The case was lost in the High Court and the Court of Appeal before the House of Lords finally invoked European law

The case was lost in the High Court and the Court of Appeal before the House of Lords finally invoked European law to find in the commission’s favour in 1994, so benefiting half a million workers, the overwhelming majority of them women.The law is an unwieldy instrument and women are not a homogeneous group, so there are no easy answers. The way forward for women seems to be more (in the jargon) “upstream” initiatives, such as skills training and different working patterns, and fewer “downstream” correctives, such as targets. When everyone acknowledges women have been disadvantaged for decades, how come there’s not much anyone can do about it right now?. The management guru Professor Charles Handy, noting that the next generation of women won’t have to worry nearly so much about these issues, says: “But of course, people are impatient.” Too right they are. Unfortunately, the former take a while to wash down to where they’re needed. The EOC has always been eminently containable; never does it appear to have crossed any Tory government’s mind that it should be abolished.This is not to suggest that the Sex Discrimination Act, and by extension the EOC, has been without significant successes.

Kamlesh Bahl points to the long legal battle on behalf of part-time workers, in which the commission argued that they should have the same employment protection and redundancy rights as their full-time colleagues. The commission celebrates its 20th birthday this year: two decades of interpreting and operating the law and studiously avoiding anything too radical. The appointment of the hitherto unknown Kamlesh Bahl disappointed many who had hoped Sue Slipman, who had campaigned with such verve for one-parent families, would get the job She was thought to have been vetoed by Downing Street. There is a business argument for encouraging diversity in the workforce, but it offers little rationale for companies to invest in the opportunities of low-skilled, part-time women workers.Perhaps there is a new role for the EOC here, promoting and finding ways of funding such initiatives. Homeworking, flexi-time, annual hours, job sharing and parental leave are all examples of schemes that benefit women without disadvantaging men.Such policies may be expensive, however, and it would be unreasonable to expect business alone to pay.

The rosy view also signally fails to take notice of what has been called the “family gap”, the difference in pay and promotion that yawns between women and men as soon as there are children.But if legislation is not the panacea that was hoped for, and we don’t have time to wait for the organic changes promised with the revolution in working practices, what can be done? The same surveys that suggest targets are unhelpful indicate that policies aimed at all employees are the best way forward. Freeman is only the third female executive director of a FT-SE 100 company, while only 3 per cent of all company directors are women. A report from the National Institute for Economic and Social Research shows that women at all levels of management stand a smaller chance of being promoted than their male colleagues.It may be comforting to think your daughter will have an easier time of it, but if you’re over 35 and bashing your head on a glass ceiling somewhere, that might not be enough. There are already more female solicitors under 30 than men, and the number of women earning more than their partners has trebled in little more than 10 years from one in 15 to one in five.All of which post-feminist optimism is very well, until you recall last week’s excitement over the appointment of Clara Freeman to the board of Marks and Spencer.