Daniel Craig and Dame Judi Dench team up for two-minute film highlighting the need for gender equality

He's bedded, rescued, loved and lost his fair share of women over more than half a century, but has James Bond ever paused to consider the rates of sexual assault of young girls going to school in the developing world?

That's one of a number of startling questions posed by a new short film by the artist and director Sam Taylor-Wood, released to coincide with International Women's Day and starring Bond actors Daniel Craig and Judi Dench.

"We're equals, aren't we 007?" asks Dench as M, opening the film in voiceover, as Craig walks towards the camera. "Yet it is 2011 and a man is still likely to earn more money than a woman, even one doing the same job."

It is the only explicit reference to his role as Bond, though the film hints at some of the character's womanising ways in comparing his situation to that of a woman.

"As a man you are less likely to be judged for promiscuous behaviour, which is just as well, frankly ... There would be virtually no risk to your career if you chose to become a parent ... or became one accidentally.

"For someone with such a fondness for women, I wonder if you have ever considered what it might be like to be one?"

At this point Craig walks off-screen, to return in a blonde wig, dress and heels, while Dench rattles through a grim list of statistics detailing continuing inequality of the sexes worldwide. "Every year 70 million girls are deprived of even a basic education and a staggering 60 million are sexually assaulted on the way to school."

The film concludes: "So are we equals? Until the answer is yes we must never stop asking."

The film, commissioned by a coalition of charities campaigning on equality issues and produced by Bond producer Barbara Broccoli, is the first film featuring the character to be directed by a woman, even if it runs only to two minutes.

"Bond is challenged by M to think about gender inequality, and I hope that the film encourages viewers to do the same," said Taylor-Wood.