Elle UK 2009

Last summer, over tea for two in a London hotel — because that, readers, is how we rock 'n' roll — we began a conversation about women and men, our differences and similarities, what unites us and what divides us. We talked about friends and families, about situations at work and at home, and about how fevered and fraught the debate around gender equality has become.

It is, of course, one of the great conversations a woman and a man can have — well, OK, maybe not, but it beats the old do-you-come-here-often? routine — and we've been having it, in one form or another, since we were...