By most people’s standards, 2016 has been a pretty terrible year. I need only mention the violence in Syria and Iraq, the plight of child migrants, the xenophobic flavour of post-Brexit Britain or the entire US election campaign to make everyone want to rush off and lie in a darkened room.

And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, womankind has just been delivered perhaps the hammer blow of 2016: apparently the most inspirational and accomplished woman of the last 12 months is, wait for it…a man! And that man is…Bono. Bloody Bono. Yes, that Bono, the arse out of U2.

Some actual women did make it on to Glamour magazine’s annual list, such as Olympic champion Simone Biles, whose record-breaking achievements in gymnastics have astounded us all, Nadia Murad, the young woman in northern Iraq who stood up to ISIS, and Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, the trio who created the Black Lives Matter campaign. But sadly the world’s three and half billion females couldn’t throw up quite enough worthy recipients, so the list was opened up to St Bozo of Dublin to represent the “many men who really are doing wonderful things for women these days”, according to editor Cindi Leive.

This doe-eyed fawning and approval-seeking continued with Leive’s contention that Bono is even more worthy of the accolade because, obviously unlike the others on the list, he could have so easily just ignored women altogether. “When a major male rock star who could do anything at all with his life decides to focus on the rights of women and girls worldwide, that’s worth celebrating,” she gushed. How lucky we women are that one of the world’s most despised celebrities has deigned to take up the cause of little old us, eh? Dear god, someone hand me the sick bucket.

Bono has taken up a number of campaigns that focus on women, including the Poverty is Sexist movement, which seeks to highlight the particular plight of poor women in the developing world. Don’t get me wrong, this is all very worthy. But what’s so annoying is that women themselves, including many from the developing world, have been banging on about this very subject for years. To give her her due, Angelina Jolie is one of them. But if you are to believe Glamour magazine it takes a rich white bloke in his fifties to mansplain it to the world.

Bono is a particular type of rich white man, of course. For a start, he’s the sort that has the type of tax arrangements that leave him open to accusations of hypocrisy. Call me simplistic, but perhaps there would be fewer people in poverty - the majority of whom are women - if the wealthy chose to contribute the full tax rate rather than paying wealthy bankers to hide their money for them? I’ve got news for Bono – that sort of thing isn’t very, er, feminist.

Neither is urging us to listen to “Papa Francisco” as he calls The Pope, a man who only a few days ago ruled out women priests, and who heads a denomination that still views the female half of the population as little more than breeding machines.

So what does this decision to honour Bono as Woman of the Year say about Glamour magazine? I’d like to say I expected better of the publication, but I’d be lying. Honestly, have you ever read it? It’s the type of volume that includes 1950s-style articles on “How To Make a Man Fall For You”, is obsessed with dieting and make-up, fills its glossy pages with the sort of “perfect” women – i.e. skinny models – you never meet in real life and that values vacuous celebrity culture over real life. In other words, it’s exactly the sort of magazine that does the work of the sexists by filling its mostly young readers full of insecurity, self-hatred and longing for things that do not exist. With friends like these, what woman needs enemies? Frankly, I wouldn’t line a rabbit hutch with Glamour magazine, or indeed any of its rivals.

Indeed, until women stop reading magazines like these they will be allowing themselves to be filled with the sort of hideous but insidious ideas that hold them back in the world in the first place. The pages of Glamour magazine do not celebrate the values or realities displayed by Simone Biles - extreme dedication, fearlessness, intelligence and the embrace of an “unfeminine” body shape - in her quest to win Olympic gold this summer. Spend too much time reading this type of nonsense and your head will likely be too full of weight loss and wrinkle prevention to worry about creating a worldwide anti-racism protest movement. And, as Woman of the Year highlights, you will be encouraged to seek the approval of men in everything you do.

Come on women - and, indeed, men. We can all surely do better than this.