For all the complaints we hear about the structural inequality of our patriarchal society, it is true that equality continues to advance.

Now to understand this you’ll need to grasp something about the British legal system. Firstly, that it’sactually teo systems, one for England and Wales and another for Scotland. Secondly, that we have two different types of lawyers. While the differences are slightly fading away, there’s still a distinction made between solicitors and barristers. Solicitors are the people that do the office work. Wills, property transfers, all that sort of stuff. They also do the office work of preparing a case for a trial. Then they hand over to the barristers who do the actual getting up on their hind legs and talking in court bit.

Slightly odd I agree, but it does allow people to specialise.

Now, for solicitors the intake has been majority female for well over a decade now.  For barristers not so much. Actually, they’re called advocates in Scotland but it’s the same thing, the talking in court bit.

…the Faculty of Advocates passes a significant milestone next week with the arrival, for the first time, of as many female trainees as male ones.

Over the previous 20 years, the ratio of “intrants” starting their nine-month training at the Bar has generally been three or four males to every female. One year in the early 1990s, the intake was 19 men and one woman.

The percentage of women joining more recently has varied between 35 and 40 per cent. This autumn’s intake, however, is a near 50-50 split.

It may take some time for the equality in numbers to filter through to the top. The Scottish Bar is small, with 462 practising members of whom 110 - or 23 per cent - are women. Amongst the 96 silks, or QCs, the percentage of women is only 16 per cent.

(Just to add more detail, silks are the senior lawyers.)

Now this reflects on of my favourite contentions. It’s no good looking at the earnings of all women, or the number of women at the top of a prfession, or even the number of women in total in a career or profession. For we know that in years gone by there was indeed discrimination against women. When we try to work out what needs to be done about equality we need to look at it all by age cohort.

Are wages for women in their 20s the same as mens’? Actually, umm, yes, they are. Are there roughly equal numbers of men and women entering the traditionally highly paid professions? As above, yes, there are.

So it would seem that, at least in part, we’ve already done the heavy lifting required to make access to professional careers equal. We now have to simply wait for the current generation to work their way through the system and we’ll have solved it all, yes?

Well, no, not quite. For we’ve still got this career break for motherhood thing to contend with.

But it is still true to say that equality advances: in many, if not most areas of life, we have at least got to the equality of opportunity stage for both men and women. Perhaps not yet perfect but better than it was, no?