Hong Kong's glass ceiling for women is set higher than in the rest of Asia - so say articles on the topic. But in the rest of the world, sexual discrimination is still rampant, particularly at the top. A recent study indicated that, in Europe, the higher up the corporate or political pecking order, the bigger the salary gap, averaging about 20 per cent. Reasons for this extreme imbalance start with biology, but have become so interwoven into social customs and attitudes as to be nearly invisible. But men compete most fiercely at the top, and that is where women demand less. They are more flexible negotiators, for instance, and pad their 'current salary' figure in application forms less than men do. But this tells us nothing about why. The nearer to the centre of power you get, the more that stereotypically masculine characteristics count. It is not surprising, given that the whole rat race was man-made, literally. It is neither here nor there whether such characteristics as competitiveness and logical thinking are 'naturally' masculine or not. What counts is that they are perceived this way, and women who show aptitude in these areas run the risk of threatening men and losing the complicity of other women. So the price for a woman to exercise the 'male' skills and traits that can get her to the top is much higher than for a man. First, because she trades a subtle array of fondness, if not respect, (from both men and other women) to live the life required to be at the top of her field and, second, because she has had to go against the social grain to excel in these areas in the first place. Men hit the social jackpot with the same behaviour. The strain of perpetually walking a gender-identification tightrope takes an enormous toll on successful women. This is why many high-achievers make the instinctive decision to conserve precious resources and switch over to the other psychological side. They take on what is known as a 'false consciousness', at least for the purposes of work. That is, they assume the psychological make-up of the power group (in this case, men) at the expense of staying true to their own (workplace devalued) female selves. They become better 'men' than men themselves. A spectacular example is US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who brags about being more fluent in dominant white male American culture than its natural heirs. Such women are simply playing smart, perhaps. Or are they playing at all? The most successful women in a man's world generally say that they have not had time to notice any discrimination. But those, perhaps, are the naturals. They are Margaret Thatchers, not Marilyn Monroes, both making the most of what God gave them. I have little doubt, for example, that Lady Thatcher would have been an exception to the female rule revealed by a recent study at the Pennsylvania State University in which men and women responded to particular workplace prejudice in distinctly different ways. When bosses were patronising towards their subordinates, by praising them highly but denying them promotions and raises, both men and women reacted with the same intensity of anger. However, men performed better in the situation. The researchers believe that this is because women did not believe their behaviour would make a difference. Clearly, affirmative action has had mixed results. Maybe a better idea would be to speed up funding to create the artificial uterus. Once men are released from their profound sense of procreative inferiority (from which the white-knuckled hold on power surely arises) they will be able to embrace their feminine side. They could devote their excess energies to creating a Ministry of Hormones to maintain the balance. Jean Nicol is a psychologist specialising in issues of cultural identity and change in an era of globalisation