An overwhelming number of Jamaicans are waking up to the fact that women are outpacing men in educational accomplishment.

In a recent Bill Johnson poll, commissioned by The Gleaner, some 63 per cent of respondents said they believed Jamaican women had more academic knowledge than their male counterparts. Only 15 per cent believed men were still ahead, while 19 per cent said both were equal in academic knowledge. Three per cent had no opinion.

The questioned posed was: "In general, who do you think has more academic knowledge in Jamaica, men or women?"

When disaggregated along gender lines, the female respondents reflected far more confidence in their own growing advantage over the male gender, with 72 per cent of them saying women were ahead in academic knowledge. A more modest 52 per cent of male respondents acknowledged that men were lagging behind women.

As much as 70 per cent of all undergraduates leaving the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, are women, while 30 per cent are men. The last time more men than women graduated from the University of the West Indies was in 1981. The figures for the other tertiary institutions across the island could not be immediately ascertained.