GENDER pay has been a hot potato in the media over the past week.

The deadline for companies to report their own differentiation between male and female salaries was last Wednesday night.

Understandably, there has been a furore about the major businesses who have a substantial gap and, similarly, big pats on the back for those companies who have parity or are close to achieving it.

I believe there are some misapprehensions at work here and, while it is fundamentally correct that men and women should be paid the same for comparable work, we also need to look more deeply into the issues underneath these figures.

There needs to be long-term action on the closely connected issues that created the gap in the first place if we want everyone to contribute to their full potential.

The issues that need to be tackled include the image of certain industries and jobs.

For example, the engineering sector is doing a great deal to attract more female recruits but has a catching-up job to do after decades of stories about heavy industry in grimy environments.

Unconscious bias is a further factor, which can affect gender balance, especially in recruitment decisions for senior positions.

I’m sure the majority of North-East employers recognise there is potential to be biased and they take steps to eradicate it.

However, there are still likely to be occasions where it happens, despite these best intentions.

When I am out in our business community, I am very aware there are as many different work cultures as there are people.

Some of these workplaces are, without doubt, more welcoming to men, although the world of Page Three pin-ups on walls of factory units is, thankfully, a thing of the past.

There are also informal networks within industries that are influencing career opportunities with a bias towards men.

Again, I stress, many of these are founded on century-old traditions, rather than any attempt today to keep women out of these groups.

As a region, we need to develop a culture that ensures women want to do, and feel able to do, high-value jobs so they can achieve their full potential and contribute to our productivity at a senior level, at a rate they don’t do at present.

This change will benefit us all as it will un-tap precious talent that might otherwise shamefully go to waste.

We are all responsible for this.

James Ramsbotham is chief executive at the North-East Chamber of Commerce