‘WOMEN ARE GODDESSES’
Known as the First Lady of Fleet Street, former newspaper editor Eve Pollard was in the news recently when her TV star daughter, Claudia Winkleman, revealed mirrors were banned in the home when she was growing up. The clear message? It’s always better to rely on your brains than your looks
We raise children, we nurture them, we civilise our sons and give hope and faith to our daughters. Women are goddesses! That’s what feminism means to me. As an old bat – which I am now – feminism also means the chance of continuing to work if I can.
Women’s liberation has not moved as fast as I thought it would. When I was young, there were so many things I thought would have been sorted out by now. I believed women would have automatically been able to do this or that, but it’s gone quite slowly. It’s partly due to men and partly due to women as well. I feel we are at the foot of the mountain on so many situations.
I want every little girl born this year to feel that she can do what she wants to do. That she can expand her mind, learn what she wants to learn. She can travel. Her dreams can come true as well as her brother’s. I think and hope that I raised my children, Claudia and Oliver, to feel they can do anything.
I never cared about ironing. I would put it under a chair and sit on it. I wanted to be playing with my children, laughing with them and watching silly movies with them. But I wasn’t there on certain days of the week, and so I used to do deals. I would say Sunday is the day off, so what do you want to do and we will do it. I saw what I thought was Claudia’s first step. Did it matter that the nanny might have seen a step the day before? I don’t think it did.
My best marriage advice is to never have a joint bank account and always have some running away money. When I started, it was only £20 and wouldn’t have got me very far. But it was psychological that there was some money he didn’t know that I had. I still have it. I have a lot more than that now, as it costs me a lot more to run away to wherever I want to go! It always made me feel that I could argue my corner.