OK, let's get to the bottom of this. Will the CVs of white men be chucked on to the reject pile by the Equality Bill or not? I call Harriet Harman's press office and this is the deal: given two equal candidates, a company may select on the basis of gender or ethnicity to rectify some existing imbalance. A male teacher might be good news for boys in an all-woman primary school, a black police officer an asset in an Afro-Caribbean neighbourhood. Fair enough.

But hang on, isn't this happening already? And, since the Bill will not compel employers by issuing quotas, won't the stodgy old firms just keep hiring white blokes while the groovy, inclusive ones continue their broader recruitment drive. “Yes,” declared the press officer triumphantly. “But now they [the latter] have permission!”

Which is why the Equality Bill, for all its noble intent, makes my teeth itch. Why do we need government to give us permission to do what we are already doing? How patronising. Moreover, Ms Harman has inflamed the grand high order of touchy white manhood without actually changing a thing. Just as vegetarianism evolved long ago from brown rice and lentils into a whole vibrant, toothsome menu, so feminism - though, hush, speak not its name! - now has more style and subtlety than Seventies-style edicts from dangly-earringed wimmin. Who, on hearing Boris Johnson had fired London's “women's adviser”, didn't ponder what she ever did and emit a snigger at this last dinosaur slain?

I am no Harriet-hater. She braved decades of male derision to insist that flexible working and childcare were the proper business of government. But her approach to rectifiying an inequality in women's earnings sounds so statist and old school.

Times Archive, 1946: Equal pay

Existing wage differences go well beyond anything that can be explained by differences in the overall efficiency of men and women as workers

BACKGROUND

• Firms told to favour women

• Want equal pay? Give up men and children

• Equality Bill is met with pride...and prejudice

• More rights to medical care for the elderly

Public bodies, under the Bill, must reveal their salary gender gap. But what will this show? Take the Treasury and Department for Transport, where women are paid, respectively, 26 and 21 per cent less than male colleagues. But, since the public sector has rigid pay strata, men and women within a given grade receive pretty much the same. All these figures reveal is that these departments attract male policy wonks and bus-spotters, aided by lower-paid female catering and secretarial staff.

Whereas private companies will be exempt from enforced publication. Here, since women are often bashful at negotiating their market worth, their starting salaries often begin well below those of brasher young men and never catch up. Ms Harman plans more “transparency”, a ban on secrecy clauses that stop employees discussing what they earn. People comparing pay slips! You show me yours and I'll show you mine? How excrutiating, how un-British!

Rather I like the Conservative Party's more muscular proposal that any employer losing a discrimination case at an employment tribunal would suffer a compulsory salary audit. An exquisite punishment to dangle over City firms: their bigger- bonuses-for-boys scams laid bare.

But why women still earn significantly less than men is a no-brainer. They downshift after having children, often into jobs a notch below their skill or former seniority, but which leave them free by school's-out. Of the 20 women I know best, only two remained in full-time work after motherhood. Most wanted to enjoy those first childhood years, and lost their hunger for corporate glory. But others felt the prevailing cultural pressure that to pursue a beloved career - when there is no financial imperative - is cheating not only your children, but yourself. Don't get all haggard with stress. Become a floral-pinny, cake-baking Cath Kidston postmodern housewife. I see these women pushing £500 buggies to baby massage, speaking to toddlers as if delivering a client pitch. They look lonely, miserable, exiled from their former selves. Do yourselves a favour, I always think - get your asses back to Merrill Lynch.

And there are many whose energy and ambition is resurgent now their kids are older. But they find their career paths have ended abruptly like cycle lanes in London traffic. How do they go forward? How can their expensive skills, acquired with your taxes and mine, be redeployed by the economy? They are presumed clever enough to work this out alone. Government retraining schemes are low level, designed to teach typists IT tricks, not find a new outlet for someone with a 20-year career in advertising or the law, whose confidence is eroded by years feeding a washing machine, yet who probably has the wherewithal and wisdom to run the world.

Girls now form a majority on university medical, law and accountancy courses and comprise a third of business school graduates. And so a huge shortage of highly trained professionals is imminent when today's young women achievers swap power heels for designer maternity wear. And when a mother is toying with returning to work and the domestic sums are calculated, the price of childcare is prohibitive. When paying a nanny's salary, her tax and national insurance out of your own taxed income, the financial difference makes slogging through the commuter traffic barely worth the sweat.

The very word “nanny” makes people scoff, conjuring as it does, images of Lady Muck, buffing her nails while a minion raises her brood. Which explains the ferocity of the attacks on Caroline Spelman. Yes, she broke a rule, but it is a bad rule. A boys' rule. That a nanny is not a legitimate parliamentary expense, while a personal assistant or window cleaner is, illustrates how little is understood about what women need if they are to work, not merely in top jobs like chairing the Conservative Party, but at all.

At the very least, hiring a nanny is creating a job. Surely that deserves the tax break another employer would enjoy? In 2006 David Cameron declared his commitment to tax relief on childcare. At present this just applies to nurseries and is only available through tax credits or an impenetrable employer voucher scheme. Tory HQ is now fudging on whether expanding this to all types of childcare - including nannies - will become Tory policy. Dave, some free advice: such a pledge will swing the heart of every woman voter.

Tax relief on childcare frees women to create prosperity: their own and the country's. It means getting women doctors from the school run back into the surgeries, enables women to set up small businesses or reach the boardrooms of large ones. That is the solution if you really mind the pay gap.

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