The aim, apparently, was to reduce the risk of overcrowding in supermarkets and chemists. In the event, the proposal was rejected. Which is a relief. Because just imagine what it would have been like.

For one thing, in purely practical terms it would have been a dreadful nuisance. On the days when only women were allowed to go to the supermarket, there would have been no husbands to reach down items from the highest shelves for them, or help carry heavy shopping bags to the car.

On the days when only men were allowed to go to the supermarket, meanwhile, they’d all have ended up getting sent back to the supermarket again afterwards, because they’d inevitably have forgotten to buy something important, or bought a load of completely unnecessary items. As all wives know to their cost, shopping cannot be entrusted to husbands alone. Left to their own devices, husbands turn into the immortal character from Viz comic, Lidl Richard. In every strip, his wife will send him to Lidl to buy eggs, bread and milk, and he’ll come home with a vegetable spiralizer, a pair of mole grips and a microchipped cat flap.

These concerns, however, are pifflingly trivial compared with the next problem: the rule’s sheer unfairness. In a traditional family household, there’s both a man and a woman, which would mean that, on any given day, someone could rush to Tesco or Boots on an urgent errand.

But think of people who live alone. And single parents. And families with same-sex parents: two men, or two women. Each week there would be three whole days when it was actually against the law for anyone in the house to go shopping at all. Out of bread? Children used up all the milk? In desperate need of paracetamol? Tough. You’ll just have to wait, until the next time members of your particular sex are legally permitted to leave the front door.

Which brings us to the next problem. Perhaps the thorniest of all. Gender identity. How would this Panamanian segregation be enforced? Imagine a security guard stationed at the entrance of the supermarket saying, “Sorry, sir. You can’t come in. It’s a Wednesday. Only women are allowed to go shopping today.” But then it turns out that the shopper is actually a trans woman. Think of the uproar. Supermarkets would understandably be terrified of mistaking a customer’s gender identity. And no government on Earth is more concerned about gender identity than Scotland’s. So little wonder they turned the proposal down.

For the same reasons, it was never likely to be taken up in England, Wales, or any nation in Europe. In a socially liberal Western country – even one in the grip of Covid panic – the idea was always a non-starter.

Then again, now that it’s come to wider public attention, some people may be able to see an upside to it. In fact, it might actually start to gather support – even though lockdowns, touch wood, are a thing of the past.

During a debate in the House of Lords last year, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb – a Green Party peer – suggested that the Government impose a 6pm “curfew for men”, so that in the evenings women could go about their business without being harassed by perverts and creeps.

This idea from Panama would give women three whole days a week of strolling around in public, blissfully man-free. So perhaps the Greens will add it to their next manifesto.