I refer to P Dev Anand Pillai's unintentionally amusing piece, Hello, dumb men are products of careless women, OK? Aside from the tragic sexism - 'women from other regions are not choosy and more feminine' - there is a serious point here about the performance of Malaysian men.

Of course, feminism is something of a dirty word within an Asian context but the reality is that women are dramatically outperforming men at all levels of the education system and are now beginning to make cracks in the glass ceiling.

For example, in virtually every subject at SPM and STPM, the girls outscore the boys. This by the way is a worldwide phenomenon, although it is particularly striking in Malaysia. At our leading universities - UM, UKM, USM - the disparity in the percentage of girls to boys is very worrying,

Especially, I'm told by university lecturers, among the Malays, where the ratio are something like 67% to 33%. This means that half of all female graduates will either end up marrying less qualified men or marrying outsiders.

Of course, this doesn't have to be a bad thing. My own (Malay) wife, I'm happy to admit, is both smarter and better qualified than I am, but somehow we get along!

However, in the great scheme of things, this cannot be good for social or family cohesion. The 'natural' superiority of men within the family structure (reinforced by religion and the legal system) means that many families will rely upon the earning power of poorly qualified men while their 'smarter' wives are left to take care of the domestic responsibilities.

I'm at a loss to suggest a solution to this dilemma. One remedy would be to make serious investments in better male role models in our schools. Another might require the imposition of some sort of gender quota system in education.

However, I suspect that there are deeper social, cultural and religious causes for the imbalance which require serious readjustment.