Women

Kang Il-chul rides in the back of a van packed with gossiping old women. The 82-year-old girlishly covers her mouth to whisper a secret. "We argue a lot about the food," she says, wrinkling her nose. "To tell you the truth, some of these old ladies are grouchy." There are eight of them, sharing a hillside home on the outskirts of Seoul, sparring over everything from territory to room temperature. Some wear makeup and stylish hats; others are happy in robes and slippers.

When she was 7 years old, Rahila Muhibi was engaged to her 8-year-old first cousin. The betrothal was arranged, in the Afghan custom, by her father. When Muhibi was ready for high school, her father fended off relatives who demanded that the marriage take place. He thought she was too young, and instead helped her win a scholarship to attend school in Canada. Last month, Muhibi, 24, graduated from tiny Methodist University here.

Etta Cummings stood in the back of a small room filled with sympathetic faces. Her failing eyes were obscured by big, dark glasses. She leaned on her cane, clutched her bright caftan and prepared to take one very big step. "My name is Etta Cummings. I'm a diabetic. My diabetes is totally out of control. I didn't take it seriously for many, many years," she said by way of introduction. "By this time, my health started deteriorating, so I'm on the run to correct it." Heads nodded in support.

California's high school exit exam is keeping disproportionate numbers of girls and non-whites from graduating, even when they are just as capable as white boys, according to a study released Tuesday. It also found that the exam, which became a graduation requirement in 2007, has "had no positive effect on student achievement."

Whether it's seen as a clever little gadget to help a woman keep a secret or a devilish deception that threatens Islam, the Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit is not welcome in Egypt. The kit allows a bride who is not a virgin to pretend that she is. A pouch inserted into the vagina on her wedding night ruptures and leaks a blood-like liquid designed to trick a new husband into believing that his wife is chaste. It's a wink of ingenuity to soothe a man's ego and keep the dowry intact.

Sometimes, it's the forbidden stories, the ones people are afraid to tell in full, the ones that emerge only in fragments, that reveal the truth about a place. This is such a story. It's being told now not because the complete truth is known, but because the story nags at those familiar with its outlines, and because it says as much about Iraq's progress as it does about Iraq's resistance to change.

Inside the tidy suburban St. Louis home of John and Linda Johnson, no photos of their eldest daughter grace the walls. Army Pfc. LaVena Johnson was just 19 when she died in Iraq in 2005; to this day her parents cannot bear to display reminders of her life. John Johnson does possess other photos of his daughter -- explicit color shots of her autopsy and death scene. He shows them to a visitor. They are horrifying: LaVena in a pool of blood. LaVena's corpse on a coroner's table.

Sitting in a bare cubicle, with her reading glasses perched halfway down her nose and typing away on a laptop she'd brought from home, Lois Draegin looked a bit like the extra adult wedged in at the kids' table at Thanksgiving. This accomplished magazine editor lost her six-figure job at TV Guide last spring and is now, at 55, an unpaid intern at wowOwow.com, a fledgling website with columns and stories that target accomplished women older than 40.

California insurers are discriminating against women, charging them more for individual health insurance than men, the city of San Francisco maintained in a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the state regulators who govern them.

Lee sits on a bar stool in a plexiglass box near a highway offramp in central Taiwan. It's late afternoon and the 29-year-old is dressed in a red negligee, a fake rose planted firmly between her breasts. "I work from noon to midnight, and it's psychologically tiring," she says. "Furthermore," she adds, pointing to her husband a few yards away, "he takes all the money." Before you jump to conclusions, she isn't selling her body. In fact, she's using her body to sell . . .