Forty years on from the Equal Pay Act, the Law Society and Legal Services Board continue to highlight gender differences as a significant category of career disadvantage. The raw data remains extremely dispiriting; although the proportion of women admitted as solicitors continues to increase, pressing issues remain concerning retention, progression, flexible working and pay.

In terms of progression, the proportion of women that will reach partner level in private practice is half that of men. We need to know why – and definitively. Not least because the complacent argument that increased access and the passage of time will soon bridge the diversity gap is demonstrably threadbare.

A fortnight ago a government-sponsored inquiry into male dominance of public company boardrooms starkly demonstrated the glacial nature of progress on this front in the top echelon of British business. In the FTSE 100, 18 companies have no women board members at all, rising to nearly 50% in the FTSE 250. Inquiry chief Lord Davies of Abersoch noted that, given the present rate of change, the imbalance will take 70 years to even out. A lifetime in fact.

Davies stopped short of recommending mandatory quotas, but said FTSE 100 companies should aim for their boards to be 25% female by 2015. Is it time for all law firms of a certain size to set targets, if they have not done so already?