You know how it is: you read the recipe and think it looks mouthwateringly good; you shop for the best ingredients and bring them together. The prospect is within reach, and then you get distracted. You go away to attend to life and come back imagining that the delectable dish is already bubbling and cooked, ready for you to enjoy.

But, hell, no, you've got to start from scratch with the recipe. What's worse is that your appetite has somehow changed. Can you really be bothered? Will the result be worth the effort? Will the outcome be all you hoped, and live up to the juicy picture in the cookbook?

Equality! What a tricky recipe that turns out to be. All those decades ago it seemed what we needed was the right recipe - legislation, a set of requirements laid out to be acted upon. The times were propitious and lots of people were speaking out. Women got what they wanted. The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970 and came into force in 1975, the five-year delay no doubt being to allow sclerotic male institutions to drag themselves unwillingly through the unhappy requirement to treat women the same as men.

Five years! It wasn't nearly enough. Here we are, nearly 35 years later, and men are still paid 17 per cent more than women in full-time work. In part-time work the gender gap is 36.6 per cent ( Office for National Statistics).

Meanwhile, we have got on with our lives. And they have been tough lives, indeed. We have grappled with the work/life balance, we have juggled pregnancies, and their attendant queasiness, with the resolve to function at least as well as men; we organised the best childcare we could find, and when that suddenly vanished called on mothers and friends for emergency help. We have taken calls at our desks from anxious teachers or, worse, hospitals - and then quietly gathered up our things and explained with deliberate calm that although we have to be away for an hour or two, replacement provisions are in place.

We check on our return that no outcomes have suffered, no lapse been incurred. And we have grown tired with the effort. And we are still waiting for equal pay. In the 1970s we believed the new dawn wasn't far off. We read and talked and planned. Sheila Rowbotham and Juliet Mitchell were our ideologists, Rosie Boycott and Carmen Callil our publishers, Germaine Greer our polemicist. These women are now almost all in their sixties and one of the core expectations that we shared has simply not happened. Now at last it just might.

The Government Equalities Office is taking matters seriously. There is a major Equality Bill coming up in the spring and there are rumours that an amendment might be included requiring companies in the private sector to publish figures in their annual accounts showing the number of male and female employees in particular pay bands. Certainly something important is stirring. It is surely unimaginable that the issue will witter on unchanged for further decades.

Not surprisingly there are voices raised against. The Confederation of British Industry is complaining that “meaningless statistics” will not do much to remedy the situation. The Federation of Small Business declares that the proposals are “overprescriptive”. The only reason that they are overprescriptive is because without some high-profile naming and shaming nothing will change.

As for the “meaninglessness” of statistics, perhaps lifting the ban on secrecy clauses in work contracts will be more effective, though for some reason that frightens people even more.

What are people afraid of? What is wrong with people being paid the same for the same work? The Fawcett Society believes that the stumbling block is how to assess the equivalence of work. Few jobs are identical. And it is within the minor differentials that excuses can be made. Back in the 1960s when I presented a nightly BBC television programme, my three presenter colleagues - all male - came to me with the news that they were all paid more than me, and weren't happy about it. The editor was told that this wasn't considered fair as our work as presenters - given differences of temperament and style - was virtually identical. My pay was raised.

Since then secrecy has taken over. No one tells or is allowed to tell. What you're paid is more taboo than your sex life. But transparency is all the mode these days. What people earn must be taken out of the closet. Let us know the pay bands, the contract details. Then we can examine with precision why women are on average paid so much less, and whether it must always be so.

Even now many of us know the office where the secretary is too good at her job to be promoted, or the researcher is not assertive enough to insist on climbing the career ladder. Men behave as though they had a right to jobs: women are still too often grateful to be accepted among them. Entrenched habits need changing. A new law could shake things up.

Last October the Fawcett Society wrote to Peter Mandelson, as Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, urging him to press hard for such legislation. He has yet to reply. But if he is tempted to argue that the economic times are not propitious, let me tell him that such a time will never come.

The right time for changes being resisted by business, by employers, by men will never spontaneously arrive. It has to be introduced by Parliament. And with a new Equality Bill, the best time is now.

joanbakewell@thetimes.co.uk

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