voluntary under the regulations, every company that does so has to provide information about calories alone, or calories plus the amount of fats, saturated fat, sugars and salt.”

A spokesperson for Aldi said: “There is currently a debate about which system of food labelling is best for consumers. We offer our customers the opportunity to make an informed choice by providing Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) labelling as we currently feel that this is the best way of keeping our customers informed. We will continue to review the situation as we approach the implementation of the food information regulation in 2014. As a responsible business, we will continue our work to reduce salt and saturated fats in our food.”

Are men the new women? Are they having a harder time than silly moaning ladies? Has feminism gone too far? Has political correctness been put away for its own good? These are such familiar cultural tropes that we may dismiss the word trope altogether. Instead I would use another word: tripe.

Still, abundant tripe trickles down from on high, even academe. Every so often a new tome details how men, not women, are discriminated against (apart from rape, murder, equal pay, genital mutilation, the power imbalance in politics, business, education, law and arts they may have a point). Things are tough for some guys. Really, I know that. I just find it hard to accept feminism has gone too far, that a bit of underarm hair signals the end of western civilisation.

It is entirely possible to understand that many men are suffering at the moment without scapegoating feminism. That is the David Willetts manoeuvre: unemployment largely affecting working-class men is somehow the fault of middle-class women. Now we have Professor David Benatar from Cape Town addressing “the systemic discrimination against men” in a book called The Second Sexism. As always he has to set up some straw women: egalitarian feminists (good) against partisan feminists (bad). He also veers into quite bonkers territory. One of the ways men are more discriminated against is that there are more of them in prison than women. I may be missing something here, but I thought it was to do with them doing more crime?

Even the title annoyed me, though. Simone de Beauvoir must be twisting in her chignon, for she understood sexual politcs and its contradictions. There are many ways to understand power in theory. Read some Foucault. And there are many ways in practice. Have a relationship with another human being. The power dynamics between men and women mean that it is possible to argue for equal rights for women while acknowledging that life chances for many men are also on lockdown.

Right now, in terribly poor countries, girls are left to die in famines and the last food is given to baby boys, while in terribly rich ones, battles rage over who gets control of women’s bodies, women themselves or the state.

Still, Benatar lists the ways in which men are discriminated against, from corporal punishment, to conscription to circumcision to paternity leave and “bodily privacy”. All of this is done without class or context – he is a philosopher, all right? – and without seemingly much knowledge of actual feminism. While seeking to define them, he blurs the difference between disadvantage and discrimination and so ends up asking if we need affirmative action for men. We already have it. It’s called the status quo.

Strangely enough, in Volume 2 of The Second Sex, some 60 years ago, De Beauvoir spoke precisely of the prize of liberation: “to carry off this supreme victory, men and women must, among other things and beyond their natural differentiations, unequivocally affirm their brotherhood”.

Distinguishing sex from gender (“One is not born but rather becomes a woman”), she set off a train of thought about how we all construct ourselves. Freedom from the straitjacket of femininity for women brings with it a freedom for men too, for the price they pay for their dominance is well documented in terms of men’s mental and physical health.

It is no shock though that at a time when women’s rights are under attack (austerity hitting women hardest, abortion under threat), the politics of envy rears its head. For it is victim-envy, this me-too masculism. Or let’s just call it out: it is basic conservatism that says any challenge to the system, any rights won, have gone “too far”. These people cannot speak about the inequalities riven between classes, ethnicities and genders because it’s all about individuals who power through.

Thus, we have the mutant Tory feminists whose credo is: “I can have my cake and eat it. Get your own cake.” I mind that they don’t share the cake, but not whether they keep their faces honeymoon-fresh or not. I am simply bewildered by a feminism that would not want to advance women’s control of their own reproduction.

Still, we all get bamboozled with the choices women now have. Despite everyday stories of violence and abuse against women, we are now to refer to prostitution as “sex work”. I still await the dinner party where middle-class parents tell me: “Tom is doing his law conversion but even though Charlotte hasn’t done her Sats she already says she want to do sex work! We always knew she was entrepreneurial.”

It is clear that all kinds of people are in pain right now, male and female. Victimhood is not an Olympic sport. This was captured succinctly on International Women’s Day by the hashtag #whataboutthemenz. To be anti-sexist means to fight sexism, not to try to commandeer it. Or to reclaim it for men. Indeed, this move to consign sexual inequality to the past when it is a clear and present danger has to be countered. And it would be if feminism got itself in gear, never mind going too far.

Good news for UK employers: employees are calling in sick less often. The Office of National Statistics reports that the average worker now takes just 4.5 days because of illness or injury, compared with 7.2 in 1993. A total of 131m work days were lost in 2011, down 6m on the year before. Londoners are least likely to take time off (1.3% of total working hours), whereas employees in Wales and north east England called in sick at the rate of 2.5% of total working hours.

Tell us how often you called in sick last year and whether you noticed any difference in your colleagues’ behaviour. Do you agree with the Work Foundation and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, who say that “presenteeism” rises in recessions because employees worry that they’ll be first in line for redundancy if they take time off.

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