Watch out ladies — the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) is after you. According to this organisation’s latest fatuous annual survey, paid for by you and me, some 6,000 women are missing from Britain’s boardrooms.

In a perfect world these women would be there doing all sorts of high-powered stuff — sacking people, closing deals, effecting mergers, snorting vast mountains of coke and so on. But they’re not; they are somewhere else instead. The EOC thinks this under-representation is disgraceful and intends to put it right.

Of course it does not know the names of the women who are missing — any woman, it seems, will do, in order to fulfil the EOC’s dream of a country where people possessed of fallopian tubes and a limited sense of spatial awareness do 51% of absolutely everything, regardless of their desire to so do or, indeed, their abilities.

It is surely only a matter of time before they start rounding up random hordes of women. And believe me, they will strike when you are at your most open and vulnerable — in the changing room at Harvey Nicks, say, or trying to park at Waitrose on a Saturday afternoon.

Before you know what has hit you you will be abducted by screeching but well-meaning harridans called Roz and Jenny and end up running the acquisitions department of Credit Suisse.

The survey shows that despite 30 years of progressive, anti-discriminatory (except in a positive way, of course) legislation, there are still not enough women doing the sorts of things that the EOC wishes them to do.

The sole reason for this, according to the EOC, is simple: discrimination; discrimination against women by men.

It has not remotely occurred to them that there might be any other cause, such as a comparatively smaller proportion of women who wish to become company directors, MPs, councillors and the like. Or, indeed, that a smaller proportion of women may possess the abilities to do these awful jobs.

These are suggestions that must be left unsaid — despite mounting evidence (those 30 years of legislation, for example) that they are the more likely explanation than simple discrimination.

Perhaps the EOC will demand still more progressive legislation. It was prominent in agitating for paid maternity leave for women.

And now, when modern, liberal and consensual couples, doing identical jobs, sit down over a nice glass of chablis to discuss, democratically, who will stay at home to look after the baby they are planning, the answer is a no-brainer: the man will be eligible for a total of two weeks’ leave from his company if he’s lucky, while his companion is statutorily entitled to nine months off on almost full pay, with her job kept open for a minimum of a year.

And so, following the law of unintended consequences, the women have another incentive to stay at home and miss those possible promotions.

Incidentally, when campaigning organisations such as the EOC announce the results of surveys that they have commissioned, do you ever expect anything other than the sort of guff detailed above?

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