We are witnessing a tipping point: the rise of Menopause Power: a growing activist movement which will change the Change in the same way that Period Power fought period poverty and stigma. On social media, on podcasts and in newspapers, there’s a huge menopause conversation, as confrontational as it is celebratory.

HRT used to be a dirty word. Now it’s a battle cry. Women will be gathering in Parliament Square in London later this month to support the menopause bill to demand free prescriptions for hormone replacement therapy in England. The bill could help thousands more women to access this life-changing treatment and will put the menopause under the microscope.

Until I met the menopause and its dastardly precursor, the perimenopause, I thought I was capable of coping with anything. My passage through midlife’s magnificent shitshow has been an education which both put me in my place, and helped me understand how tough that place is for others. The more I find out about what happens to women in menopause – physically, mentally, medically and culturally – the more I am on a war footing.

Delcome to the Great UTI Scandal, a story of unnecessary suffering for millions, needless hospital admissions, antibiotic resistance, sepsis-related deaths and basic ignorance of the science around female bodies. Women are 30 times more likely to get a urinary tract infection than men, and UTIs are agonising and occasionally fatal. In the past five years, there were 1.8m hospital admissions involving UTIs in England alone, plus even more GP appointments. This is not just a gender health gap – it’s a dangerous crevasse. But is there another way?