Catherine Mayer—author, journalist and president of the Women’s Equality Party—talks to Five Books about her optimism for a more equal future for society by way of her favourite science fiction visionaries and their work.

Love and marriage may go together like a horse and carriage, but what happens when the horses are spooked and the whole procession is run off the road? Katie Kitamura, whose new novel A Separation charts the disastrous—and tragic—failure of a marriage, considers some of literature’s most heartfelt accounts of relationship failure

Kayla Rae Whitaker composes an ode to ‘women who make things’, from wooden dolls to indie music, and post-modern triptychs to the best candy bar you’ll ever taste. These are tales about what happens when the muse becomes the artist

Is old age necessarily degrading? Should we leave home in our final years? Is there ever a good time to go? Novelist, biographer and critic Dame Margaret Drabble, now aged 77, discusses the difficult questions that arise as we age—and recommends five books that examine them in depth.

In her book The Rival Queens, historian Nancy Goldstone explored the destructive relationship between Marguerite de Valois and her mother Catherine de’ Medici. Here she chooses five different memoirs that best explore the emotionally complex dynamics that characterise mother-daughter relationships.

The celebrated feminist gives us her view of essential reading for women – and says the gender revolution is far from over

The freedom to pick up a book is something we take almost for granted today but women readers have faced all manner of obstacles throughout history, as the author of The Woman Reader explains

The roots of our (generally) open attitude to sex lie not in the sixties but the 1760s, says the historian and author of The Origins of Sex, who explores this earlier sexual revolution through its literature.

The author of The Maid and the Queen takes us on an enjoyable ride through European history, looking at well-connected women who outwitted their husbands or asserted their independence.

The Dutch science journalist takes a light-hearted look at national stereotypes: why Dutch women are happy, and what it means to be blonde. She picks the best books on Dutch women.

The president of the Asia Society discusses the changing role of women in Asian countries and how women have reached positions of leadership there

As President Obama and his wife, Michelle, arrive for their state visit to the UK, the historian of US presidential families considers the contributions of first ladies, from the very first one to the present day

Founder and CEO of Women for Women International Zainab Salbi says we need to make the 21st century the time for women’s rights, and describes how reading Rumi’s poems helps her to find inner peace

The Bangladeshi campaigner for lifting women out of poverty says village life has been wrongly idealised. It is not a harmonious whole, with the elders looking after the interests of all the villagers alike

The feminist historian and author of History of Women in the Americas shares her book choices and explains why abortion will always remain a flashpoint in the United States.