Should a company be in business at all if inputting simple equality measures is likely to send their profit margins into free fall? It is a common picture: the government announces suggested enforcements to maternity leave or the living wage and cries reverberate around the SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) world. We will never survive! The costs will bankrupt us! Responses like these only serve to highlight inadequacies in business models rather than the so-called unreasonable demands being placed upon them.

Women are being ripped off for our gender on a daily basis, so excuse me if I don’t feign concern when suggestions to improve equality are met with resistance. Rather, I am celebrating progress and focusing on the positive. Most recently, senior Bank of England official Andy Haldane announced at a conference this week that companies with 30 or more staff should be reporting their gender pay gaps, too.

For me, this move is appropriate – if overdue. Since 6 April 2017, companies employing more than 250 people have been obliged to report their gender pay gaps. The results have been eye-opening. From Ryanair (71.8 per cent) and Millwall Holdings (80 per cent) to Boux Avenue (75.7 per cent) and Sweaty Betty (66.6 per cent), the pay gaps – miles wider than the 17 per cent national average – are jaw-dropping.

Efforts to “explain away” these gaps included clichés like simply having more men in senior positions, more women having part-time roles. Another favourite is that women are less likely to ask for pay rises and promotions than men. The fault, at every turn, is always situational, or it is always the woman’s. It is never the company’s.

Haldane also addressed the ethnicity pay gap in his speech, saying there were “strong grounds for extending compulsory reporting to ethnicity as well as gender”. We already know that being a woman of colour is a unique disadvantage in society and reporting could make leeway in changing this. We are expecting it by 2021.

Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Show all 20 1 /20 Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Michelle Obama The American lawyer and author served as the US first lady from 2009 to 2018. In March, her book Becoming was on course to become the most popular autobiography to date, having sold more than 10m copies, according to her publisher Bertelsmann. Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Oprah Winfrey The media mogul is best known for her television presenting and philanthropic work. However, Winfrey is also an accomplished actor, having starred in The Colour Purple (for which she received a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the Academy Awards), Selma, and A Wrinkle in Time. WireImage Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Angelina Jolie The US actor, filmmaker and humanitarian has won accolades including an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards. Her work spans almost four decades, with roles in films like Maleficient, Wanted, Lara Croft, and Mr & Mrs Smith . Getty Images for The Critics' Ch Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Queen Elizabeth II As the first child of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the royal took to the throne in 1952, meaning she has now ruled for longer than any other Monarch in British history. Her Majesty recently celebrated her 93rd birthday. WireImage Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Emma Watson The 29-year-old actor started out her career in the film industry, with her role as Hermoine Granger in the beloved British literary adaptation Harry Potter. The Paris-born star has since gone onto study at both Oxford and Brown University and is a UN Women Global Goodwill Ambassador. Getty Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Malala Yousafzai The Pakistani female education activist is the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. In 2012, the Taliban attempted to assassinate Yousafzai on the bus home from school after documenting her experiences during the Taliban’s growing influencer in the region. In recent years, the 22-year-old has become a leading figure of girls' rights and is currently studying at Oxford University. Walt Disney Television via Getty Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Peng Liyuan Liyuan is a Chinese folk singer and artist who is also married to the current General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping. Vanity Fair listed Peng in its annual best-dressed list of 2013, with Forbes naming her the 57th most powerful woman in the world a year later. Getty Images Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Hillary Clinton The former politician was the first lady of the US from 1993 to 2001. Clinton was the Democratic Party nominee for president of the United States in the 2016 election but lost out on the role to then Republican Party nominee Donald Trump. She is the first woman to receive the presidential nomination of a major US political party and documented her life in politics in her best-selling book What Happened in 2017. Getty Images Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Tu Youyou The Chinese pharmaceutical chemist is best known for having discovered artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin – drugs used to treat malaria. She is the first mainland Chinese scientist to have received a Nobel Prize in a scientific category. Youyou is often referred to as the “three noes” winner having won the prize without a medical degree, doctorate, or training overseas. VCG via Getty Images Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Taylor Swift The 29-year-old singer is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with hits such as ‘We Are Never Getting Back Together’, ‘Shake It Off, and ‘Bad Blood’. Not only is the songwriter making waves in the music industry but she’s also starring in the upcoming film Cats as character Bombalurina. Getty Images for TAS Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Madonna Singer. Songwriter. Actor. Businesswoman. The 60-year-old has many titles under her belt with successes including hit songs such as ‘Like a Prayer’ and ‘Vogue’. The American star has also stared in films like Evita and Who’s That Girl. Getty Images Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Angela Merkel The 65-year-old politician currently serves as Chancellor of Germany. She was also the leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In October, Merkel announced that she would not seek re-election as leader of the CDU and as Chancellor in 2021. Getty Images Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Deepika Padukone The Indian film actor and producer is one of the highest-paid actors in the country. Last year, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Padukone regularly speaks out about issues such as feminism and depression after she was diagnosed with the medical conditions in 2014. Getty Images for Time Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Priyanka Chopra The Indian actor, who recently married singer Nick Jonas, is also a singer and film producer. She first hit the headlines in 2000 after winning the Miss World pageant. Chopra regularly speaks about the importance of self-love, women’s rights, and mental health awareness. Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Ellen DeGeneres The American comedian is best known for her work as the host of her eponymously-titled talk show, The Ellen Degeneres Show. She has previously hosted the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, and the Primetime Emmys as well as starring in films such as Finding Nemo and Finding Dory as the voice of Dory – a blue tang fish who suffers from memory loss. Walt Disney Television via Getty Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Aishwarya Rai Rai is an Indian actor, model and winner of the Miss World pageant in 1994. The 45-year-old has won two Filmfare Awards and was honoured with the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France in 2012. WireImage Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Sushmita Sen The Indian film actor and model was won the Miss Universe contest at the age of 18 in 1994. She has since worked in several Hindi films, and Tamil and Bengali language projects. Sen is a role model for many women around the world having adopted two girls at the age of 25 and has described being born a woman as a ‘huge award’. WireImage Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Theresa May The British prime minister is a politician who previously served as the British Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016. She is the second woman to have been elected to the position of prime minister in British history. Getty Images Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Melania Trump The former model is currently the first lady of the US. She was born in Slovenia and regularly speaks about the importance of teaching and empowering young people. Getty Images Top 20 most admired women in 2019 Yang Mi The Chinese actor and singer made her acting debut in the television series Tang Ming Huang. The 32-year-old is also a global ambassador for US fashion brand Michael Kors and has previously starred in an Estée Lauder campaign. Getty Images for Stuart Weitzman

