AT a time when much of the world is taking a stance which allows cartoonists to freely express themselves however offensive some people find their drawings, it is a little strange that The Sun is to prevent young women from expressing themselves by willingly taking off their tops.

However, the cover-up of Page 3 is long overdue.

As The Sun’s proprietor Rupert Murdoch tweeted a couple of years ago, it has become “old-fashioned”. Page 3 came into being in November 1970, at the end of the sexual revolution of the Swinging Sixties, and it was meant to indicate the modern and brash nature of the new red-top tabloid.

Yet times have changed. Equality between the sexes, promoted by anti-sex discrimination laws, is now seen as desireable, and therefore the flash of female flesh, where the woman was only in the paper because of the size of her breasts, was clearly outdated.

The display of women in this way went deeper than just the nudity on the page. It suggested that the newspaper thought women couldn’t achieve in their own right with their own brains or skills. It demeaned them. It suggested that a woman’s prime role was not to be a politician or a sportsman but to be an object of glamour for men to look at.

Times have changed in another way. A naked girl is no longer a unique selling point for The Sun as now you can find similar pictures all over the internet. The difference, though, is you have to choose to use google to find those pictures, whereas many members of a family had no choice when a paper was pushed through their letterbox.

The Sun, and the Murdoch empire as a whole, has also changed. After the phone-hacking scandal and the Leveson inquiry, it is seeking respectability, and ditching the naked women is one way of finding it.

However, although things have changed, they also stay the same. It looks like long-legged lovelies will continue to disport themselves on Page 3, only now they will be covered up with handkerchief-sized pieces of material. This may be a step towards equality, but it is only a step. Society has further to go – after all, the few women in government are still regarded in some quarters as being “Cameron’s cuties” rather than people with powerful ideas who are leading the country.