IT COULD be a search for seminal novels, or "Watershed Works of Fiction" or simply a quest to find out how the novels women read differ from those read by men. It all depends on whether you listen to Radio 4, look on the BBC web site or read the national papers.

Women's Hour having dulled down, rather than dumbed down, since it fell into the life-is-real-life-life-is-earnest hands of presenter Jenni Murray, and with a slot that generally pits it against the vacuum cleaner or the washer, I'm not the listener I used to be.

Boiling jam, however, has to be supervised. It isn't the most entertaining job in the world and the kitchen radio is on Radio 4. Woman's Hour beat counting the dots on the wallpaper by a short head.

Which book, Ms Murray asked, did I feel had given me a changed perception of women. Eh? Was that her spin or had I got the wrong impression? All I'd read about was a simple search for women's favourite novels, but seeking further clarification only muddied the water. I can think of female characters I want to pick up off the page and quietly strangle - Miriam in Sons and Lovers, for a start, and Cathy in Wuthering Heights - but none who changed my attitude to my own sex.

Fortunately, not everyone has taken quite the solemn attitude of Women's Hour. Researchers from London University have already rounded up 400 women to nominate their favourites and, uninhibited by words like "seminal" and "watershed", they put Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the "long list". Top came Jane Eyre and, oh dear, Wuthering Heights. But it got better; my own all-time favourite, Pride and Prejudice, came equal fifth (with Toni Morrison's Beloved). I've loved Pride and Prejudice since long before Colin Firth rose, dripping, out of a lake. It didn't "change my perception of women", but it certainly showed me the woman I most admire in fiction: Elizabeth Bennet.

Fancy being able to live with Mrs Bennet and not commit matricide. Then there's her ability to weather Darcy's offensive behaviour with outward calm, to stand up to Lady Catherine de Bourgh and, when marriage was the only career, to dare to turn down the slimy Mr Collins. She glides through the pages like a swan, smooth progress on top and paddling like blazes underneath.

If anything changes my perception of women, it's not female characters, who are imaginary when all's said and done, but female authors. Jane Austen had to scribble on minute bits of paper, hiding them if anyone came into the room. Flora Thompson, whose delightful Lark Rise to Candleford is a thinly-disguised autobiography, had a hard enough life then met outright hostility from a husband jealous of her writing's success. More recently, J K Rowling famously wrote Harry Potter at caf tables with the baby buggy parked alongside.

For so many, it would have been easier not to write and in later years to say: "Well, I would have, but there were the children... elderly parents ... lack of time ..." But they didn't and their determination and dedication define women for me.

It's nothing to do with feminism, and could have a lot to do with pig-headedness. It can be seen not only in writers but in the many women who have taken on authority, or a cause, when all seemed hopeless. Look no further, round here, than the women who campaigned to have Dr Richard Neale's case properly investigated.