THREAD: Phoned the student loans company the other day only to find out that I’m nowhere near paying my debt, 14 years after graduating. That in itself is infuriating, but what is even more so is that my husband has almost paid his off.

We studied at the same time, same course, same uni. The difference is that I have a womb and took two periods of mat leave after the birth of our children (shared parental leave wasn’t a thing when I had mine)...anyway, it’s mostly women who take time off, despite new legislation

And so, two lots of mat leave meant two periods of not paying anything to my loan. Fair you might say. But, here’s the bit...the interest is allowed to build while a woman is on mat leave, in my case cancelling out a big chunk of what I paid to my loan up to motherhood.

I could rant about student loan interest for days, but that’s not the issue here.

I come back to my own situation. A man and a woman with identical degrees, for which I will pay significantly more. Where’s the fairness in that?