1. Childless distaff divorcees are urged to revel in restored freedoms and frequently do, while plucky widows have long been admired.

2. Women also accounted for a majority of attendees at the No 2 film, the suspense movie Red Eye, marking the second consecutive weekend that the top two films appealed to a distaff crowd––a paradoxical turn given that the studios generally target young males.

3. Lucy Mangan Wednesday October 18, 2006 The Guardian My mother has given me lots of advice over the years ("Don‘t do that" being the most frequent, closely followed by myriad recommendations about making the perfect gin and tonic, although looking back I see that they all actually boil down to: "don‘t bother with the tonic"). But when I first started living with my boyfriend, she delved deep into that cache of hard–won knowledge accumulated by the distaff side and bequeathed me three especially vital rules to live by.

4. As a child, my own experiences of all things distaff led me to believe that the phrase was synonymous with "having children so that there is someone on hand at all times to hand you gin and tonics on the hour and child benefit to pay for the raw materials therein". In fact, I‘m pretty sure that my mother only had a second child to cover the other‘s sick leave (usually work–related, the fine motor control needed to slice lemons accurately not really coming within the purview of the pre–schooler). As I got older, I suspected the phrase might be a euphemism for "too stupid to take the pill and quite pleased to have a reason for getting out of double science and into a flat" and now that I am of an age at which friends of mine are beginning to use "maternal instinct" to describe an increasingly freighted and oppressive factor in their lives, I try not to think of it at all as it makes my head bleed.