Women have come so far in my lifetime. When I was seven in 1964, the famous 7 Up series began life as an episode for the British current affairs show World in Action. That original episode featured 14 seven-year-olds and, like the filmmakers, I have followed their lives until the present day, catching up every seven years.

It was only as I grew older, however, that I noticed something glaring about the casting. In 1964, the producers selected children from every class in society including a child of mixed race. Yet, they also cast 10 boys in the series and only four girls.

The change in how women think about themselves, their future and their rights has snowballed. Credit: iStock

The reason for the lack of girls, I believe, is because, when I was seven, no one expected girls to have interesting lives. Girls would do what girls had always done, regardless of their class. They would grow up, marry and have children. End of story.

What the producers missed was the revolution about to occur in women’s lives. A revolution that has had an impact greater than the French, the Russian, or any other you care to name.

The reason the radical nature of this change remains relatively unacknowledged is because it is the first to be created by, for and about women. Men still write most of the history and decide what is and isn’t important. With many honourable exceptions, many men find it hard to be interested in women and their lives.

The change in the way women see themselves, the expectations and aspirations they now have about their lives has been miraculous. My mother’s generation, born between the two world wars, had the same expectations for themselves as did the producers of the 7 Up series and of every preceding generation of girls. They would become wives and mothers.

Your own money and control of your own body are the essential ingredients of liberty and independence.

Then in 1960, the pill was launched. Maybe the world suspected how important this new medical technology was, because of all the pills in the world, only one gets called “the pill”.

It changed everything because it changed the way women were able to see the world and their place in it. For the first time, women could control their reproduction. They could decide when or if to have children.