Money can't buy love. But it helps

When girls start getting better exam results than boys, it is a national crisis. Experts agonise, ministers promise action, and just about everyone expresses alarm over the notion that boys might be at a disadvantage. Compare and contrast this, as they say in exam papers, with the low murmur that greets the news that women in this country still haven't achieved equal pay with men.

Almost 30 years after the Equal Pay Act – remember that? – the gap remains stubbornly unaffected by good intentions, legislation and the introduction of a minimum wage. According to research published tomorrow by the Equal Opportunities Commission, a body whose existence is often derided as an example of political correctness, women who work full-time in Britain are still earning only 81 per cent of average, male full-time earnings. The gap is even wider – 25 per cent – if you look at weekly rather than hourly earnings, because men work longer hours and are more likely to be paid overtime.

So where are the banner headlines, denouncing the shameful failure of attempts to end the pay gap between men and women? Where are the grovelling ministerial statements, apologising to the women of this country for allowing the continuation of a systemic form of discrimination? It is not clear to me whether successive governments have felt impotent or simply decided that this fundamental unfairness is something they can live with. It is almost as if they unconsciously believe it is natural for women to earn less; they have certainly employed all sorts of excuses, arguing that women's employment patterns are different from men's, and lower rates of female pay come about because they bunch in poorly paid occupations.

Yet the EOC has established that the gender gap exists at every qualification level, including graduates; indeed the gap is wider for the professional classes, managers, administrators and people who work in the City – the very women who should in theory be least affected – than it is for blue-collar jobs. So the news for girls who have done brilliantly at school, collecting straight As and outstripping boys in their class, is that they will soon discover, when they enter the harsh world of work, that academic success is eclipsed by gender.

There has been virtually no change in the pay gap between men and women in full-time work since the mid-1990s. For women with part-time jobs, many of whom are responsible for children, the situation is even worse; they earn only 59 per cent of full-time hourly male earnings, a statistic that has hardly changed since 1975. Any household with a woman as its sole breadwinner is automatically at an economic disadvantage, a circumstance frequently ignored when commentators get worked up about single mothers.

And this insidious form of sex discrimination continues throughout women's adult lives, for we also suffer at the hands of the state when we reach retirement age. Women make up two-thirds of the retired population but have an average retirement income that amounts to just over half (56 per cent) that paid to men. This is, according to the EOC, because the basic state pension, on which women are more likely to depend, is set at too low a level, is declining in value and "even full entitlement will not lift women's retirement incomes above poverty level". In that sense, it seems reasonable to hold governments directly responsible for a great deal of female poverty in this country, and to suggest they should have the decency to give us a gender-based discount – 20 per cent is a nice round figure – on essentials such as food and housing.

All of this puts paid to the notion, promulgated by well-heeled women such as the novelist Fay Weldon, that we live in a post-feminist age in which the people we should feel sorry for are men. I know it's hard, but let's imagine for a moment that all this was happening to the other half of the human race. I have no doubt that there would be royal commissions on inequality, a minister for men and NHS counselling to help them cope with self-esteem issues.

Personally, I am not interested in sympathy, but I am certain that few reforms would have such a dramatic impact on women's lives as equal pay. Money can't buy love but it sure helps, which is why so many women feel depressed and angry each time they open their bank statements.