Survey Says….Warning! This week's  USC survey  of relative happiness levels had good news and bad for midlife women. Women tend to be happier, even past 40. But just when we can see 50 coming, the streams cross and it's men on top, reports CBS News' Cynthia Bowers. The study, which analyzed data from 47,000 people, [...]

By Dr. Patricia Yarberry Allen I am a 48 year old woman and I had my last period 2 years ago.  I was never very athletic and have had no interest in pursuing the fitness craze that seems to have affected all my friends.  I am thin unfortunately because I have mild Crohn’s disease and [...]

Mystery readers may know Ruth Rendell for her popular Inspector Wexford books, or else the procedurals she authors as Barbara Vine. But she’s also a member of the British peerage, and is now using her authority to go after some of the hardest crimes to solve: Lady Rendell, a long-term campaigner against the practice of [...]

Look to the women, says McCain: Cindy McCain, that is. While her husband’s political opponent charmed the media with his cross-country trip, the founder and funder of the American Voluntary Medical Team was visiting Rwanda, too often known simply for the 1994 genocide that has scarred its people. Brought there by Women for Women International,  [...]

What glass ceiling? younger women ask. Writing from  Fortune Magazine’s "Most Powerful Women" summit in San Francisco, editor at large Patricia Sellers notes that younger and older women reported very different experiences when asked about barriers to their rise: The Most Powerful Women franchise, just a decade old, is already Fortune’s second biggest after the [...]

No reason to wait: Researchers in New Zealand urge earlier screenings for breast cancer – while admitting that the benefits they predict can’t happen unless more women take advantage of the free mammograms: Screening women aged 50-69 should result in 20-34 fewer breast cancer deaths a year, an overall reduction of between 5.7-8 per cent, [...]

I Said, Party of One: This week,  a new AARP study confirms what many of us already knew:  for many older women,  living alone is not a sad state but a new opportunity. A whopping 63 percent of single women who live alone say their older years are the time to pursue their dreams. The [...]

Dreams can make money, too: Forbes magazine loves to release lists of people who make ton more money than you. In the new "Celebrity 100" list of the world’s most powerful celebrities,  a goodly number of midlife women make the cut – topped, of course, by Oprah: Ratings for the self-made billionaire’s flagship production, The [...]

Because you keep putting off that mammogram: For those of us who find mammograms awkward, uncomfortable, even painful, the news this week buzzed with possibly-helpful ideas: A little lidocaine might help. A study out of Idaho suggested that a normal anesthetic gel helps some women endure the procedure with significantly less discomfort. "Mammography saves lives, [...]

It’s time, Navy captain tells Congress: Alert watchers of Good Morning America last week saw the unflinching face of Captain Joan Darrah, a 30-year Navy veteran preparing for today’s Congressional hearings on the military’s policy "Don’t Ask,Don’t Tell" policy on gays in the military, which come right after a new poll showed that 75 percent [...]