"YOU know, I have a friend who’s a house husband too. His wife goes out and earns their keep, while he stays at home and looks after the baby and cat," a friend told me over lunch. She was responding to my statement about someone I knew, who was a house husband. My friend clasped her hands thoughtfully and said, "It looks like Malaysia is getting more progressive."

Progressive indeed! According to a recent news report, there are more women than men in universities. Furthermore, online research has stated that Malaysia ranks a high fourth place in Asia for number of women in top management, with 23% of Malaysian women in senior management positions, far above figures for Britain and most of Western Europe.

And it’s about time, one would think. Certainly, the women I have worked with are far more conscientious and organised. I admire their abilities and I wish I could be as focused and systematic as some of the women I have had the privilege of working with.

Other evidence of this trend is a recent news report that stated the Human Resources Ministry intends to implement "gender-neutral" laws to counter sexual-harassment at the workplace. Kudos!

To highlight this recent trend, former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said, "Women are better educated, and just as capable, if not more, than men ... Men have become dependent on women, while women are becoming more independent. Soon, women will dominate society and men will lose the position of authority, and men will not be able to stop them. They are too lazy to stop them."

A friend, who is a lecturer, reinforced this perception by telling me recently that the young women in his tertiary level class were hardworking and intelligent, and that the young men were usually the opposite.

Perhaps some men are lazy, but perhaps others just believe that they will get what they want just because they are men. After all, there is a general perception of a glass ceiling for women at work, and even if that does not exist anymore, there still might be a "salary ceiling" for women on the career ladder, as compared to a man in a similar position.

Mahathir said, "Women are better educated, and just as capable, if not more, than men. In the past, women were confined to the kitchen. Now, they’ve come out and done well, providing the intellectual output needed for nation-building."

If this is the case, however, then Malaysia is surely losing out, considering that women’s participation in the labour force is only at 46%, according to the 2009/2010 Economic Report. Aside from a few companies, there appear to be few initiatives to draw women back into the workforce, especially if they are young mothers.

This leaves us with 54% of men, some of whom, as Mahathir has put it, are "lazy". One wonders how many of these are actually leaders, whether in the private or public sector.

This leads to my next point. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) recently found that for every woman it arrests on a corruption charge, it brings in 15 men. A recent news report stated that women’s propensity for corruption is far less than men. From 2005 to June 2009, MACC (and its predecessor, the ACA) made 2,495 arrests, of which 94% or 2,339 were men. In comparison, 156 women were arrested.

The head of Malaysia Anti-Corruption Academy, Samarajoo Manikam, was reported to have said, "Statistically, women seem to be cleaner."

Could this be why Malaysia has been "mediocre" (according to former president of Transparency International Malaysia, Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam) on the Corruption Perception Index these past few years? Could it be why few signatories to the UN Global Compact in Malaysia have undertaken initiatives to counter bribery? Would we have a cleaner and more effectively managed economy and country if more women were in charge?