The best female-focused dystopias to make you think deeply about contemporary women’s experiences

In Only Ever Yours, baby girls can no longer be born naturally, and instead they are made in laboratories, and then raised communally in schools.

They are trained in the arts of pleasing men, and some will be selected by eligible bachelors, leaving the rest to become concubines (sex slaves) or chastities (teachers). We follow the story of frieda and her best friend isabel as they go through the final preparations of school and prepare to be chosen. However, when isabel disappears, all of frieda’s loyalties and perceptions of their world will be put to the test.

I have so much admiration for Louise O'Neill's unflinching depiction of the pressures on the young women in this fictional society – the constant obsessions with looks and weight, the way they are taught to be competitive with each other, the slow degradation of frieda’s sense of self.

By manipulating and extending many real-world scenarios, O'Neill exposes the intense pressures and extreme fetishisation of young girls in society. And as for the ending – it’s one you’ll never forget.

After a virus decimates the world’s female population, an unnamed midwife must work out how to survive and make her way to safety in a world where women are scarce, and men seek to control the few who are left.

I loved this story for its incredible world-building and the fresh approach to the struggles of a woman trying to exist in a world of chaos, competition, and aggression. I really appreciated the practicalities of survival that the main character prioritises over any sense of idealism or femininity: the novel beautifully casts those themes aside to portray the midwife’s deeper and more profound strengths. 

A beautifully told tale about a group of young girls who work the ‘line’ – squeezing into rock crevices to find the harvest for their community, which is a matriarchal society.

The girls must remain small, and go through years of training, but when Jenna, the leader of the line, moves a single stone, she makes a discovery that threatens all she knows to be true.

McKinlay's clever, understated writing in this YA novel provokes profound questions about how far the leaders will go to protect themselves and their ideals. And the focus on a matriarchal society offers opportunity for reflection on how we interpret and naturalise gender roles and identities. 

When teenage girls begin to develop a powerful electrical charge in their hands, their new ability turns the world upside down.

They can set things on fire; fight back; hurt; kill. Boys and men are now vulnerable like never before. I love the way Alderman plays this out: society is definitely not an instant utopia now the girls are in charge! This story is a fascinating vision of what might happen if the order of the world were turned on its head, and girls were suddenly the ones with all the power. 

Despite the proliferation of YA fiction since The Handmaid’s Tale was first published in 1985, I would suggest that this novel (and its recent sequel The Testaments) is essential reading for anyone keen to understand the way dystopian fiction can elucidate the struggle women have faced for bodily autonomy.

Older generations of readers are probably already familiar with it, but now, particularly as the TV series comes to an end, younger generations may miss this important work. This is the story of Offred, handmaid and slave to her Commander and his wife, in the new world of Gilead, set up to espouse patriarchal religious doctrine and determine women’s status solely by their relationship and service to men.

The handmaids are women who once lived freely in the old America, sometimes with children of their own who have now been removed from them. In Gilead they are reduced to vessels of childbirth, dehumanised, degraded, often tortured or killed for their transgressions.

However, despite enduring all this, and the many betrayals of the powerful women and men around her, Offred retains a spark of rebellion and a determination to save her daughter that will make her risk everything to escape and reclaim her child.