Out of interest I talked to my mum about this and she confirmed that he would thinhk that someonne was being a bit rude if they refferred to her as 'that woman' rather than that 'that Lady', now as a thoroughlly capable and intellihgent woman I am not going to sit down and give her and her contemporaries a lecture on lingisutic decontruction or how her acceptanece of athis patraiachal nonsense is an acceptanece of her repression etc etc. Furthermore, I chatted with my missus(opppos opression RIGHT there in that very word) who says that in certain CONTEXT she'd find the being called a Lady in a one-to-one a 'bit archaic' - work environment, one-to-one in a normal, but not in a general situation. Soooo, Rosie I think your tilting at windmills (my opinion) making this part of some feminist battle. As I said earlier, I'd never say Ladies/Lady to female colleagues at work and would find it, at best, outdated if a male colleague did...but again, can't recall the last time I heard it in this context. Meanwhile out on the Lane in Local parks/pubs etc I am probably still going to use Lady as description to my kids when reffering to someone who is also in earshot....at the risk of offence to some (probably a minority). As I know Rosie, Asset and Katie I will not in their case. Really we should be trying to make people use gentleman rather than man to solve this, that would be far more civil and equal.