WE may, for a second time in our history, have a woman prime minister. But that doesn’t mean the glass ceiling is a thing of the past.

Nationally, the pay gap between men and women narrowed between 2014 and 2015. Sadly, in York the reverse was true. Here, the gap between what men earned and what women earned widened by 6.45 per cent.

No-one seems sure why York has bucked the national trend, and gone backwards. As a city, our record on equal pay still isn’t that bad. While the pay gap between men and women here widened from 2014 to 2015, it was still smaller than the national average. It was just the rest of the country caught us up a bit. It is nevertheless unfortunate.

The figures aren’t necessarily the result of women are paid less for doing the same job as men. A Government spokeswoman pointed out that women tended to work in jobs that are less well paid.

Time out looking after children could also lead to women earning less, because they had correspondingly fewer years of experience, she added.

But it still can’t be right or healthy that nationally, women working full-time earn on average 19.2 per cent less than men - or that in York the gap is actually widening, not reducing.