Women’s lack of confidence fascinates me. It seems to go even deeper than the prompts we get from society would suggest – the encouragement to think badly of ourselves, to be and do less, to shrink our achievements, to take up less space so men have room to expand. At least until you realise how many of these messages we do get and how early they start.

I was doing a book event the other day, and a woman my age recalled how her mother told her when she was seven or eight to stop reading because if she got too clever she would never get a husband. That was bad enough, but the murmur of recognition that went round the hall full of people older and up to 20 years younger was worse. All of us, I’m sure, can add to the pile our examples of times we were told to hide our lights under bushels lest it offend the ‘natural’ order of things.

“Why women are brilliantly describing themselves as #AppropriatelyConfident”