Three women have just been subjected to corporal punishment under sharia law in Malaysia for having sex out of wedlock. It takes two to tango, of course, and yet no man was punished. Discriminatory or what?Closer to home, a new report has revealed that women lawyers in England and Wales continue to suffer from sexist attitudes in the legal profession. This is despite years of equality legislation, and a society where the head of state, attorney general, solicitor general and deputy head of the governing Labour party are all women.

And now, it transpires, women are even on shaky ground when they sneer at the male of the species for taking to his bed with a dose of Man Flu.

Let’s deal with the last, and arguably, most trivial point first. Today’s Daily Telegraph trumpets biologists’ findings that Man Flu really does exist. It’s official: Men are not just wimps, but have evolved a weaker immune system than women because we subscribe to the maxim of ‘live fast, die young’. Once we have fulfilled our reproductive destiny, we shuffle our mortal coil and leave women – hardier than us when it comes to resistance to disease – to bring up baby.

I’m not convinced this is true. In fact, just thinking about it has given me a headache, which will probably develop into a migraine or brain tumour, but I’m not expecting any sympathy – from women.

And now let’s get down to the serious stuff: corporal punishment in Malaysia.

Andrew Khoo practises law in Malaysia, where he sits on the Malaysian Bar Council and co-chairs the country’s human rights committee. He has just spent some weeks as a guest of the Law Society’s Commonwealth Professional Fellowship Programme 2010.

Khoo told me that Malaysia has a dual system of law where there are both civil courts and courts that apply sharia law. He said: ‘This leads to a tension as to how far civil ideas of human rights should extend to or mitigate sharia-based punishments.’

He was referring to the case of three women caned for having sex outside marriage. Such caning is vicious and carried out by men. And yet the men with whom the women had extra-marital sex escaped punishment.

Says Khoo: ‘Ideally, the men should have been punished, too, but it was easier to prosecute the women. The facts spoke for themselves. They had children and they were unmarried and so they must have had sex out of wedlock. Case proved. But there is a definite concern, especially among women’s groups, that somehow women have to face the brunt of punishment under sharia and men hardly at all.’

Women, including women lawyers, do not necessarily disagree with sharia law and its principles. Khoo said: ‘There has been extensive debate about whether or not the bar council should be critical of sharia law and in particular the punishment of caning. Or whether we should acknowledge that caning is something provided for in the Qur’an and therefore should not be questioned.’

The debate continues.

In the UK, meanwhile, manifestations of sexism may be less stark but they are no less real, according to a survey conducted by King’s College London together with the Association of Women Solicitors (AWS).

Some 800 women solicitors across England were surveyed and half of them believed that those lawyers who made use of ‘work-family/life policies’ – or flexible working – were viewed as less serious about their careers than other lawyers. Some 44% felt that working flexibly had a ‘negative impact on lawyers’ promotion prospects’.

And yet career satisfaction was high. Some 80% of the female solicitors questioned said they experienced ‘real enjoyment in their jobs’. There was almost unanimous agreement – 96% – that they wanted careers where work could be integrated with personal and family lives, but 46% of respondents said they ‘constantly’ had to put their jobs first.

The newly elected AWS chairwoman Christl Hughes was unsurprised by the survey’s findings, but added a new twist of her own to the story. Women solicitors in the provinces face more ‘outdated sexist attitudes’ than their London colleagues, she said, including a belief among clients that ‘solicitors should be men’.

And so there you have it. On one side there are laws that appear to discriminate against women. On the other side there are laws that appear powerless to prevent discrimination against women, especially up north it seems.

What use the law? Are there other ways to change sexist attitudes?