Yes, I finally heard it – the solution to gender inequality in the workplace! I argued it myself not so long ago with some younger female friends of mine and, after being sharply shot down, I presumed I was on my own on this one – their reaction was that it was male chauvinism going even further, trying to get more perks for men who already enjoy the most anyway.

I first brought it up after reading an article by Rosie Boycott, the long-serving feminist activist – she described the dilemma of running a small business (a farm in her case) and living in fear of half of her workforce, namely a thirtysomething called Sarah, falling pregnant. A year’s paid maternity leave would effectively bankrupt Boycott’s business. Yet it was a right that she had spent much of her life defending.

Attending a Wainwright Trust event earlier this week, a panel discussion on equality legislation and workplace discrimination, the final question from a woman at the front was the same one I’d posed to my female friends.

I didn’t write her wording down verbatim, but essentially it was: “Is it not the case that gender pay inequality, and so employers’ perceptions, will remain the same as long as there is such a stark difference between maternity and paternity leave? I’d like to see the day where an employer holds the same concerns over employing a young man as a young woman in this respect. As long as the man does not take equal responsibility in raising children in the first years of their life, inequalities will exist.” Were I not the journo scribbling away at the back, I would have cried out a hallelujah!

This answer to gender inequality, not to mention pay inequality, seems simple, while also being socially and legally complex. But if a man were to have the same paternity leave rights as a woman, would things not steadily even out? Two job candidates or promotion prospects, one male, one female, would no longer raise gender-specific concerns in the manager or HR professional – they would both carry the same risk.

Or, in a more positive light, the “risk” would rather become the “norm” and simply be a fact of modern business. Fathers of young children would return to work with the same disadvantages of missing time out of their career, and so the playing field would be even.

But again, if it were the norm, and no longer simply an issue of discrimination against females being “swept under the carpet” (as Harriet Harman recently put it), then it’s a safe bet that business would swiftly come up with a solution to career disadvantage incurred by workers with young children.