Men earn £300,000 more than women over a lifetime. Call that equality?

I haven’t taken much notice of International Women’s Day since I flirted with radical feminism as a student, ahem, quite a while ago. But my inner Germaine Greer has been springing into life again due to a survey by recruitment consultants Robert Half marking IWD today.

It found men are likely to earn £300,000 more than women over a lifetime, and that’s difficult to dismiss with a dainty shrug. Let’s face it, in most parts of the country, it’s a house. Yes ladies, employers think we are worth a whole three-bedroom-semi less than a bloke. It’s enough to drive a girl to dredge up those Doc Martens and dungarees from the dusty recesses of the wardrobe.

Discrimination has supposedly been outlawed in this country since the Made in Dagenham era, when the 1968 strike of female machinists at the Ford car factory led to the Equal Pay Act of 1970. Yet this week, in one of those ‘you really couldn’t make it up’ stories, it emerged that women working in the department of equalities minister Nicky Morgan are being paid around £3,000 less a year than the men.