As a child, I had some inkling that women were considered inferior when my mother couldn't be served in the bar of the pubs she frequented but was confined to the snug. Then there was my application for a library membership, which required my father's signature rather than my mother's.

When I started my legal business in the early '80s, there were still very few women in the field except in secretarial positions, and I would often get phone calls from people asking to speak to the man in charge. I thought the whole thing was ridiculous, of course, although I would never have described myself as a feminist.