We all know that progress can be a slow-burner, and women are being penalised for being women – there is no other way of painting it. A new report released this week for the Government Equalities Office found women were two thirds less likely to get promoted in the five years after having a child compared with their male counterparts. Even more depressingly, 17 per cent of women had left employment entirely in the five years following childbirth, compared with just four per cent of men.

It’s a vicious cycle that must be broken: mothers are less likely to go back to work than fathers because they go into maternity leave earning less than their male partners, then they return from it earning even less. Childcare is unaffordable and parental leave still remains unequal in this country. Companies penalise mothers who end up being the ones bearing the burden of school pickups and doctors’ appointments because now their careers are less important to the family income.

Look around most offices and ask yourself how many women over the age of 35 are occupying senior roles – and how many of those are mothers. Now tell me small businesses should not be required to try and change this.

The gender pay gap isn’t all about city bankers and board-level roles; it’s about ordinary people working in all levels of society. In fact, just 40 per cent of the private sector is covered by the 250 employees pay gap reporting threshold. If we don’t target small business and hold them to account, it will only continue to stubbornly exist.

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The Bank of England speaks of “incentives” for companies to explain and close pay gaps, but when the World Economic Forum says it will take 202 years to close, why is the government dragging its heels?

We know how to solve this and no, it isn’t comfortable. We need to punish companies that don’t reduce their pay gaps, we need to enforce job share options and equal parental leave, as well as provide support for parents returning from leave until the spirit level balances out. Despite volumes of research showing that more gender-equal companies achieve higher average returns, not all businesses see it that way or figure it’s enough of an incentive.