THE Fawcett Society’s revelation on Equal Pay Day that the gender pay gap stands at 15.7 per cent — equivalent to women being forced to work for free from today till the end of the year — shames our society.

It is 44 years since the Equal Pay Act sought to end wage discrimination against working women and, not only has Britain failed to deliver on that promise — it’s getting worse.

The gender pay gap actually widened in 2013. Figures for this year are obviously incomplete, but it would be surprising if the trend had reversed.

The Con-Dem coalition has attacked pay and conditions across the board. Not across the boardroom, of course, where it has refused to do anything about flyaway salaries for bosses.

We found out last month that FTSE directors now take home (“earn” is hardly the apposite term) an average 120 times the pay of a full-time employee at the bottom of their company, up from 47 times in 2000 and a rise of 21 per cent over the last year alone.

The yawning pay gulf between City slickers and fat-cat directors on the one hand and the workforce on the other is not directly a gender equality issue, although the fact that the tycoons of business and finance are overwhelmingly men will have its effect.

And, as the stats show, this gulf has been widening since the start of the millennium and indeed before. No government since Thatcher’s has tried to rein in the tiny elite gobbling an ever greater share of the national wealth.

But the current government bears a particular responsibility for widening inequality between the sexes. The bonfire of public-sector jobs has affected women more than men, since they are more likely to be public-sector workers.

That reality means that the endless pay freezes and below-inflation rises forced on the public services have disproportionately hurt women more than men.

For the same reason, outsourced jobs in services such as the NHS are more likely to be done by women than men, and — as is so starkly illustrated by the Doncaster Care UK strikers’ plight — the privateers who snap up such contracts always begin by attacking pay and conditions.

And the Fawcett Society’s Dr Eva Neitzert is certainly right to note that the introduction of hefty fees for workers to take their bosses to employment tribunals is a disincentive to workers to fight for their right to equal treatment and a signal to managers that they can get away with discriminating against female workers if they like.

Britain is going backwards on most measures of equality between the sexes, as last month’s World Economic Forum survey showed.

We are lower down the global rankings on women’s economic participation, educational attainment, political empowerment and health than we were when the forum began collecting such statistics in 2006.

Much was made recently of David Cameron’s refusal to wear a “this is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt.

News that that T-shirt may have been produced by super-exploited women in Mauritius labouring for just 62p an hour has damaged the Fawcett Society’s campaign, but does highlight that gimmicks such as this do very little to challenge the reality of women’s oppression.

An incoming Labour government must take real action to address this — removing the barriers to taking cases to employment tribunals, reversing the attacks on public-sector workers and providing the affordable childcare young families need so that both parents can go back to work when they consider it appropriate.

First of all, Labour should make a clear commitment now that it will reverse the trend towards greater pay inequality in our country.