On Tuesday, the nation gave a collective gasp of horror at the vote in the General Synod on female bishops. Despite years of campaigning and the overwhelming support of the dioceses, the stained-glass ceiling remains intact. Even those untouched by faith reacted as if it was beyond belief that the ecclesiastical arm of the state could bar women from its highest office. Turning its back on modern times has thrown the church into crisis.

Polls tell us that this country cares deeply about equality. However, other events over the past week indicate that it's not only the Anglican church that talks the language of equality but significantly fails to walk the walk. In every sphere of life, in the UK and the rest of the EU, in banking, the City, law, medicine, Westminster and Whitehall, inequality is embedded and, more shamefully, is treated as the norm.

On Thursday, for instance, in Brussels, in spite of the best efforts of European legislators, Yves Mersch from Luxembourg was confirmed as an appointee to the European Central Bank's executive board. Resisters believed it was time for a woman to hold the job. The ECB now has 23 members, all of them male – and it will stay that way for several years.

"Citizens across the EU have been astounded to discover the lack of gender diversity in the ECB and in other EU organisations," says Sharon Bowles, the robust veteran Lib Dem MEP who chairs the European Parliament's influential economic and monetary affairs committee and was recently shortlisted for the post of governor of the Bank of England (and now could be a prime candidate for the deputy's job).

"I've never done the gender line before, but on this I lead from the front," she adds. "We are living through extreme austerity and it's the fault of men. They did it all by themselves, precisely because so few women are in senior positions and they are far more risk averse."

A day after I talked to Bowles, Amber Rudd, Conservative MP, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on sex equality and personal private secretary to chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne, also discussed her frustration at the invisibility of women in senior decision-making positions.

She pointed out that nine men sit on the Bank of England's rate-setting monetary policy committee; eight sit on the new financial policy committee to monitor financial stability; and the six frontrunners to become governor of the Bank of England are also all male. In addition, for the first time in 16 years, there is no female minister at the Treasury or in eight other departments. Rudd says David Cameron must be held to his pledge that by 2015 a third of his cabinet (now five women and 19 men) will be female.

"Where have all the women gone? It's perplexing," she says. "But if you want action, you have to hold men's feet to the fire. I find it extremely irritating that every time I go into a room it's still all male. Forty per cent of women who have a degree don't have children, so it's not because of motherhood. Any all-male group share a similar set of prejudices. That has to be challenged."

The road to women's progress has always been bumpy; a small shuffle forward – last week it was news that the pay gap for female full-time work had narrowed to under 10% but was still as high as 36% for women employed part-time – followed by two steps back. Now, however, a far more retrograde pattern is taking hold. A combination of the cuts, female underemployment (draining the talent pool still further of women who might one day move into senior roles) and the scarcity of females of diverse backgrounds at the top of Britain's most important institutions could, for the first time in decades, put the glacial rate of progress into very sharp reverse. How has that happened? And what can be done?

"Many people believe two things at once," says Nan Sloane, head of the Centre for Women and Democracy. "They believe the world is a woman's oyster. Young women are doing better than men academically and moving into law, medicine and the City. Equality has been achieved. At the same time, people also realise that for many women the pay gap doesn't exist because they no longer have a job. They are hardest hit by the cuts. Women are not where we thought we would be.

"Younger females with no interest in women's politics, for the first time, are saying, 'I thought things were going right. And, somehow, they aren't'."

In January, as part of the Counting Women In campaign, Sloane publishes Who Runs Britain?, a look at women's place in public life: "Some changes are positive. But so much progress is going in reverse. How women get to where they want to be is the major challenge for the rest of this decade."

Of course, women are as varied in their allegiances as men. Nevertheless, in the past few days, talking to women from different classes, political parties and income groups, what is striking to me in more than 40 years of reporting in this area, is that the male establishment is achieving what feminism has manifestly failed to do: forging a common bond among a cross-section of women, affluent and alpha, right and left, squeezed middle, jobless and working poor.

The bond is the anger that when the welfare state and the public sector that provides 40% of female jobs is being refashioned on an unprecedented scale, and decisions are being taken on who pays the highest price in the recession, women are nowhere near centre stage. "The state as a public sector employer and a provider of services such as childcare has played a huge part in women's progress for 30 years," says Ceri Goddard of the campaigning organisation, the Fawcett Society. "The diminishing role of the state is going to have a significantly negative impact on women's lives, and nobody is discussing what's filling that void."

