Susan B. Glasser writes: There are few women at the top anywhere in America, and it’s a deficit that is especially pronounced in journalism, where women leaders remain outliers, category-defying outliers who almost invariably still face a comeuppance.

Sheryl Sandberg may be a billionaire and a bestseller, but the Facebook COO’s self-help book is  not a recipe for success in this or any other field. At least not yet. All of these women in journalism, Abramson perhaps most of all, have leaned in. They paid close attention to those anxiety-producing cover stoirs in the Atlantic about having it all. They looked men in the eye and asked for promotions and raises (well, sorta, kinda, maybe—look what apparently happened when even someone as powerful as Abramson dared to complain.   They somehow overcame the stigma of being called bossy as girls, and most of them have balanced both challenging career experiences and raising children at home. They did not lack in confidence—or at least figured out how to project it, even when they weren’t in fact entirely feeling it. In short, these women editors have done most of the things the professional women’s empowerment class recommends.

But still, they were not really able to succeed. They—and I—remained stuck in a trap not of our own making. It’s called editing while female.  I said nothing when I worked as an editor and considered myself privileged—if more than occasionally terrified—when I was sent off to cover the war in Afghanistan, and heard the sound of gunfire for the first time while reporting on the battle of Tora Bora. I learned Russian and traveled to Iraq and slept on a hospital roof in Basra with a team of British snipers and co-wrote a book about Vladimir Putin. I edited Roll Call, a newspaper about Congress, in my 20s. I edited the Washington Post Outlook section and Foreign Policy magazine.

I was an optimist, even about the Internet, killer of tradition, and I believed that the bad old days of institutionalized discrimination were mostly behind us. As for the other stuff, the lingering evidence this was not entirely the case, I just avoided it. I didn’t write about how isolated I felt as a young working mom surrounded by older men or how to run a meeting while having a miscarriage. I did not blog about the male editor who told me I shouldn’t worry about having my own slot as a Washington Post foreign correspondent alongside my husband, since I couldn’t possibly hope to be his peer as a journalist anyway. Even when I became a department head and discovered that I was paid less than all of the other senior editors at the Post, I said nothing, because after all, I was younger and I was a woman and I didn’t want it to be about that. And besides, speaking up would mean being judged. And inevitably being found wanting.

Robert Schiller writes:  The hope that economic growth promotes peace and tolerance is based on people’s tendency to compare themselves not just to others in the present, but also to the what they remember of people – including themselves – in the past. According to Friedman, “Obviously nothing can enable the majority of the population to be better off than everyone else. But not only is it possible for most people to be better off than they used to be, that is precisely what economic growth means.”

The downside of the sanctions imposed against Russia for its behavior in eastern Ukraine is that they may produce a recession throughout Europe and beyond. That will leave the world with unhappy Russians, unhappy Ukrainians, and unhappy Europeans whose sense of confidence and support for peaceful democratic institutions will weaken.

While some kinds of sanctions against international aggression appear to be necessary, we must remain mindful of the risks associated with extreme or punishing measures. It would be highly desirable to come to an agreement to end the sanctions; to integrate Russia (and Ukraine) more fully into the world economy; and to couple these steps with expansionary economic policies. A satisfactory resolution of the current conflict requires nothing less.

Companies with at least one female director had better returns for six straight years. Which raises the question: If the financial argument for gender diversity is so compelling, then why aren’t companies recruiting more women to their boards? Or, to put it more broadly, why do public companies need an incentive to do something that is clearly in their own interest?

One solution to this dearth of women may be demographic. As more women graduate from college — in most advanced economies, their graduation rate is now higher then men’s — eventually more women will find their way to boardrooms and corner offices. Except that this isn’t necessarily true. By 2035, studies show, women will still be underrepresented.

In Silicon Valley, again, the shortage is even more acute. Only 20 percent of computer-science grads are women, down from 37 percent in 1985. The proportion of women in computer jobs declined to 27 percent in 2011 from 37 percent in 1990. Overall, women make up almost half the workforce. Yet they aren’t choosing careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

Michael Spence writes:  High-priority items are fairly clear. In the short run, the top priority is income support for the poor and the unemployed, who are the immediate victims of crises and the underlying imbalances and structural problems, which take time to remove. Second, especially with rising income inequality, universal access to high-quality public services, particularly education, is crucial.

Inclusion sustains social and political cohesion – and hence the very growth needed to help mitigate the effects of rising inequality. There are many ways for economies to fall short of their growth potential, but underinvestment, especially within the public sector, is one of the most potent and common.   Good and Bad Income Inequality