There's nothing like a dame of a certain age The world of the performing arts is, of course, one where women belong naturally. There is no male alternative to Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. No male actor can play Cleopatra like Dame Judi Dench, or Medea like Dame Diana Rigg. But in writing, publishing and even the visual arts women have had a tougher time. In the Royal Academy's current exhibition, Zoffany's painting of Royal Academicians with a nude male model includes not a single woman academician, unless you count the portraits in the background. At that time - 1772 - no woman could be in the presence of a nude man. There are more than performers among us: women have proved themselves as administrators too. There's Rosalind Savill, the scholar who as director of the Wallace Collection took it from strength to strength; Jillian Sackler who on her husband's death transformed his legacy into one of the world's most outstanding arts foundations; Vivian Duffield, not only a great donor but one of the arts world's great movers and shakers, and Liz Forgan, the outstanding chairman of the Arts Council who negotiated the Government cuts with minimum damage and has been unceremoniously dumped by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport for her pains. We are certainly a diverse lot: Shirley Bassey together with Evelyn Glennie, Antonia Fraser hobnobbing with Joan Plowright. Some can't make it because of ill health: Margaret Drabble, for example, though sister A S Byatt is present. Here we all are, brought together by our gender and the honour bestowed. We are now of a certain age - which usually means an uncertain age. I would say we are still in our prime, whatever our numerical definition. The faces are growing lined and the skin less taut than in our youth, but that doesn't matter. Indeed, recently one of our number, Harriet Walter, published a book, Facing it: Reflections on images of older women, which celebrated older faces. It seems that when life is full of the things we enjoy doing we have confidence enough to confront any age. It is the buoyancy and spirit of these women that impresses me. None of them is unsure of what they do: they value their own talents and are right to do so. Perhaps that early self-deprecation is a left-over from old-style manners and has no place in today's world. Certainly, once the photograph is taken and we emerge into the wider party that is spilling across the Royal Academy, there are a host of other women currently making their mark in what government calls "the creative industries": Vivienne Westwood with the dazzling model Lily Cole; Maureen Lipman, Kirsty Wark, Jancis Robinson, loads more. Such a gathering simply could not have happened in the year the Queen came to the throne. And perhaps she is the most impressive of all. It is impossible to overestimate the influence she has had on us. Her way of life has been remote and exclusive in so many ways. Yet by her professional approach to the job she has had to do, she exemplifies all we aspire to: to be and do the best we can. She has also met more of us than any other monarch, and knows how different we all are. When I leave, she is in conversation with Joan Collins.