The saying ‘grow some balls’ could be more useful in the workplace than we thought. Why? Because more than 40 years on from when the Equal Pay Act was introduced in 1970, women are still earning less than blokes, even when doing the same work.

To (mis)quote the London Underground announcement, it’s a case of ‘mind the gender gap’.

Women take home 20 per cent less than men – that’s 80p for every £1 – for putting in the same amount of hours.

Tuesday this week, was dubbed Equal Pay Day. It’s symbolic because it’s the day in the year when women doing the same job as a man for 20 per cent less would stop earning.

Between now and the end of December, many women’s payslips would have nothing but zeros, unlike their male colleagues.

This has prompted many high-profile females, including shadow minister for women and equalities Gloria De Piero to try to get a rise (sorry, couldn’t resist) out of it.

Last year, a survey showed that female lawyers are paid £51,396 less than male lawyers.

Yes, I know it’s hard to feel sorry for lawyers but stay with me on this.

According to the Law Society, almost half of all solicitors and a third of barristers are female and women have been making up more than half of new legal trainees since 1993.

In many firms, it’s a case of ‘don’t mention the pay’ and staff are told not to discuss what they earn, which means women often don’t realise they are earning less than the bloke sitting opposite.

This happens in the financial world, where it can be a sackable offence to swap salary secrets.

To be fair to banks (someone has to), some are trying to be more open about pay but there are still a lot of old-fashioned attitudes about what men and women are worth.

Research by unions shows that when there are gradings at work, men are much more likely to appeal than women and end up doing better out of them.

Even more worryingly, brilliant work done by Oxford University and led by director of career services Jonathan Black, found the salary gap opens up incredibly quickly once ex-students start work.

Just six months after graduating from Oxford, a woman will typically be earning £23,000, while a man who has done the same course and come out with the same level of degree will be on £26,000.

Much as it would make this a more juicy story, I can’t pretend this is down to men saying ‘You’re a girl, so we’ll pay you less’.

Sadly, it seems we females self-select ourselves out of higher-paying jobs.

For many women, when they see a job advertised they think: ‘Well, I can only do 90 per cent of that job, so I’d better not apply’.

While blokes will just go for it, even if they can only claim to have 60 per cent of the experience or qualifications asked for.

Seems it’s all about having cojones...

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