A middle-aged student writes of finding a sense of belonging with twenty-something-year-old classmates; a Saudi Arabian woman makes history at the top of Mount Everest; the funny things said when women say no to having children; the No. 1 killer of girls aged 15 to 19 globally is not a disease; and remembering the anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s extraordinary journey.

A mother teaches her daughter about “true” role models; a film counters the stories of women instrumentalists in the jazz movement; Marie Dutton Brown traces her journey in the publishing world over the last 43 years; Dr. Jackson Katz argues that violence against women should be reframed as a man’s isssue; and, after they’ve attracted more than 10 million YouTube views, meet the Internet’s “Cutest Couple Ever.”

By Deborah Harkins

The (pleasant) challenge for 40-year-old director Kirsten Kelly: Mount a play involving 50 brides and 50 flight-suited, helicopter-dangling grooms on the stage of a 60-seat theater.

By Cecilia M. Ford, Ph.D.

Psychologist Cecilia M. Ford counsels a much-disliked office manager on (1) changing her behavior and (2) the power of praise.

Leslie Morgan Steiner reminds us that domestic violence can happen to anyone; student-loan debt is growing fastest among adults 60 and older; what happens when you replace food aid with cash payments?; righting a 22-year-old wrong done to architect Denise Scott Brown; and Indian women plant trees each time a girl is born in their village.

Filmmaker Paige Morrow Kimball talks sexism in Hollywood; a documentary on Angela Davis documents the woman behind the activism; Margaret Thatcher’s notable “badass” moments; the loneliness of being the “boss-lady”; and a photographer captures the toys that make us happy.

“On a bitterly cold winter day at dusk, I was called to deliver a calf from an Angus cow housed in a run-in shed,” says Dr. Rebecca Law. “A shed is a bit challenging when Mama needs a C-section. I was operating on my knees; the owners were on their knees holding a light. I’d have to stop and hold my hands in warm water to thaw them out.”

If Caroline Kennedy is, indeed, appointed ambassador to Japan, sources speculate, she—like Hillary Clinton—could be a powerful force for the rights of women.

Susan Patton’s advice to the women of Princeton University: “The cornerstone of your happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.”

The “Barbie paradox” (yes, there is such a thing); women in Saudi Arabia can ride their bikes in public; the feminist politics about the thong; Hyeonseo Lee, a refugee from North Korea, talks about a childhood where public executions were normal; and Audrey Hepburn on embracing aging.

“In my first large-animal practice, in Copake, New York, I was the first woman they’d ever had,” says veterinarian Rebecca Law. But the farmers were very accepting. They wanted to make it easier for me, but they quickly saw they didn’t need to do that—I could do everything the four guys in the practice could do.”

As the goodbyes and tribute shows roll out, we’ll keep an ear open to how Barbara Walters plans to use “retirement,” once she’s free of that punishing weekly schedule of ‘The View.’ Something almost entirely new is about to be created. And Walters will probably teach us what “reinvention” means.

By Cecilia M. Ford, Ph.D.

“I understand that it is a little late for me to fix my shyness, but I am now in crisis. I have to get a job that will give me benefits. I am not sleeping, because I can’t think of anything but the disasters that will happen to me if I don’t get a job.”

Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean in” has sparked a firestorm of controversy, as every feminist should. We round up some highlights from this week’s dialogue, and hope you’ll join us in keeping it going.

By Janet Golden

Alice Hamilton became the first woman professor at Harvard in 1919, four decades before the university accepted women as undergraduates. Still, acceptance came with the petty humiliations that female experts were expected to endure back in the day.