In a lively children’s centre in East London, women are being asked a question to which they respond with varying degrees of surprise: “What do you want?”.

The responses range from, “Oh my goodness, I would like a lot” to “What? Nobody, asks what I want - not even my husband.”

In 1996, 10,000 women from across Britain took part in a ground-breaking study that aimed to find out what they wanted from life.

Back then, postcards asking that very question where sent out far and wide, with space for respondents to detail the issues they felt most affected them and their families. No one needed to be asked twice. Women replied in their thousands, identifying domestic violence, equal pay, breast cancer research and removing VAT on sanitary protection as key ‘women’s issues’.