In the Middle Ages the workers carving giant figures in the hillside chalk couldn't have comprehended the idea of sexual equality.

Men hundreds of feet long were pictured striding purposefully across the land, while women were portrayed as small, servile - and usually naked. As the years passed and the age of feminism arrived, it all seemed a bit old-fashioned.

So art student Chris Cook decided to play her own part in the on-going battle of the sexes by creating a woman to look up to on the Downs.

Land Girl - all 120ft of her - is the result.

Chris, 46, an HND fine art student at Northbrook College, Worthing, and four friends spent a day cutting the outline with pickaxes on a hillside at Saddlescombe Farm, near Devil's Dyke.

She said: "I was studying the subject of the female form. I did a sculpture and several drawings and was looking for a new medium.

"When I looked at hillside drawings I found the only female ones didn't show women anything like they are.

"I thought it would be nice to show a woman with a bit of purpose. She's meant to be walking across the Downs.

"It's a statement. These days women are taking their place in society more."

Land Girls was the nickname given to members of the Women's Land Army, who kept farms going during the Second World War after male labourers joined up.

Chris, of Clifton Road, Brighton, said: "They were in many ways the first group of women to do what had primarily been a male job. It seems quite historically-appropriate."

Sadly, Land Girl won't last as long as its Sussex male counterpart, the Long Man of Wilmington, believed to have been started in Roman or medieval times and still clearly visible today.

The National Trust, owner of the farm, is due to plough the field in a couple of months. But walkers on the South Downs Way will be able to see the outline for the next fortnight or so, until it becomes overgrown.

Rather than using a professional model, Land Girl is based on Chris's own body.

To get a better idea of drawing the female shape she traced around her shadow with a stick several times on the sandy beach at Newhaven.

She said: "Kids were coming up to me and asking what was going on. It was a strange way to work, but it was effective in giving me the idea of how to do the large one. The main difference between it and the male carvings is obviously that it's got a bum and a bust."

The National Trust gave permission for a temporary carving after Chris spoke to a ranger when her group visited Saddlescombe Farm.

She said: "It was hard work actually transferring it to a hillside. Originally it was only going to be 60ft long, but the legs weren't in perspective. They were too short when you looked across at it.

"We doubled it in the end. It was hard work because I had to keep going to the other side of the valley to see it properly. It's not just like a canvas where you can stand back and take a quick look.

"At least it's different."