Congratulations to L Jau for her excellent letter to Malaysians on violence against women. Jau hit the nail on the head when she said that "though a small minority of the offenders have mental disorders, the majority of them are otherwise 'normal' people who do it because they can, and it gives them some sense of power".

Further on she advocates "another form of prevention: instilling respect and non-violence in all our citizens, especially...males...that our homes and society must instill in our boys and young men genuine respect and caring for women and girls."

The crux of the problem - this lack of respect for persons of the opposite sex - is indeed here. It is not a peculiarly Malaysian problem, but rather a global and ancient one. Asian societies often delude themselves into thinking that in their culture, women are respected whereas Western societies commercialise them.

Yet it is in our traditional upbringing that a lot of disrespect for women is often inculcated, often unwittingly. At a young age boys are taught to be leaders, girls to accept their leadership, husbands are expected to command, wives to respect their husbands.

Children are often sent to specifically boys' or girls' schools rather than mixed ones as if somehow the presence of the opposite sex would deter them from their educational goals. In many of our religious offices you will find women occupying one part of the edifice and men the other, and that is if women are not altogether excluded from the ritual.

In some Asian countries there are even separate sections in public transport vehicles to again segregate women from men. All this naturally contributes to societies where men and women pursue a good part of their daily lives away from the opposite sex.

Each sex then grows up treating the other as an enigma rather than as just another person. And I am not even scratching the surface where there is overt sexual discrimination on one basis or another.

Certainly, Western societies are not exempt from sexually-motivated crimes, but at least in most Western nations, it is possible for a woman to walk unaccompanied in the streets even after dark without a lingering fear of being molested, catcalling is not extinct but is not all that frequent, nor does it attain the proportions of outright harassment, and women are generally treated by men as just that, not as creatures from outer space who should be tamed to do your bidding.

In essence, what I am advocating is a more open society, where men and women treat each other as equals, and have learnt to live with each other's presence from their tender childhood as normal human beings - drop all this segregated schooling, all this exclusion of women from religious practices or their relegation to support roles, etc.

Women will always be physically weaker than men - that is the law of nature, and you will always find some sectors of activity dominated by one or the other sex - but there is no sense in excluding or obstructing half the human population from contributing to its well-being by illogical taboos or discrimination. We are partners, not adversaries, in life.