AS the deadline looms for British companies to declare their gender pay gap data, we need to brace ourselves for an avalanche of more depressing statistics on the vast discrepancy between female and male pay across the world of work.

Companies with more than 250 employees throughout the UK have only a few days left to publish this information and it’s going to make for uncomfortable reading. The government has set a time limit of April 4 for private bodies, with those in the public sector facing an earlier deadline of March 30. The Equality and Human Rights Commission have promised hefty fines for those who fail to comply with this disclosure demand.

It’s right and proper that this information should be out in the open. Deep inequalities in pay between the genders has been a dirty yet well-known secret, allowed to continue for far too long. The statistics revealed in recent months make for shocking headlines and much of the newsprint media has jumped on the bandwagon and had a field day finger-pointing at the failure of organisations, like the BBC for instance, to bridge the divide.

When Auntie Beeb’s gender pay gap was revealed as 9.3 per cent earlier this year and the high-profile and well-respected journalist Carrie Gracie resigned over the disgraceful discrepancy between her salary and that of her male counterparts, there was one particular newspaper that went for the jugular. The Telegraph was like a dog with a bone, berating the BBC while ITN’s pay gap stood higher at 19.6 per cent, Sky’s at 17.5 per cent and Channel 4, a whopping 28.6 per cent, with the national pay gap averaging at an unhealthy 18.4 per cent.

The Telegraph should have known better. Any pay gap is unacceptable for obvious reasons and the BBC as a public service broadcaster will have to be seen to be making an astronomical effort to repair their reputation over this gross unfairness in salaries, sooner rather than later.

But it’s a long way to fall when you act as judge and jury. With a shocking gender pay gap of 35 per cent, almost four times that of the BBC, and the highest pay gap in any media outlet in the UK, it appears that The Telegraph should have cleaned up its own act first.

This inequality is further compounded by the fact that, while 73 per cent of senior staff at the broadsheet are male, 63 per cent of junior staff members are female. And this is after The Telegraph’s new chief executive Nick Hugh, who came on board in June 2017, already made big changes to reduce inequality by over a fifth. Hugh’s target of 2025 for a zero pay gap must feel like a long way away for his female staff.

Now I think it’s fair to assume that most Telegraph readers are of the less liberal and progressive variety, but when three quaters of the management team represent just under half of the population, then everyone, regardless of their political persuasion, is being short-changed on the content and variety of news.

With women almost absent from the top of the tree, it’s hard to understand why any women would buy The Telegraph at all? As 52 per cent of the population, women deserve a clearer voice and an equal footing when it comes to editorial decisions in the press.

With information now in the public domain, there’s no real reason why gender parity should be put on the long arm. Companies across the UK need to be open and transparent about their plans to tackle pay discrimination and tackle it fast. We need to ensure women have opportunities to progress to senior positions regardless of career breaks to bring up their children. I have many close female friends, with a wealth of talent and work experience between them, who, when returning to their career, find they are unable to re-enter employment at the same level as they left it, ending up in lower paid employment with little scope for progress. Our failure as a society to appreciate their talents and view their input as valuable is a national shame.

It’s no surprise then that, according to a recent TUC report, the gender pay gap is at its most evident when women hit the age of 50. From the moment women enter the world of work they are already being paid less than their male contemporaries, with women earning an average of £8,421 a year less than men for full-time work by the time they get to their half century mark. This inequality follows women even into their retirement where the numbers are getting worse rather than better. Figures analysed from the Department of Work and Pensions by mutual insurer Royal London, have revealed that retired women are now £85 a week less well off than retired men, a threefold increase in the gap since 2006/2007, not to mention the WASPI women whose pension age was changed from 60 to 66 with no time to plan.

Once the deadline is passed this April, there will be no hiding place for companies unwilling to address this potent gender parity issue, or divert attention away from their own failings towards their female staff. After all, economic equality is a human rights issue. Action is needed now, and it’s needed fast.