There's a history attached to gender discrimination at the workplace as a result of failed political manoeuvres and unfair wage practices. One such example is Barbara Castle, who was born 100 years ago on October 6th and who died in 2001, has soared in public opinion ever since she quit politics, propelled on the updraft of anti-new Labour sentiment and continuing frustration at unequal pay, which resulted in the creation of Equal Pay Act.

Women care about equal pay not just because of the money, but as a matter of respect. Yes, they deserve equal salaries compared to men, that goes without saying, but this practice isn't followed every time!

Let’s talk about Carrie Gracie, an editor at BBC who was lied about equal pay. She was earning 50% of what her male co-workers were earning despite working at BBC for decades. The Guardian wrote about a scandal which happened in 2009 about a little-known BBC news presenter who made the headlines by revealing her £92,000-a-year salary on air and getting into a public spat. Carrie Gracie told a Labour peer that, unlike the MPs charging for “chandeliers and manure”, she never even claimed for telephone calls “because I understand what public service is about”.

She made the headlines yet again a week ago when she resigned as China editor and accused her employer of illegal pay discrimination. A dispute simmering since last summer, when the publication of BBC pay scales first revealed how few of the best-paid stars were women, boiled over and led to days of outrage and mockery over the BBC and its treatment of women.

In an interview for the BBC’s Woman’s Hour, Gracie explained that she had turned down a £45,000 pay increase that would have taken her overall pay to £180,000, but left it below that of two male international editors, the US editor, Jon Sopel, and the Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen.

The row has been painful for the BBC, exposing deep divisions among some of its best-known staff and evoking memories of the Savile scandal when its failure to act became symbolic of wider social injustice. In raising issues of inequality and fairness, Gracie has put the BBC at the heart of two of the defining issues of our age.

Being systematically underpaid isn’t just unfair, but insulting. It says that you’re disposable, that nobody really rates you or cares if you leave. And the worst thing about being treated with this kind of contempt is that it fosters a terrible, nagging self-doubt. Even to go public about being underpaid is mortifying, because it only invites speculation about what might be wrong with you; it’s like admitting to being eternally single in a room full of pitying smug marrieds. Maybe they’re right and, in some way that everyone seems mysteriously unable to specify, you aren’t quite good enough. At the very least, you must be a lousy negotiator.

This misconception and self-doubt in a person wouldn't arise in the first place if companies adhere to equal pay rules!