When I was 13, my all-female class was asked to write a life plan. What would we achieve? What milestones would we hit? I considered my answers long and hard, producing a document that could now be reduced into a single word: Everything.

There was not a dream I wouldn’t commit to. I’d travel. Become the director of the BBC. Write novels. Set up charities. All while having countless children. Women, I believed, could do everything. My mum had told me so. Just a few years before, she had pulled over the moving car to tell me about the Suffragettes. “Women died to give you the vote,” she’d revealed earnestly. “So you should always make sure you use it.” To me, this meant working hard. Earning money. Being an outspoken, active citizen.

Almost two decades later, and I am about to turn 30. I l

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