Nothing changes the gender equation more significantly than women's economic freedom.

Female inferiority is internalised by us. Women need a lot more confidence.

Women tend to need the healthcare system more because we bear children. Insurance companies - not all of them, but many of them - 'gender-rate.' Women may pay 40% more for their health insurance than men do.

One's enemies are always talking about 'post-feminism.' It is a word invented by people who would like to do away with feminism.

I used to regard genres as being embedded in cliches, and I always felt funny about the need we have to label things. But I'm happy to think of 'Starred Up' as a prison drama, although we tried to smuggle in some elements of family drama in there.

Being born a girl in India, it matters a lot what family you are born into.

My mother had been educated at a convent, and she had been converted to communism by my father during Stalin's most rampant period, at the beginning of the 1930s. So she had two gods, God in heaven and god on earth.

My father was a soldier and my mother was a great mover. She once counted up how many places she had lived in during the first 25 years of her marriage and it came to 20.