At the current rate of progress, it could take nearly a century before the gender pay gap is closed in Britain. So the government is trying to speed up the process.

Putting pressure on employers to tackle the nation’s gender pay gap, new rules taking effect on Thursday will require large companies to publish the average salaries of the men and the women they employ.

The regulation affects companies with 250 or more employees. The figures must reveal information like salary differences between men and women, differences in average bonuses and the proportion of men and women who received those bonuses.

The rules give the companies until April 2018 to report the information to the government and publish it on their websites and on a government website.