The Vienna Philharmonic at last night’s Proms were as technically deft and impressive as reputation demands. But they were, I noted, still astonishingly male (and white, but let’s just stick to gender for the time-being).

There was one prominent female violinist and a second non-male was, I was assured, lurking somewhere. But the orchestra notorious for refusing to admit women for generations still strikingly lacks even the diversity we take for normal in the BBC Symphony Orchestra or the London Symphony Orchestra.

It was particularly noticeable as the night before, I had been at the opening of the Whitechapel Gallery exhibition of the second winner of the MaxMara Art Prize for Women. The Italians are, like the Austrians, not a nation I would have put in the vanguard of sex equality, a view that Berlusconi’s alleged peccadilloes has done nothing to dispel. But the forward-thinking (and art-loving) family-run fashion firm MaxMara has – with significant support from the Italian ambassador in London, Signor Giancarlo Aragona – founded (with the Whitechapel) and funded this prize intended to find and champion the next generation of Tracey Emins and Rachel Whitereads  in the UK.

It has, largely, managed to avoid the controversy that still occasionally dogs the Orange Prize for women’s fiction, a ridiculous controversy when  the Orange long ago proved itself by profiling fabulous authors overlooked by other awards. But, by the same token, neither has the MaxMara award garnered the attention it deserves. Nevertheless, this year’s winner, 29-year-old Londoner Hannah Rickards, admits her win was invaluable as the prize involves a six-month residency in Italy, buying thinking time it is difficult for young artists to secure –  time which helped create the work now showing in the East End.

The award is an impeccable example of Anglo-Italian relations and, I am sure, an affront to all critics of political correctness who seem to detest any efforts to create a level playing field. But  I suspect that Austria could do with something similar. If they had the gender equality rows in Vienna that are commonplace in the UK and prizes like the MaxMara  to make a difference, isn’t it impossible to imagine that the Vienna Phil wouldn’t look very, very different?