Melanie Phillips is a controversial social commentator who has moved away from liberal views on social problems to become identified with right-wing opinion. She supports the traditional family and has lambasted feminism, which she believes has weakened marriage, harmed children, and generated a sinister conflict between the sexes. "Feminism encourages women to continue making damaging demands of society...Men are seen as the enemy, reprobates, potential wife-beaters and child-abusers...The battle remains to free women of men." Born in London, she studied English Literature at Oxford, and trained as a journalist on the Evening Echo in Hemel Hempstead, where she won the British Press Awards Young Journalist of the Year. She then joined the New Society and after a year moved to the Guardian where she spent two years as a social services correspondent, winning the British Press Awards Reporter of the Year. She was a social policy leader writer from 1980-84 and then became news editor. She became assistant editor and columnist in 1987 and edited the Society and Environment pages. She joined the Observer in 1993 as a columnist and in 1998 moved to the Sunday Times.