IN THE past few weeks a local authority was reported as facing a £50 million bill after losing a sex discrimination claim involving 3,000 women employees over the overtime and bonuses paid to male workers. A young waitress was awarded £124,000 for sex discrimination and unfair dismissal after suffering a campaign of harassment by a chef, and a former beauty queen hired for a sales job because of her good looks — then fired when she became pregnant — was in line for £42,000 after a tribunal ruled she was unfairly dismissed.

In the 30 years since the Sex Discrimination Act came into force there have been many positive changes for women in the workplace. But some problems stubbornly persist. The Equal Opportunities Commission believes it is time for a wider debate, to find a more modern approach that works better for individuals and for employers, and in particular laws that can help to prevent discrimination rather than, as now, solely relying on laws that put discrimination right after it occurs.

Nearly half of pregnant women face some form of discrimination at work. We have a persistent pay gap of 17.1 per cent for full-time women and a shocking 38.4 per cent for part-time women. And four in five part-time workers, mostly women, find themselves stuck in jobs below their potential partly because of the lack of flexible working at more senior levels. More than 125,000 cases under the Sex Discrimination Act and 67,000 equal pay cases filed over the past 30 years have failed to deliver equality.

The Discrimination Law Review gives us a golden opportunity to progress as it creates the promised Single Equality Act that will create a framework for discrimination laws, with a Green Paper expected by late spring.

Thirty years on, the workplace has changed radically. Most mothers now work and fathers want to be more involved at home. Thousands of employers are creating a more welcoming environment through good policies and reaping the benefits. But the laws have not caught up. Our contribution to the debate includes a proposal to consider whether we need a new law to end the pay gap, whether we should extend legal protection to parents and carers and the need for reforms to the tribunal system — which has seen record numbers of equal pay and sex discrimination cases in the past five years — so that it is more effficient, less complex and delivering lasting change.

The present system cannot deliver change fast enough. Individuals seek justice via the lengthy and expensive tribunal system, possibly without adequate legal advice and often at great personal cost. Employers find the web of sex equality and employment law confusing and the cost of defending themselves against claims high. The average cost of legal advice and representation for individuals is £4,433, and employers spend an average of £5,813 on legal costs, excluding staff time.

As a result, individuals are put off going to a tribunal and even if they do, and win, the remedies imposed do little to tackle the workplace problems that gave rise to the case in the first place.

Take equal pay. The 30-year-old legislation has helped to combat “women’s rates” — less pay for doing the same job as a man — and there have been striking gains in obtaining equal pay for work of equal value in some sectors. But it has done little to address the more deep-rooted causes of the pay gap such as occupational segregation and the unequal impact of caring responsibilities.

An approach emphasising what positive steps an employer can take to address all three causes of the pay gap has advantages, not least in making legal action less likely. Action could start with a light-touch equality check to see whether there is a pay gap — and help employers to understand the nature of the problem at their organisation. If there is a gap, other measures might include a review of pay systems or extending flexible work opportunities to help employees to better balance work and family.

Parliament has decided that next year the public sector should adopt a new approach to promote sex equality and eliminate sex discrimination. In the private sector, with the full-time pay gap nine percentage points higher, it must also be time to think again.

As our population ages, more of us will face the extra responsibilities of caring for an older relative and the need to juggle work and family: so should discrimination on the ground of caring responsibilities be explicitly recognised in law? We could create a ground of protection based on having a dependant, or expand the concept of “reasonable adjustment” that has developed in disability law to cover people with dependants.

These questions need the widest possible debate. The Women and Work Commission Report has estimated gender equality could be worth up to £23 billion a year. We cannot afford to let this chance for reform pass by. Thirty years on, it’s time for a new generation of laws to deliver equality for a new generation of men and women.

The author is chairwoman of the Equal Opportunities Commission