Feisty and fabulous, Helena Kennedy QC is a rebel with a cause.

One of Britain’s best and most outspoken lawyers, she’s also a peer in the House of Lords and a campaigner for equal rights.

But Lady Kennedy of the Shaws wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth.

The 63-year-old, who heads Oxford University’s Mansfield College, grew up in a council house in Glasgow.

She started her career in law with a double whammy – not only is she female but from a working class background.

Now, 40 years on from when she graduated, she’s still as passionate as ever about fighting for women’s rights.

As she points out, three vacancies for judges came up in the UK’s Supreme Court earlier this year and all of them went to men.

At the moment, there is only one woman judge out of 12 – Lady Hale, who was appointed eight years ago.

Mother-of-three Helena says: “We have to ask the question, why is that still happening?

“It comes down to cloning, in that people appoint in their own image, without realising it.

“Men are appointing people who remind them of themselves.”

She’s got a point.

Even though half of all law undergraduates have been female since 1993 and almost half of solicitors and a third of barristers are women, according to the Law Society figures, there is still a yawning gap in pay and career prospects.

Specialist legal recruitment firm Laurence Simons found female lawyers are paid a whopping £51,000 less than their male colleagues.

Since fees for top-level legal professionals are often negotiated and include bonuses, it often comes down to having the confidence to demand a better deal.

Helena adds: “Women’s skills are often undervalued and they’re often not very good sales people for themselves.

“They might be great when selling an organisation or someone else but they are worried about being pushy when it comes to talking about their own qualities.”

When she began work as a criminal lawyer, she says the legal profession was even more male biased and her dreams of becoming a barrister seemed remote.

“At that time, there were very, very small numbers of women doing it,” she says.

“I was pretty determined about practising at the bar.

“I wanted to do it and wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Eventually, she set up her own chambers, where she could practice as a barrister and have an fair crack at being given top cases.

For a long time she specialised in cases linked to domestic violence and sexual discrimination.

Other well-known cases she has been involved with include the Brighton Bombing and the Guildford Four appeal.

All through the 1970s and 80s, she wrote and went on radio and television to talk about the fact women weren’t getting a fair deal, not just as lawyers but also as victims and defendants.

Her campaigning actually led to changes in policy and codes of practice and she was given The Times Newspaper's Lifetime Achievement award in 1999.

“If you look at women’s careers in pretty much any male-dominated profession, you usually see it’s rare for them to go up the main staircase or ladder,” she points out.

“Instead, they’ll probably end up going up the drainpipe and through the window.

“That’s why so many women set up their own businesses, because they can get around the system that way.”

She believes the rise of celebrity culture hasn’t helped women’s rights over the past 10 years.

“The way the media bigs up celebrities and the massive focus on the way they look has made young women feel under more pressure to be thin and look glamorous all the time.

“It’s been hard for recent generations of women to know what it feels like to be contained and fulfilled.

“Many lost the sense of that and they paid the price.”

On the other hand, she didn’t think much of the way a small group of extremists hi-jacked the feminism movement.

“It was a caricature of what a feminist is like, saying they are all men-hating, drab and misery mongers.

“Those who decided you had to turn your back on looking good, or having friendships with men, were a small but loud group and what they said was so untrue.”

She says she mentors many young women and feels positive about the future.

“The good news for women is that new research shows that the old ways of leading, so using the stick and carrot, is not the way to get the best out of people.

“It’s better to look at the whole and a more well-rounded way of leading plays very well into the skills we women have.”