The launch of a space shuttle can still make you weep with amazement and wonder, if you happen to be watching it.

In my mother's day, she didn't go to college. Not a lot of women did. Now for every two men who get a college degree, three women will do the same.

People with a college education are now less likely to divorce than they were a few decades ago, and they're more likely to describe their marriages as happy. That finding really surprised me. It appears that those with a higher education have been more able to dismantle strict traditional roles and, in doing so, gain more freedom. I call it a seesaw marriage, one in which both the man and the woman take turns being the breadwinner, making it possible for each of them to experience career advancements or breaks at different times.

I think we should all call ourselves feminists.

That's not a convincing argument. Public sector jobs are cyclical. Teachers get fired when money is tight, then rehired when things get better. Manufacturing jobs, on the other hand, aren't coming back. They're relics of a past age.

Every congresswoman surely endures the same strains that drive some of her male colleagues to have affairs: lots of travel, families far away, heady work that makes a domestic routine seem distant and boring. But the stakes are much higher for women, because they are still judged by a different standard.

In China, a lot of the opening up of private entrepreneurship is happening because women are starting businesses, small businesses, faster than men.