Women

Maria Jimenez doesn't seem like she would have the energy to be part of a legal revolution. She's a single mom, living in a poor town about two hours outside this sleepy capital. She has four kids, no job and no husband. But Jimenez has seized on a controversial new law here that gives her the upper hand in winning child support from the man who she believes is the father of her children. "My children have the right to know who their father is," said Jimenez, 32.

BAGHDAD - Less than a year and a half after the last U.S. troops left, Iraq's political leaders are openly debating the prospect of two dangerous paths for their country: de facto division or civil war. Perhaps both. Tension between the Shiite majority, now in control of the levers of power, and the Sunni Arab minority, which dominated under Saddam Hussein, has been building for months. But politicians on all sides agree that the country has entered a perilous new phase, highlighted in late April by an attack on a Sunni protest camp by security forces that killed at least 45 people.

IN Iran, everyone loves a good soccer match. But female fans are forbidden from attending public games, as "Offside," a new film directed by Jafar Panahi, depicts in both comic and incisive detail. Ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, strict rules have limited the interaction of women and men in Iran.

The call came on a Friday afternoon: Underground girl fight. Tomorrow morning. Eleven a.m. A hangar downtown on Santa Fe Avenue. The call was from a PR firm. That was all the information there was. It seemed like a Hollywood fantasy of "edgy." But it was real. Sort of. The address was a shuttered brick storefront. Razor wire coiled atop chain-link fences. Nearby was a strip joint and a seafood plant. Parking was not a problem. Around back, the circus began. Vans crammed into a tiny alley.

LIUYI, China — Bathed in a faint afternoon sunlight that seems to highlight every wrinkle on her face and hands, Fu Huiying hobbles around her dusty home. Nearby, chopped vegetables suggest a dinner half-made, and the smoke of years of cooking has stained the wall behind a small gas stove. But the eyes are drawn to Fu's deformed feet and the tiny, ornate shoes on the floor next to her, both objects marking the 76-year-old as one of the last of a kind. For almost a millennium, the practice of foot binding was prevalent across Chinese society, starting with the wealthier classes but over the years spreading down through urban and then poorer rural communities.

Women who get urinary tract infections - and that's nearly half of all women -- likely know this already: Try cranberry. It's a treatment that's been passed around among women for a long time to prevent the recurrence of this annoying infection. Unlike some folk remedies, this one has gained credence through the years from the experts - the medical experts, that is. And a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine reinforces the use of cranberry products to prevent UTIs - one of the most common bacterial infections among adult women, with about 7 million doctor visits a year in the United States alone.

- Within 30 seconds in her airy, orchid-filled office three floors above Central Park, Betty Halbreich had zeroed in on one of my chief torments as a professional woman. "I know why you have a problem with pants," Halbreich said dryly, patting my hip. Halbreich, an 85-year-old personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, has dressed Joan Rivers, Meryl Streep and Candice Bergen, and helped costume designer Patricia Field adorn the women of "Sex and the City. " She's one of the supporting characters in "Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's," a new documentary, which opens May 3 in New York and Los Angeles, about the aspirational fashion emporium, and she is writing a memoir that HBO recently optioned for Lena Dunham to adapt.

Perhaps the most dramatic image from the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles did not involve a gold medalist -- or a medalist of any type. It featured an athlete in distress, Gabriele Andersen-Scheiss, whose tortured push to the finish line in the inaugural Olympic women's marathon drew anguished gasps from a crowd of more than 70,000 in the Coliseum but transformed the Swiss runner into an international symbol of courage and determination. Anyone who has seen it probably has never forgotten it.

In the 1930s, women who dared to dye their hair often left the beauty shop with violent headaches, swollen eyelids and blisters on their foreheads. A decade later, the picture wasn't much prettier. "We used to make these diabolical bleaches, mixing 20-volume peroxide in a bowl with three drops of ammonia," Vidal Sassoon told Vogue a few years ago. "The number had to be exact, and I was terrified my hand would shake--it was as primitive as that."

'What Women Want' Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 56 minutes Playing: In limited release