Hello and thank you for downloading the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service.

In the early 1970s a young woman called Carmen Calil set up a feminist publishing house

specialising in books by four and about women. It was called Farago Press. She spoke to

Claire Bowes in 2019.

The expectations for somebody like me was just to have tea parties and get married, you know.

And I knew perfectly well I just simply couldn't do any of that.

Carmen Calil had her sights set far higher.

I always wanted to change the world. I didn't think the world was good enough.

I mean in that way I'm intensely childish and I didn't think the way a woman lived was good enough.

Whether she works or whether she doesn't, it's the woman who was expected to look after the house.

But plenty of men who don't think that's work at all.

Britain in the early 1970s was grappling with all sorts of questions about women's lives,

which had been raised by the newly resurgent women's liberation movement.

The UK had only just passed an equal pay act in 1970 and debates had begun

about a sex discrimination law.

But however hard the wife works, it's the man who is legally the boss.

He's the legal guardian of the children. It's him, not the wife who gets sickness benefit if he falls ill.

Are these things built into our society?

Or could a law against sexual discrimination help to ensure that our children have an equal chance?

Do you think women need liberating in any way?

It depends what you mean by liberation.

What do you mean by liberation?

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