I WAS five when Margaret Thatcher was made Prime Minister in 1979.

Just starting school all brighteyed and brimming with excitement in my sensible Clarks shoes. My life up until then had revolved around Sindy, Tiny Tears, and playing ballet schools with my little sister.

Maggie remained in the job throughout my school days, until 1991 when I was 18 and preparing to leave school forever.

I was aware that she was there, but in truth she had very little effect on my daily life.

Teaching methods in the 1980s were different to what they are now.

We weren’t encouraged to debate politics and current affairs, at least not until sixth form.

We were cocooned in a little bubble, lovingly protected from the harsh realities of the striking miners, poll tax riots, or the everpresent sinister threat of the IRA.

Without the internet or rolling news channels, life started and finished in the playing fields at the end of our cul-de-sac.

I recall the horror of the Brighton bomb, the wonder of the Berlin Wall coming down and I knew we were at war, but the Falklands were an awfully long way away and I couldn’t have named you one of Mrs Thatcher’s policies.

Yet the Iron Lady did, in hindsight, have an enormous effect on me – because she was a woman and unaware that this was in any way out of the ordinary, we grew up believing that the top job was ours for the taking.

It was only years later when Ileft the naivity of an all-girls school and liberal nature of university that I really experienced sexism and by then the confidence to compete was too deeply entrenched in me to be destroyed – after all, we’d had a female prime minister by then!

Margaret Thatcher is often berated for failing to fight the female cause.

As the first female PM, many were no doubt waiting for her to fail, or at the very least turn her time in office into the bra-burning female crusade they had fought so long to prevent.

Instead she got on with the job as well, of course, as any man might.

You may or may not agree with Mrs Thatcher’s politics, but one thing you can’t accuse her of, thank goodness, is being a feminist.