Baroness Warnock

Philosopher; Honorary Fellow, 1997-

I  realized how lucky I was to be able to combine professional life with domestic life, thought it had been a struggle at first to get things in the right proportion. I have never been a theoretical feminist. I have always wanted women to be treated as the equals of men if they could show the same ability; I do not believe in the kind of feminism that would separate women from men, as having their own exclusive ways of thinking. I believe that subjects such as mathematics, physics and philosophy are gender-neutral, and that there is not a ‘woman’s truth’ and a ‘man’s truth’. Therefore, inevitably women must compete with men as equals in search of equal truth. I do not deny that women have had, and perhaps still have, a struggle against prejudice in some fields, and also a continuous and undoubtedly everlasting battle to combine all the aspects of inevitable, and also enriching… Perhaps I was, and am, too fond of men; perhaps I took too much delight in the give and take of sex, the taking turns between dominance and submission, to be able to envisage a world in which women could do without men, or must regard themselves always as inferior.

From Mary Warnock, A Memoir: People and Places (2000)