How far have we come?

But while the generation that has grown up since the 1970s has benefitted from new legal rights, equality is not yet firmly in our grasp.

True, it is now illegal for employers to refuse to employ married women, or expect women to resign when they become pregnant. But the single biggest number of complaints to the Equal Opportunities Commission, last year, was from women who told their boss they were pregnant and were promptly sacked. Having a right is one thing, exercising it, especially, when there is no legal aid for employment tribunals, is something else.

A closer look
While women working full time now earn 80 pence per hour for every £1 earned by a man, the real gap in men and women's earnings is far wider. 44% of women in employment work part-time, and they earn, on average, only 60 pence per hour for every pound earned by a man. Women are entering the workforce in larger numbers than ever before, but the job market is still heavily segregated by gender. And the sad fact is that, the larger the proportion of women in an industry, the lower the status, and the lower the pay.

The reality of work for most women is, low status jobs that are insecure and badly paid. A few high profile women have broken through, but the reason they are high profile is precisely because there are so few of them. A quick glance at the FTSE top 100 companies from last year shows how few women there are at the most senior levels in the UK. More than half of the FTSE top 100 had no women on their boards. Only 10 had more than one, and none had more than 2.

Women today are committed to working for a living. We are certainly more likely to be in paid work than our mothers, working longer hours and for more of our lives. This change is most obvious among mothers of small children. Just over 50% of women with children under 5 are now in paid employment - this accounts for 1.6 million women. Of these women, 1.2 million were themselves brought up by mothers who were not in paid work at all. So much has change, in terms of women going out to work, but what's happening at home?

Next page: work is all around