The first female conductor of the Last Night of the Proms says prejudice against women survives in surprising quarters

Marin Alsop, who will on Saturday night be the first female conductor to tackle the Last Night of the Proms in its 118-year history, has suggested society is still uncomfortable seeing women in authority roles such as hers.

In interview with the Guardian, she said: "There is no logical reason to stop women from conducting. The baton isn't heavy. It weighs about an ounce. No superhuman strength is required. Good musicianship is all that counts. As a society we have a lack of comfort in seeing women in these ultimate authority roles. Still none of the 'big five' orchestras has had a female music director."

Her remarks come in the wake of the outcry sparked by Russian Vasily Petrenko, the principal conductor of the National Youth Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, who claimed orchestras "react better when they have a man in front of them", adding "a sweet girl on the poduim can make one's thoughts drift towards something else".

Alsop, in an interview with the Observer's classical music critic Fiona Maddocks, said she had never had the sort of glamour often demanded of prominent female musicians, "so it didn't arise. I looked OK – I hope! – which I guess in some ways made it easier".

She said she has regularly encountered prejudice. "One of my early conducting experiences was a step-in – the conductor didn't show up and someone said, 'Go on Marin, you want to be a conductor,' and I ran up on stage. As I stepped onto the podium one of the guys in the brass section said, 'Oh man, it's a girl.' At the end of the week he said to me: 'You're really good. I never really noticed you were a girl.'"

Asked if she would conduct the Vienna Philharmonic, which took until 1997 to admit the first woman to the orchestra, she said ruefully: "They haven't called."

Alsop, who is gay and has a son with her musician partner, said the decision on whether to have children is a huge issue for female musicians.

"We're progressing. But just at that moment when your career needs a push, you need to figure out, 'Am I going to have a family?' That's a huge issue for so many women, of course, and I have many friends who left it until their 40s – too late."

She admitted however that prejudice against women can survive in surprising quarters, even in herself.

"Whenever I get on a plane, I check who's flying it. Once I saw there were three women in the cockpit. And I thought, in spite of myself: 'Oh oh, something wrong here.' If I reacted like that, what on earth does the person who doesn't have my super-high tolerance of these issues think?'"