Alice, 39, is a criminal barrister, married with two children under eight. Four women became barristers at the same time as she did, she says, but only she remains; childcare, inflexible work practices and the old boys' network took their toll. "We have the policies and procedures and laws on equality but somehow there's still a padlock on the gate. Nobody wants to talk about it, but it's there," she says.

On Monday, Cameron gave a speech to the Confederation of British Industry. "I'm here today to tell you this government gets it," he said. But not quite in the way Alice requires. He suggested that, as part of the drive to reduce regulation, some mechanisms to promote equality such as equality impact assessments are dispensable. They calculate the impact of policies on men and women (for instance, taking into account in transport policy that if you axe late-night staff at rail stations women's safety may be in danger). "We have smart people in Whitehall," Cameron said. "We don't need all this extra tick-box stuff."

"It was emblematic that in Cameron's speech he cast legislation that protects and entrenches women's rights as red tape that is stifling growth," says Professor Diane Elson, a member of the campaigning Women's Budget Group. "The phrase 'smart people in Whitehall', mostly male, will come back to haunt him."

"We've reached a very dangerous point for equality if you start to take away what edges society forward on the issue," adds Katie Ghose of the Electoral Reform Society. "You look across the sweep of public life and see how advances for women so easily slip back. In the Welsh and Scottish assemblies, for instance, the proportion of women was initially high and now that has been lost. Politics should be at the forefront of change, and it's so woefully behind."

"Cameron sees equality as the icing on the cake, not its key ingredient," says Goddard.

Women's voices ignored, equality measures framed as a barrier to growth and a casual misogyny continues to emanate from parts of government. The recent report on child sexual abuse by Sue Berelowitz, the deputy children's commissioner, for instance, was dismissed by ministers as "hysterical and half baked".

In a speech last week, women's minister Maria Miller described various measures, all voluntary and mostly short-term. On Thursday, in a webchat on Mumsnet, members threw the verbal equivalent of rotten tomatoes in response,

There are six men – Cameron, Osborne and Oliver Letwin and, for the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander and David Laws, all from very similar backgrounds – who effectively run the country. That was the traditional postwar pattern but in the 21st century?

"You're making decisions that affect the cost of living, affect men and women's lives differently … who is sitting around the table saying, 'Have we thought about these people?", says Rachel Reeves, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury.

"Decision-making needs challenge and diversity. It needs debate from different perspectives. A female viewpoint needs to be embedded in every department. It should be part of the DNA of what government does. I had so many more opportunities than my mother, but I don't think you can make that assumption for the next generation of women."

"Brand female needs to be stronger," says Sue Terpilowski, who has run her own company, Image Line PR, for 25 years and is the Federation of Small Businesses' London policy chair. "I don't believe in quotas, I do believe in getting by on merit, but for that to happen you have to begin with a level playing field. And I'm hearing it's not a level playing field any more. There are far less women around. I can't put my finger on why."

DeAnne Julius, now head of the independent policy institute Chatham House, was one of the first women appointed to the Bank of England's monetary policy committee. Set up in 1997, it has appointed only four women since then and 27 men. "If any committee is a bunch of clones, that's bound to affect the quality of decision-making," she says bluntly.

Women of talent and ability are out there, she adds, if you look. Deloitte and other companies have instituted a number of policies, for instance mentoring women through the pipeline. Organisations such as the 30% Club have helped increase the still small number of women non-executive directors on FTSE 100 boards.

"If the Treasury wants women, it needs to hire a good head hunter, not a cheap head hunter," Julius says. "We need government to publish annually who is in the senior ranks now and what its targets are for the future. The private sector does it all the time. You have to push and keep pushing."

Many women are opposed to quotas, but Bowles is a convert: "Sweden has done it very well. It has equal numbers of men and women on shortlists. The women gain experience and interview panels get used to seeing how women interview. We've faffed around not doing enough for 10 years, we can't afford to wait another 10. My own party has to stop being liberal and say we must have quotas. The damage if we don't will be far greater."

After last week's debacle, the Church of England is trying to find a route to reversing its inegalitarian vote; elsewhere, however, inertia rules . "The slippage is alarming," says Beverley Hughes, former Labour minister now in the House of Lords. "We have a handful of female icons, but not the critical mass where there is power and influence. That matters because it helps to shift the ground for the majority of women. Then, at least, we have a tipping point."