As we are having our lunch in our favorite restaurant in Zagreb, we notice that most tables around us are taken by women in their fifties and sixties. Here there are two of them, there three, and over yonder as many as four. Most of them are dressed to kill. There is much happy cackle all around us. “Lucky women,” I turn to my beloved at some point. “This is the best they will ever experience.” And then I elaborate my comments with a bleak vision of what is in store. In a generation or at most two, women will be relegated to their hearths once again. “They will be happy to see the light of day.” Perplexed by my passionate outburst, my beloved keeps mum. Women two or three generations ago are well beyond her experience. And this is how things have been for untold generations. My vision included.