OK, so on Trident. With the situations in Russia and the Middle East, some would say taking money out of the defence budget isn’t wise. Should we not be defending ourselves?

Well, I think what we need to do is think about what security means, and that means we need a safe, peaceful, healthily fed, fair world and nuclear weapons are no contributor to that. I’d like to ask Cameron and Miliband under what circumstances can you imagine a sane British Prime Minister pressing the nuclear button and I hope their answer to that would be never. In which case, why do we have these hideous weapons of mass destruction? There is actually a growing push for a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons, so if [Britain] were to get rid of Trident, we put a huge impetus on that drive for a global ban. If we put some of the money into aid, into diplomatic efforts, we can get a new place for Britain in the world as a champion of human rights and democracy. This year we’re celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta; lots of human rights principles and ideas developed initially in Britain. It’s not at all drawing into our borders and being isolationist, it’s reaching out to the world and saying, “We’re going to use what soft power we have to encourage peace and security.” It’s an active stance, but it doesn’t involve throwing high explosives around.

OK, moving onto some of Stylist’s heartland areas: how do we get women into top jobs?

We support the Norwegian 40%-women-on-boards quotas, we support making class-action suits much easier so it’s possible for women to group together if they’re being disadvantaged. I also think that one of the things that’s not immediately gendered but is enormously damaging is the privatisation of public services. As all of the services that have been privatised have shifted towards minimum wage, zero-hour contracts and inferior employment conditions, a huge percentage of those affected by that are women.

How can we make the work/life balance more manageable?

Well, Britain has some of the longest working hours in Europe. People actually work more than their theoretical full-time contracts, so we want to enforce the Working Time Directive [the EU legislation that prevents employees working more than 48 hours a week – Britain allows companies to opt out].

And so to the gender pay gap, some say it’s at an all-time low and has disappeared for people under 35. What do you think?

I think the last figures show it’s actually started to get worse again. The problem is people cite so many different figures but I’m a former trustee of The Fawcett Society so this is an area of personal interest. It’s started to go in the wrong direction and that’s unsurprising given the impact of austerity and the privatisation of public services. What we need is gender pay audits in companies with over 250 employees. And with regard to the lack of women in the FTSE 100, we need to create a viable career ladder. If these companies know 40% of board members have to be women, they’re going to have to build a ladder to get women to that point.

The political interview: Natalie Bennett, Green Party