If women are too polite to mention the M-word we’ll never erase the pay gap

Some women are so keen to be nice they confuse a chat about salaries as rudeness

Salaries are the last frontier for women's equality in the workplace (PA)

It is, frankly, easier to talk about bondage. Or bestiality. Or any of the other things (Botox, infidelity, piles, phobias) which in days gone by would be very much off the agenda. In British society most people would rather talk about absolutely anything – even their own bottoms – than talk about money. Salaries, in particular. It is just Not Polite.

Which, of course, is one of the reasons for the continued existence of the gender pay gap. I give you that corseted trailblazer Kate Winslet, 40, who announced that conversations about the gender pay gap were “vulgar”. “I don’t like talking about money,” she said, as if she were on the sound stage for Sense and Sensibility. In 1930. “I don’t think that’s a nice conversation to have publicly at all.”

What a wholly grim word “nice” is. Women want to be “nice”; they want to please, and they don’t want to get down and dirty by pointing out the outrageous and indefensible difference that so often exists between their pay packet and that of a male counterpart.

This doesn’t really matter for the polite Winslet – net worth: £65m – but for the rest of us, it is a bit more pertinent. This is why the news that the Government is insisting on the publication of a gender pay gap league table for all companies with more than 250 employees is so exciting – and why it is making the business community squirm. It is going to be embarrassing for the boss class. And humiliating, too. For women have always suspected they were paid less, but were never allowed actually to find out.

For more than a decade, I worked at a certain broadcast news organisation, and I knew that my male counterpart – who did exactly the same job as I did – was paid more. Could I ever officially bring it up with my line manager? Are you joking? That information is “confidential, Ms Millard”.

But why? I was never given an adequate reason. This coupling of a specious notion of confidentiality with a certain social vulgarity is one of the reasons the pay gap has been allowed to creep invidiously into all walks of life. Where salaries are open and known (with MPs, for example), the gap vanishes.

Women may be infuriated and insulted, but we are part of the problem. I have been on a series of interviewing boards lately and was amazed and depressed by the paucity of female candidates willing to have a robust discussion about salary in the room. Some actually went as far as suggesting that they be paid less than their current rate. They were so anxious to appear nice that they confused having a proper chat about salaries with a form of rudeness. My experience appears to be a common one; from Hollywood to the City and in thousands of boardrooms in between, women are getting the gigs, performing brilliantly, having the kids, achieving the work/life balance – all those things that early agitators for gender equality worked for – except in one sphere: equality of pay.

“Oh,” but the boardrooms will squirm. I forecast a series of ludicrous posturing from big companies prior to the arrival of the pay league table (which I envisage pinned up on the way to the Ladies, alongside the Office Bake Off poster and an advisory leaflet about health and safety). “But look!” they will cry. “Women have maternity leave! Women work part-time! Women come back to work after career breaks and so have less experience to offer.” (Although I would debate the legality of this last one).

Well, it’s surely not beyond the wit of the boardroom to address this matter. The table can simply show the pay of people with perhaps a little box revealing their per diem rate, so inequality can be speedily assessed.

The next corporate move will be to point out that levelling the pay gap will cost so much that profits and commensurate pay to shareholders will be threatened. Ladies, you’ve put up with it for so long – don’t wreck everything with a footling ambition to be paid equally. Don’t forget that this is a nation where dining clubs are still allowed to exclude women from membership.

There is only one thing for it. Two, actually. Firstly, make the publication of league tables a legal requirement. And secondly, make salaries the stuff of ordinary conversation, just as sex, drugs and Botox are. It will start off toe-curling, but we have to get used to talking to our neighbours, and our girlfriends, and our partners about how much we earn. Think how dinner party conversations could be enlivened, and go forth with courage.