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.

By Roz Warren

“Of course, when I got a job in the junior room at my local public library, I had to put a lid on my stress-relieving swearing. Eileen, dropping a heavy reference book on her sandal-clad foot, can exclaim only ‘Sugar!’ Deb, tripping over an extension cord and falling flat on her face, is allowed to shout ‘Dang!’ Even when a hotheaded patron begins shouting and swearing and calling me nasty names, I’m not allowed to return fire.”

The constant barrage of scrutiny and criticism that women anchors and reporters face; Tina Fey runs the world (in case you didn’t know); male writers still outnumber female writers in major literary publications; an end to Women’s History Month?; and Sandra Day O’Connor on the high stakes of her history-making appointment to the Supreme Court.

Of a City University professor who retired at 60 with no plans for the future—and suddenly discovered that she had talent as an actress.

When the Military Bookman opened its door in 1976, in a small shop on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, I was following my husband into the out-of-print book trade. Ninety-five percent of our customers were men. I was a woman in a very macho business.

As the National Car careens down the Fiscal Highway, pessimism runs rampant. Most of us ordinary folks in the backseat assume that we won’t be able to retire. Ever. We speculate about potential jobs for aging, disappointed, and testy workers. Suffice it to say that in the future, you will want to stand back wherever hot beverages are being served.

Dr. Ford counsels a well-educated, once-successful professional who is deeply discouraged by the bleakness of her job prospects at age 53.

Mary Moss Greenebaum knew, to her regret, that “the world sees Kentucky as a hopeless state.” She had a galvanizing idea—to set up a nationally recognized Author Forum, bringing the world’s great authors and thinkers to Louisville and matching them with equally distinguished interviewers. “I knew right away that each session should be interviews between two great minds,” she tells us. But the “powers that be” said it couldn’t be done.

In this week’s Wednesday 5, our last for the year, we highlight some of Women’s Voices’ more notable and popular stories of 2012. As our readers, your visits to our site, comments, emails, Facebook shares and likes, and Tweets let us know what stories mattered to you and why.

Let’s honor the women elected to office this year by remembering the women who came before them.

Caracas’s poor turn a luxury building into their home; Elizabeth Gilbert; clever zingers for when adult children insult parents; The Gender Issue from “The Chronicle of Higher Education”; and the challenges of being both a good scholar and a good mother.

In this week’s Wednesday 5, we highlight groundbreaking women of aviation; open our ears and hearts to one woman’s tale of lessons learned from surviving breast cancer; take notes on how to avoid family drama in family-run businesses; take more copious notes on how Hilary Mantel revitalized the genre of historical fiction; and provide a primer on Medicare Advantage, that mysterious hot potato of the presidential campaign trail.

What NOT to say to your adult children; Janet Wallach’s new book, “The Richest Woman in America”; lack of women speaking on women’s issues in the media; redefining the power of the word “no”; and Roz Warren on uncomfortable yet fashionable shoes.

Natasha Trethewey’s views on the healing power of poetry; Debora Spar’s theory about women caught in a “purgatory of perfection”; a 1956 look at women as bosses; the discovery that 73% of speaking roles in film and television belong to men (yikes!); and fun with the new “Middle-Aged Diva,” Terisa Griffin, covering Adele.