Women march on - but there's a way to go yet - Telegraph When I started as a journalist, older women who really had fought their way up warned me about all sorts of backwards types who would look down on me as a silly little girl. One warned me to take my wedding ring off in job interviews, to avoid the man across the desk assuming I was painting a nursery. I didn't, and I still haven't found the prejudice I expected. Perhaps I'm just lucky: perhaps chauvinist pigs are confused by my surname and think me one of the lads, or perhaps I'm blithely unaware of the sexism that envelops my trade, but for me it feels as though women are on the march, not still struggling through an episode of Mad Men. Even better news for women my age is that we're now earning more than men. Women aged 22-29 are paid 1 per cent more than men, and 0.2 per cent more between the ages of 30 and 39. That all changes when they have children, which means the fight for pay equality may soon become about a "motherhood pay gap" rather than a "gender pay gap." Even on measures other than pay, things are looking up for women, thanks to the efforts of business leaders and politicians. In 2014, women account for 20.7 per cent of board positions in the FTSE 100 - up from 12.5 per cent in April 2013. So why were those schoolgirls with Vs on their cheeks worried? The problem is that when you look at those top jobs, you still see a preponderance of grey suits. It was a while before I considered political journalism, because I so rarely saw women reporting on the subject. If only a fifth of board members, 22 per cent of political journalists and 23 per cent of MPs are women, then a girl might conclude that those jobs wouldn't welcome her. In a previous job, I handled the applications for an internship scheme for aspiring political hacks. Sifting through them, I soon realised at least 70 per cent were coming from men. I was surprised, until I spoke to someone in the Conservative Party involved in candidate selection, who told me it was the same case for women applying for those roles. Less than a third of the applications to join the list of possible candidates for Parliament came from women. No wonder the number of elected MPs the party ends up with is so tiny. Girls pick up subliminal messages about what they are capable of from a young age. Although record numbers of them took science A-levels last year, they were more likely to do so in a single-sex school. In co-educational schools, girls seem to conclude that certain subjects are for the boys. If a lack of confidence about their chances of success is putting women off even having a go, then we must do as much to change that perception as we do to help women once they have made it to the workplace. Yes, there is a great deal more to do, but let's also celebrate the great changes we are already seeing. I would hate for those wonderfully clever girls I met in February, and others like them, to think that because we haven't yet arrived at our destination, there is no point in joining the great march of women.