The decline in the number of women in top jobs in Britain is alarming. Last year, slow progress on equality in the workplace actually went into reverse in half of the sectors surveyed. Today we have fewer female MPs, cabinet ministers, senior police officers, judges and NHS executives than we did even a year ago.

The standard explanation for this is that women have babies and that this arrests their career development. Improvements in maternity provisions seem to have exacerbated this trend. Paid maternity leave has now been extended to a full year, but it is available to the mother only. This has, perversely, entrenched women in the traditional role of wife and mother because the man is unable to take the same parental leave to share the child care. The Government should change the law to allow couples to choose which of them wants to take the year off.

But there is more to the problem than that, which is why women who do not have children – a quarter of the female workforce at age 40 – suffer from the same discrimination and disadvantage. The trouble is that the attitudes and habits of the British workplace were forged in an era when breadwinner dads and stay-at-home mums were the norm. That mindset persists. It is a macho culture of long working hours where, even if the old boys' network is not what it was, the boys go out for a beer with the boss after work. And – despite the fact that girls now outperform boys at school and at university – there continues to be a subliminal consensus that women are less capable or strategically able than men.

All that needs to change. More flexible working patterns, the choice to work from home and job shares need to become the norm. Workers also need access to more high-quality, affordable child care. Attitudes need to change in politics too. It is shameful that fewer than one in five British MPs is a woman and that countries like Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iraq, and China beat the UK on women's representation in parliament. Nor can there be any excuse for the decline in the proportion of women in top jobs in the public sector. The shattering of the glass ceiling can no longer be left to gradual social change. It is time for changes in government policy.

Source: The Independent (UK), 5 September 2008