Should women planning to have children expect to be assessed by prospective employers on exactly the same basis as candidates not planning to have children? Should women returning to their jobs after maternity leave expect the same pay and status as they had before? Should employers be penalised for discriminating against women in either case?

The issues are complex, but the answers are simple: yes, yes and yes. There is no point acknowledging women's rights to equal opportunities in the workplace without legislating to protect them from discrimination. And there is no point in legislation without enforcement.

Yet the real world intrudes. As we reported on Monday and as Nicola Brewer, then chief executive of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), noted yesterday, it is an inconvenient truth that women are being turned down for jobs and promotions because of the cost and hassle of their maternity rights. Worse, as those rights are extended to include 12 months' paid maternity leave, up from nine, the risk grows that laws framed to erode gender stereotypes will end up entrenching them instead.

Important social reform is colliding with prejudice and what some employers take to be their short-term financial imperatives. Ms Brewer deserves praise for pointing this out. She did so in a speech launching a consultation aimed at modernising a workplace “stuck somewhere in the 1950s”, even though, as she acknowledged, her remarks could be taken as an attack on hard-won maternity rights.

They are not. On the contrary, she has indicated that the EHRC's preferred remedy is not to cut mothers' rights but to increase fathers'; to “level up” in favour of the British men whose two week's statutory paid paternity leave is the shortest in Europe. There are powerful arguments for maximising both parents' time with their young children. There are counterarguments, too, including one based on a study of American university professors who, if male, chose overwhelmingly to use any extra paternity leave to write books, leaving childcare to their partners. But not all men are as single-minded, or as selfish.

The real reason that levelling up is unrealistic is cost. Ms Brewer argues that the debates on who should raise young children and on the work-life balance in general are social as well as economic. Given her position, she is entitled to try to lift the discussion off the bottom line. Yet the fact is that any net increase in statutory parental leave entitlements will mean redundancies and closures, especially in the current climate and especially among small businesses.

This is not the time for generous new entitlements. It is the time for the best employers to press the competitive advantage that the best employment policies bring them. This means proactively encouraging women to return to the labour market after having children. Research shows many have vastly improved time management skills after surviving life's ultimate multi-tasking test. Common sense says having children also means broader life experience, of obvious use to all but the most-blinkered employers.

For all the same reasons, the best employment policies will also help men to be good fathers. There is a simple way of doing this: rename the second six months of mothers' maternity leave “parental leave”, to be shared as partners' wish. Experience elsewhere in Europe suggests uptake by fathers would be significant. Not all women can be superwomen, or want to be. Not all men want to bring home the bacon all the time. The law should reflect this.