It was one thing to recognise that conventional indexes make women’s experience and priorities invisible, but quite another to work out a new conceptualisation.... I think up ways of naming from women’s perspective ... We have put in the entry ‘ loving husbands’ and along with it ‘Radical men’ and then have listed Bertrand Russell and John Stuart Mill for example, and have also cross-referenced them with ‘champions of women’s rights’.... By far the biggest entry is ‘Harassment’ – there must be a reference on every page ... it is a practical way of saying that we don’t have to accept the classification system that men have devised.

I have deliberately refrained from indexing any men who are mentioned in the text on the grounds that what is good for the gander is good for the goose ... how many indexes in books written by men make women invisible?