Almost half of all Malaysians believe there will be matrimonial problems if a woman earns more money than her husband, a survey conducted by YouGov UK shows.

This belief appears to be shared by both sexes, with 47 percent of men and 46 percent of women from a sample of 2,768 agreeing with such a notion.

They were asked to respond on whether they agreed or not with the following statement: “It is likely to cause problems if a woman earns more money than her husband.”

The survey had a total of 10 questions, which were then used to score how progressive men and women in a particular country are for YouGov 's global report on attitudes towards gender.

Malaysia ranked 15th out of the 24 countries surveyed, just below Indonesia but above Lebanon.

Ranked at the bottom was Algeria, while at the top of the list was, no surprise, Sweden.

While the number of Malaysians who disagreed with the idea that “women earning more than men was problematic” was slightly more than those who agreed, the percentage of those who concurred with such an idea was significantly higher in Malaysia when compared with other developed countries.

In the US, only 27 percent of men agreed with such a statement as opposed to 64 percent who disagreed, while 38 percent of women agreed with such a statement while 54 percent disagreed.

In Denmark, only 14 percent of men agreed with the statement compared with 74 percent who disagreed while 22 percent of women agreed compared with 64 percent disagreeing.

However, on whether both sexes should receive equal pay, a whopping 72 percent of men and 78 percent of women in Malaysia believed that both should.

Also, 88 percent of men and 96 percent of Malaysian women believed that it would be good for women to make careers of their own.

How respondents answered for various other questions can be viewed in the chart above.

YouGov describes itself as an Internet-based research firm in the UK.