At Cambridge I did a lot of acting and seriously thought about a career in the theatre. But I decided to go for the bar, imagining myself a sort of ‘Portia’, fighting for the disadvantaged.

My springboard into gender and women’s rights was being appointed head of law and policy at International Planned Parenthood. Not just in the context of access to reproductive health services, but also education, employment, marriage, inheritance, and land and property.

Widowhood is one of the most neglected of all gender and human rights issues. Many widows we deal with, especially in rural areas, are illiterate, and for a whole range of economic and cultural reasons cannot access the justice system. The biggest challenge is getting funding for our work so we can manage projects and really lobby to get governments to adopt our Widows’ Charter. We are looking for more lawyers to join our board.

My husband died when I was teaching judicial administration to Commonwealth magistrates. The Malawi magistrate had a sick baby and I arranged for his wife to bring her to the UK for treatment. The first thing this woman said when she entered my London house was: ‘You mean your husband’s brothers let you stay here and keep all these things?’ That was the wake-up call. In 1995, at the Fourth World Women’s Conference, I hosted the first international workshop on widowhood and we started our organisation.

In the UK many practising lawyers cannot really work out what I do. For them I am probably a bit of an enigma. I pride myself on stopping a proposal in Nepal to enact a law to pay men to marry the young widows of the conflict there. This was an appalling violation of women’s rights, treating widows like chattels.

So many law graduates now are attracted by the high salaries they can earn at huge corporate firms. Meanwhile, those of us who became lawyers in order to right wrongs are now finding that, with cuts in legal aid, the scope for helping the disadvantaged is increasingly limited. I am trying to persuade my granddaughters to consider law because the training equips one to enter just about any field. Every area of human activity, every organisation and every campaign will have a legal aspect.

But I think it’s also important that people come into the law from other degree courses. I prefer the American system, where legal studies come after your first degree.

Margaret Owen is pictured above left with Tanzanian lawyer Asha-Rose Migiro, who is now UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.