So how should you do it — live on the radio, in the privacy of your own home with champagne on standby, or maybe in the Ritz where all the trimmings have been laid on to ensure triumph? Since tradition dictates that, as a woman, if you bungle it this time you will be waiting four years before you have another chance to propose, it is a serious business.

I shall be in Lisbon, having whisked my boyfriend away for the weekend. Baroque palaces, cavernous jazz bars and coffee shops curling around squares and spilling lovers on to the pavement will set an idyllic scene. Added to this there will be a tinge of expectancy. Should I be inclined I would be spoilt for choice with dozens of perfect proposal moments. But I will be disappointing the Mills & Boon brigade as each one will pass without so much as a murmur of the M word. This is not because proposing is a uniquely male rite of passage. I am not waiting for my man to drop to his knee, rose clenched in teeth, to offer himself up as a husband.

The idea that deciding when to marry is a male prerogative, the last bastion of gender inequality, is no longer true. Plenty of female-initiated ceremonies will be taking place throughout 2004, as they do every year.

Nor is February 29 a one-off chance for women to break free of the constraints of their sex. Thankfully we have managed to leave behind such clichés. The age of sitting tight and waiting to be asked, as if at an old-fashioned dance where all the other girls seem to be whirling around on the arm of Prince Charming, is exhumed only for the sake of nostalgia. Most women would not stay quiet if they were longing to tie the knot.

Lara, 24, a trainee solicitor, recently got engaged after a “very mutual decision” between herself and her partner. She agreed that she would have enjoyed proposing but wanted to avoid doing it in a leap year. “It’s far too much of a cliché and would become a defining factor in the marriage.” But I’m not proposing because I don’t want to get married. Believe me, it ’s true. Despite cohabiting couples growing steadily in numbers and one in three babies being born out of wedlock, it is still difficult to budge the assumption that all women harbour secret wedding fantasies. The traditional state-of-play dictates that a proposal has to be coaxed gently out of a man via a meticulously prepared campaign; the aim being to make him think he has hatched the idea.

Women, on the other hand, are seen to be in constant starting position, ready to go at the first whiff of a bent knee. It’s a bit like the opposite of sex; women wanting to do it at any opportunity, men saying: “Not now, dear, I want to be completely ready.” Bridget Jones hasn’t helped, crying into her glass of chardonnay and fantasising about how skinny she will be before her own matrimonial extravaganza.

Neither have books such as The Program, by the Harvard graduate Rachel Greenwald, which gives business-like tips on how to trap a man into marriage. This only buoys up the idea that marriage is the ultimate fulfilment of a woman’s life.

For young women like me, eager to get ahead in their chosen career and to enjoy the independence bestowed on them, it is difficult to see marriage as anything but an obstacle. In your twenties, having escaped institutions but still free of responsibility towards children or ageing parents, it is a rare chance to be answerable to no one. It is not surprising that the Quirkyalone network, a group defining themselves as “romantics who resist the tyranny of coupledom”, is tipped as a ballsy Bridget Jones replacement. The Quirkyalones hosted parties across the globe to celebrate February 14, a time when vast numbers dread the annual onslaught of heart-shaped chocolates and booked-out restaurants. Taking America by storm, Quirkyalones have tapped into the need for a break from the relentless search for the perfect partner, and at the same time taken the sting out of being single.

Relationships do not always nourish — sometimes they stifle, and it’s the same for marriage. This issue has rumbled on since 1949 when Simone De Beauvoir complained that “marriage was the traditional destiny for women”, and even before that Victorian campaigners were split over whether marriage and women’s rights were mutually exclusive. Each generation believes it is pioneering a rule-breaking approach to marriage; meanwhile the unmarried masses have grown in size. The National Family and Parenting Institute found that in 2002 one quarter of non-married adults aged 16 to 59 were living together as a family unit but had shunned marriage.

I admit there is an element of rebellion involved in shying away from marriage. Some will pander to parents longing for a wedding, coerced into it by cries of “But I’ve already bought a hat!” and “This dress has been worn by the family for generations.” Others, like me, will resist, preferring instead to strike against conformity and to try to be mistress of their own destiny.

The fear of failing silences my wedding bells. The pitfalls of mismatched marriages are amply demonstrated by divorce rates; at the last count, four in ten marriages break up. More of my friends have divorced parents than vice versa. My generation of twentysomethings, who have mostly passed the ages when their parents married, have been witness to the destructive implications of marriages falling apart. Why risk it when you can live long and happily with your partner bound by nothing more than your love for each other and, perhaps, a shared mortgage? Perhaps I am as guilty of youthful idealism as my parents. I’m also conforming to a new kind of individualism that borders on selfishness. A survey in 2002 by the National Marriage Project of Rutgers University, New Jersey, found that one of the main reasons for not bothering to marry was “the change and compromise that marriage necessitates”.

Paula Hall, a Relate counsellor, agrees that couples are becoming less committed to the hard work involved in nurturing a relationship. “Life is becoming stressful enough without having to work at your love life,” she says. Leaving out the vows makes it easier to jump ship should things go wrong but can mean that couples focus on their individual rather than shared needs. Selfish and commitment-phobic are tags often hurled indiscriminately at men, but in many cases it is women who are pursuing a shopping-list lifestyle. “For some, the ideal would be to e-mail a list of requirements and have the perfect man delivered,” Hall says. “Women invest less but expect more.”