What pressures do young women face on social media?

“No one is completely honest on social media, and everyone to a greater or lesser extent shapes their behaviour to win approval.”

“Social media puts pressures on young women to look a certain way, to wear a face that they want the world to see and to say the things which they think will please and impress. Their online persona and appearance are continually judged and when they are perceived by others to be falling short in some way, it is hurtful and damaging. All of this inevitably has a corrosive impact on their self-esteem.”

How have you balanced work and family life?

“I’ve been fortunate that a teaching career is one of the most accommodating for a working mum.”

“When the children were young, I rarely had to work at weekends or during the holidays.  Teaching has also proved to be a career with the flexibility for me to take time away when they were little and to return to work part time until they were older.”

What makes a leading lady in 2019?

“She should be happy in her skin and be confident in her self-worth and in the life choices she’s made.”

“The women I admire the most are the ones that are making a good job of whatever they do – whether they are in a higher paid job or being a home maker. They are also making a difference to others rather than focusing only on their own success.

Increasingly women in the modern working world are gaining the confidence to break through glass ceilings and aim for top jobs in the workplace, but they are up against men who have far greater self-belief professionally.  I would always prefer to work with a colleague who is aware of and honest about their own shortcomings, but in many walks of life having this sort of personality does not lead to promotion.  When a man looks at a job advertisement with a bullet pointed list of ten criteria, he will typically think that meeting two or three of the requirements is sufficient to encourage him to apply;  a woman will focus on the two or three things she feels she cannot do and will talk  herself out of applying. This is a real difference in the way that women do, or don’t, advance themselves professionally. They too often lack the self-belief to risk putting themselves forward. I should add that, in my opinion, the man’s way is not actually the right way to approach things and that a combination of self-confidence and self-awareness is the best of both worlds, but I do think that women are more prone to self-doubt than men and that this is one of the reasons why they continue to be outnumbered in the top jobs.”