Issues
I've never been one for cosy chick-lit stories. I don't want to read about women meekly accepting the inequalities and prejudices of our culture, I want to see them challenging it and thriving outside its controls.
Over the years I've struggled with the feminist label. Burning bras was never me, and as for the right to demand sex as I wanted it... Hmm. These things put me off claiming to be a feminist for years.
But at its heart feminism is about fair treatment for women, and in recent years I've become more comfortable with using the label. But even when I haven't overtly used it the issue has been central to my writing. My characters are strong, independent women, usually at the top of their professions. They're capable of making their own lives and careers, and of changing the universe.
Women and men think about the world differently. Broadly generalising, men compete, and women tend-and-befriend. Some of this is due to different wiring in our brains, but how much of it is culturally programmed? Girls are brought up not to make a fuss, while boys can be more noisy.
I've always thought women were women's worst enemy in the struggle for equality. While we programme our daughters to look sexy and find a man we change nothing, and if my writing can show just one woman that there are other ways of being in the world it will have done its job.
Over the years I've struggled with the feminist label. Burning bras was never me, and as for the right to demand sex as I wanted it... Hmm. These things put me off claiming to be a feminist for years.
But at its heart feminism is about fair treatment for women, and in recent years I've become more comfortable with using the label. But even when I haven't overtly used it the issue has been central to my writing. My characters are strong, independent women, usually at the top of their professions. They're capable of making their own lives and careers, and of changing the universe.
Women and men think about the world differently. Broadly generalising, men compete, and women tend-and-befriend. Some of this is due to different wiring in our brains, but how much of it is culturally programmed? Girls are brought up not to make a fuss, while boys can be more noisy.
I've always thought women were women's worst enemy in the struggle for equality. While we programme our daughters to look sexy and find a man we change nothing, and if my writing can show just one woman that there are other ways of being in the world it will have done its job.
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