Lunch with Raewyn Connell was always going to be about big ideas. She became a sociology professor aged 31 in 1975 and has been at the cutting edge of new thinking on contentious subjects ever since.

Her 26 books canvass topics from sexual politics to school teaching, and her work has been translated into 24 languages. Connell is one of the few Australian social scientists with a truly global reputation.

I read Connell’s influential early career books on social class and politics as an undergraduate at the University of Sydney. It is her work on gender relations, however, that won her international prominence. “I don’t see my own career as being out there in front uniquely but there have been several times in my career when I was among the early workers in a given field,” she says.

But

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