Tad: Molly, tell me...how much are you being paid for this column?

Molly: I assume the same as you.

Tad: Would you have a problem if I were paid more?

Molly: Too right I would. We do the same job.

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Tad: So you think men and women should be paid the same. I can't help but feel that there's something inherently unfair about that.

Molly: Let's get this straight - you're actually saying that you find it unfair for men and women to be paid the same to carry out the same work.

Tad: Well, yes. Not just unfair for men, but for companies that employ them and for the economy as a whole.

Molly: How do you figure that?

Tad: Well, in most industries, there is a period of training, which is at considerable expense to a company. With male employees, the expense will be amortised over the next four or so decades because men will work until they die or retire. The majority of women will choose to stop working after a decade or so and the money spent on their training will be thrown out with the dirty nappies.

Molly: Oh where to start...I'd be gripped to learn more about these hapless corporate enterprises and Western democracies choosing, through free market economics, no less, to recruit and develop hordes of intrinsically less profitable female employees.

Tad: “Free market”? There are reams of laws regulating this kind of stuff.

Molly: I don't think companies recruit women just because they feel obliged to. They do it because bright people are always in short supply. Corporate success isn't just a matter of getting hold of a load of spuds and giving them this magical training you talk about. A meritocratic job market serves the economy you are so anxious about because it represents the most efficient allocation of limited resources.

Tad: Interesting you bring up efficient allocation of resources. It costs the NHS the same to train a man or a woman to be a doctor. But 48 per cent of women doctors are part-time while only 5 per cent of male doctors are part-time. Which is a better return on the taxpayers' investment?

Molly: So presumably the logical conclusion of your argument would be that it is wasteful to bother even educating women enough to enter the job market if so many of them are going to end up doing nothing more intellectually strenuous than childcare. What then for the women who by your reckoning aren't even going to become baby machines? What should their talents be channelled towards? Knitting? Embroidery? The pianoforte?

Tad: I'm not saying that women shouldn't benefit from every opportunity the world has to offer just the same as men. They simply should not complain if they're paid less. Just seems a bit dog-in-the-manger-y considering men work longer and die younger.

Molly: What planet do you reside on, Tad? I'm yet to meet the woman who has decided to pursue a career out of some dog-in-the manger desire to deprive her male counterpart of a job.

Tad: I reside on the planet where men pay for women. Women say that they want to be treated equally, but have you ever seen a women reach for her purse when the waiter brings the bill? It's like watching a glacier move. And yet, on average, women save 30 per cent less of their salary than men. They know - way at the back of their minds, even if they don't want to admit it - that they don't necessarily have to save for the future because they may be able to rely on someone else. Men do not have that luxury.

Molly: Even supposing, for argument's sake, that modern families are actually organised so that mummy stays home and bakes apple pie while daddy goes out as sole breadwinner, you are still way off beam here. All the evidence shows that women who break their careers to have children trade in a world of professional recognition, job satisfaction and, of course, salary, for one where they are basically unpaid, undervalued labourers bringing up future generations. And they do this just in time to miss out on the top and most lucrative jobs, which men can then neatly step into. If anything women should be paid more while they are in full-time employment to compensate them for the years of domestic serfdom that may lie ahead. Yet almost more anger-inducing than your arguments is that in reality women earn 20 per cent less than men within a year of graduation and 30 per cent less a decade later. So you win. You don't win fair - but you win.

Tad: I'm starting to think you get paid by the word.

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