Following an opinion piece by Labour MP Austin Mitchell in the Daily Mail, the role of women in politics is once again under scrutiny. “More amenable and leadable" is how Mitchell described women MPs. Meanwhile, a new study claims that female bosses earn 35% less than their male counterparts – over forty years after the Equal Pay Act was designed to put an end to such discrepancies. Have things changed since the labour market of the 1920s and ‘30s? Or is there still much to be done?

We spoke to labour market expert and Professor of Public Sector Management, Alison Wolf about gender equality in business and politics. Wolf is Director of the International Centre for University Policy at KCL, she headed a major government review on education in 2011 and is author of The XX Factor.

Is it a conundrum that the closer women come to equality of employment, for professional educated women, the weaker the ties and affinity across womankind?