They say that our experiences shape our lives. I am only 18 and studying at St Paul’s girls’ school, so much of my experience is yet to come. But what happens around me and to my immediate family has played a big part in how I see the sexes today.

At school we do as we like. If you enjoy physics you can study it without fear of being the only girl in a class of boys. Nobody’s there to tell you that at most schools the jazz club is a male preserve or that science isn’t for you. Maths is our most popular A-level.

When it comes to the opposite sex, we remain confident. Only a minority have regular boyfriends; most of us tend to go out in large groups. Most prefer to pay our way on a date, but some of us want to be paid for.

We don’t have to wear uniform so we are free to dress up or down and wear make-up. But we are doing it to please ourselves, not others.

Some days my friends will wear designer jeans by Seven and skirts by Marc Jacobs; the next day something from Primark or Topshop. So I wouldn’t say it gets competitive at school. We all look utterly individual and we all think we look pretty.

We are everything the feminists who burnt their bras in the 1970s could have hoped for: yet, for my generation the word feminism has become devalued. My contemporaries are living the dream of feminism but, for some reason, the word has become stereotyped by derogatory connotations of dungarees, hairiness and man-hating.

As far as they think about it at all, it’s regarded as a thing of the past. “Feminists? they’re the crazy people who burnt their bras,” they say. “But I like wearing a bra — a pink one with a bow on the front.”

Only last week I heard one of my fellow sixthformers — seriously — arguing that men were destined to be better leaders than women. She believes that an inspirational figure is more likely to appear from the boys’ school down the road than from our female enclave. It’s down to genes, apparently.

Others go on about how they will stop working if they have babies. They take for granted they will have a choice to stay at home or work, as they please, but don’t seem to see that this privilege has been hard-fought, nor that the struggle isn’t over.

Given the pay differentials between men and women, the difficulties women — including my own mother — routinely encounter at work, and the persistence of sexual stereotypes, I can’t see any cause for complacency.

Perhaps I am more aware of all of this because of my mother’s experience. My mum, who is Japanese, is an investment banker who continued to work full-time after I was born. The first Japanese woman to graduate from London Business School, she has always fought against the odds when it comes to her career. When, six months into her pregnancy, she announced she was expecting and requested three months’ maternity leave, her boss told her that if she took more than two there might not be a job to come back to.

She was the first woman at the bank to ask for maternity leave at all, other pregnancies having resulted in the women leaving.

Despite a successful year, her annual bonus was slashed. With a baby due at the end of February, my mum went in after New Year to fight for the bonus she was due. I was born on January 12, six weeks early, weighing 3Ålb.

When my mum returned to the office her desk was gone. Taking the matter to court was not an option. Even if the case was won, no other bank would hire you. By the time my brother was born, three years later, she had learnt her lesson. Refusing to tell anyone at work, she invested in outfits that would conceal all evidence of the impending arrival. The shoulder pads on the jackets made her look so big that a colleague advised her to go to a health farm.

By October, two months before her baby was due, the bump could no longer be concealed. She told her boss, but this time, instead of requesting time off, offered to use her four weeks’ annual leave. He agreed, and she worked until three days before giving birth.

Six hours after my brother arrived, she received a phone call from an irate managing director in Hong Kong. “Why didn’t you return my message?” “I was having a baby,” she replied.

What happened to my mother took place in the late 1980s. It wasn’t the dark ages. And as recent cases show there are women out there still facing discrimination every day.

Much more could be done in schools to raise awareness. We’re never really taught about feminism and that needs to be addressed. It’s only now, in the sixth form, that we have begun discussing sexual politics.

We cannot always assume we are going to enjoy exactly the same opportunities as the boys at our brother school, St Paul’s. There are around 90 of us in my year. At least half are planning to study science, and at least 20 of those want to go to medical school. We imagine that we are going to coast through life and never experience any kind of discrimination — until something comes along that slaps us in the face.

Recently a banker came to give us some career advice. He meant well but it was so sexist. He said City jobs were fine for women, but warned us off the trading floor. It was “too macho and far too aggressive” for the likes of us. Similarly, he added, stay away from corporate finance because of the long hours. Can you imagine him saying that to sixth-form boys? And when is anyone ever going to say to a young man: “This is a good career because you can go part-time after you have children?”

Depending on my A-level results, I have a place to study English at Oxford. And I know that if I have children later on I will want to work. To me, feminism has nothing to do with whether you like pink bras with bows on the front, wax your legs or have long hair. It’s about equal opportunity. Fair and square. And it should be just as relevant to twentysomethings as it was to women a generation ago.