As a gen X feminist who survived and ignored a violent assault in the 80s, I didn’t identify as a victim – but #MeToo gave me a crucial new perspective

In the scorching summer of 1987, young, invincible and hungry for adventure, I left my cloistered life at the University of Sydney to hitchhike to Darwin. I wanted to discover the “real” Australia, that classless utopia of rugged, self-made blokes in the Foster’s ads; the quixotic outback of explorers and mavericks celebrated by Xavier Herbert and Patrick White. Hitchhiking for art was a masculine pursuit, mythologised by Jack Kerouac and the beatniks. I wanted to update their 60s machismo with some brazenly female 80s cool. I would document my 8,000km trip, return to Sydney unscathed, and write a novel. Or so I thought.

My companion, Andrew Peisley, and I hit the highway at Lithgow, armed with a tarp, seven books and a guitar. We’d survive on Peisley’s dole cheque and busk for counter-meals in pubs along the way. We agreed to remain platonic, accept every lift that got us closer to Darwin, and never split up. Four days in, at a Cunnamulla roadhouse, our rules imploded. I was kidnapped by truckies. Four of them, driving two road trains in convoy. They couldn’t fit us both in one truck so they offered to take me in the first and Peisley in the second. I climbed, just as Kerouac would, into the first rig and we drove off. But when Peisley approached the second truck, the driver slammed the door in his face.

Emma Joliffe takes exception to the assumption that women are buying newer versions of stout because they are less bitter

Your report ( Higher stout consumption driven by female drinkers and low alcohol options, 4 April ) quotes Tom Holmes from Vocation brewery as attributing stout’s popularity to a female preference for sweeter tastes: “We think there is something around the sweeter flavours of stout being introduced that are bringing more females in, as it does not have the same bitterness typically associated with hops, so it’s more accessible.”

Leaving aside the wince-inducing use of “females” as a noun, this sentence immediately raised my antennae. As a woman who prefers black coffee, dark chocolate and a pint of bitter (and, yes, stout), I wondered if there was any scientific evidence that women have a sweeter tooth?

Outdated attitudes aside, the friendship, fashion and sex proves an eye-opener for a new generation of viewers as the show reruns on TV

A commitment-phobe boy had just dumped me when I first started watching Sex and the City . I had only been on this planet for just over a year when the show first aired, but the 25-year-old series came to me as a Manolo Blahnik-clad rite of passage when I needed it most.

Many of my Gen Z peers are now meeting Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda for the first time, as the show was released on Netflix in the US last week. In the UK, you can watch it on Now TV, or buy it on Amazon Prime. And older women can’t help but wonder what Gen Z are making of it .

The Colombian pop star – and mother of two boys – disliked the global blockbuster, saying its message robs men of chance to ‘protect and provide’

In an unlikely dissension from what has become a critical and commercial consensus, Colombian musician Shakira has said that the Barbie movie is “emasculating” and suggested that it “rob[s] men of their possibility to be men”.

In an interview with Allure magazine that focused on the “she-wolf feminism” behind her work, Shakira said she had watched the Greta Gerwig-directed satire and said: “My sons absolutely hated it. They felt that it was emasculating. And I agree, to a certain extent.”

The Gulf state is the new chair of a UN women’s commission. That reflects a bigger issue as governments attack or fail to prioritise gender equality

Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the Beijing declaration , a landmark blueprint for advancing women’s rights. It marked the mainstreaming of feminist concerns, with 189 states signing up to the text at a conference in China, where Hillary Clinton, then first lady of the US, declared that “women’s rights are human rights”.

Yet when the United Nations celebrates that achievement, its commission for promoting and evaluating progress on gender equality will be steered by Saudi Arabia . A country known for its abysmal record on women’s rights was chosen unopposed this week to chair the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Even the personal status law it brandishes as a sign of progress in fact enshrines discrimination including male guardianship over women, and gives immunity to perpetrators of “honour crimes”. Women’s rights advocates have been jailed and there are multiple allegations of their torture .

Readers respond to Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff’s article about her reservations about embarking on parenthood

Re Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff’s article ( I know I want at least one baby. But the more I learn about motherhood, the more terrifying it seems, 12 March ), having survived the trauma of childbirth and managed to scrape enough to pay for childcare and a living, there is another aspect to consider: the immense negative impact motherhood would have on your career.

Having successfully worked in the world of media agencies for 15 years, I have now arrived at a firm stop in my career due to being penalised for flexible hours. I cannot physically work 55 hours a week while looking after my two girls.

The label of ‘feminist’ is beginning to feel more like a subcategory on Netflix than a meaningful description of art

Let’s play a game. Of all the best picture nominees from this year’s Oscars , which film is the most feminist? Is it Barbie, a family-friendly paean to our childhood’s plastic It Girl? Poor Things, a racy riff on Frankenstein that charts one woman’s process of self-emancipation? Or is it Anatomy of a Fall, about a hotshot bisexual writer accused of murdering her man?

You can make a solid case for any one of them. Conversely, a takedown of each is easy, too. Barbie’s girl power is nothing but good PR for Mattel , and besides, why did they allow Ryan Gosling to steal the show ? Poor Things is a man’s manicured vision of women’s liberation . If it’s so feminist, where’s the menstrual blood? The armpit hair?

Beatrice Loayza is a film critic and historian based in New York

On International Women’s Day Kate Mosse, co-founder of the Women’s prize for fiction and bestselling author of Labyrinth, heralds a new honour

Gloria Steinem said: “The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organisation but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights.” The key then, for all of us trying to make the world a better place for women, is not to complain but to act.

I am celebrating this International Women’s Day in the same week that my own initiative to promote women’s equality, the Women’s prize for fiction, announced its longlist, and in the same year that we launched the inaugural Women’s prize for nonfiction.

Forget Barbie and pink cupcakes. Radical change is what we should fight for on International Women’s Day

In 1932, 75-year-old socialist Clara Zetkin stood in Germany’s Reichstag and, despite being so unsteady that she had to be carried into the building on a stretcher, managed to give a rousing speech lasting more than 40 minutes. “The fight of the labouring masses,” she declared, is “the fight for their full liberation.” She wasn’t a fan of feminism (dismissing it as bourgeois), but it was Zetkin’s dream that women everywhere, especially the most deprived and marginalised, might one day be free of all forms of oppression. The Nazis took power in Germany shortly after. Zetkin fled to Russia and died there.

On the day I went to see Zetkin’s former home north of Berlin in Brandenburg, now a museum, there were no other visitors. Despite her iconic status in her own time, she has been largely lost to history. Her bravery is remembered usually as a footnote to the fact that she helped found what we now know as International Women’s Day.

Angela Saini is a science writer, teaches at MIT and is the author of The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule