I am old enough to have experienced several “firsts.” I was admitted to Yale graduate school before it admitted undergraduate women. I was one of the first two women hired by the University of Washington’s Department of Sociology that were eligible for “ladder positions” (the possibility of tenure). I was one of the first three women invited into the International Academy of Sex Research, and I was one of the first three women invited to be in an elite men’s dining club since the club began approximately 75 years ago. In other words, I participated in a moment in time when social change was happening, and women were at least invited into the room- even if the room had a glass ceiling.

Things are so much better and different now that it amazes me how much progress has been made. When I was at Yale there were just a couple of women admitted to the law school, and it was possible to know or at least recognize every woman on campus. There were no tenured (or even full-time) women faculty in my department, and I remember my graduate student adviser calling me to his office and asking me if I wanted to give up my fellowship so a male student “who had to support his family” could have the money. I remember that we had to do some militant moves to persuade the department to create a women’s restroom in one of the three floors in our building.

These were the bad old days, but many things changed. Not always gracefully I grant you, but change was in the air. Still, I remember when I first came to the University of Washington some of my colleagues were uneasy and awkward about how to include me. Faculty at that time were quite collegial, and one of them opened our first conversation by asking me what sport I’d like to play with my fellow professors (the choices were basketball or softball). My first lunch with my colleagues was at a goodbye party for a senior faculty member who was going away for a few years to work at the National Science Foundation. His goodbye gift from the faculty was a joke: a tweak on his getting older, so they presented him with an eye examination poster that positioned the letters against a photograph of a nude woman’s breasts and torso.

Today my faculty is half women. Yale’s undergrad gender ratio is approximately 50-50, and my former men’s dining and discussion club is now diverse and women are well-represented. I am not saying it’s nirvana, but let’s give some meaningful change its due. It has been a very long time since I’ve been in a professional situation where I was the only woman.

I know some women’s freedoms are under assault, and I cannot ignore the fact that our country elected a president who bragged about grabbing women by their genitals and has been formally convicted of a sexual offense. Still, I want to take a moment to acknowledge how much better it is for women now than when I was a young woman. At the risk of sounding too much like Felicia Feel Good, I want to celebrate some true accomplishments: Women did not win the presidency, but they had the chance to run, and many millions of people voted for them. Women are now senators, congresswomen, and federal judges. Women dominate university admissions and law and medical schools are often half female. Women engineers may be in the minority, but no one thinks that’s an impossible ambition anymore.

Most importantly, young women are increasingly told that they can be who they want to be, choose their own sexual style, and love and marry same- or opposite-sex partners. They can marry or not, have kids or not, be physically strong and mentally ambitious. If you’re not a baby boomer you may not realize that many of these are rights and paths that did not exist for most women until the beginning of the boomers’ adult years.

Equality of choice and opportunity for women is not guaranteed. We can’t assume that a wide range of equal rights for women will continue without protecting them.

Do I think misogyny has disappeared? Of course not. Do I think there are countervailing values and political forces that would like to take away many of women’s choices, including control over their own fertility? Of course I do. We can never assume that history always moves forward, especially in these days when even the words equity, diversity or inclusion cause grants to be canceled and people to lose their high-profile jobs. But that doesn’t mean there has not been meaningful progress. I am grateful for the cultural shifts that have allowed women to be formidable political actors, and that no one is surprised anymore when a woman is president of a prestigious university. I am relieved that we now celebrate the sexual panache of famous women performers and that we strike back at slut shaming and other forms of punishing women for their sexual freedoms. I find comfort in the fact that gay women (and men) can legally marry the person they love.

When I was younger, we were told that women couldn’t be first-rate mathematicians or warriors, and that women could not exist without men or children. We were told a lot of things that weren’t true, and there were more pathways blocked than were open. And even though many earlier prejudices have been debunked or contested, women still often meet roadblocks because of their race or looks, or from a general belief that they should not do that job, live that lifestyle, or be more qualified than a male candidate. Equality of choice and opportunity for women is not guaranteed. We can’t assume that a wide range of equal rights for women will continue without protecting them.

However, those headwinds should not stop us from celebrating legal and attitudinal changes in so many countries. I am deeply grateful for how much better it is to be a woman today than it was for my mother and all the women before her.

Q: I have a long-term friendship with someone that I wish to end. She has been absent at too many of my important events (my wedding, my children’s weddings, the list goes on) and while she is in another state, she does have the ability to travel. Over the years this hurt me a lot, and I no longer feel she is a true friend. But I do want to respect our history, so how do I do this in an ethical and even caring way?

A: One of the cardinal rules of a close friendship is to show up for important moments in a friend’s life. However sometimes it is impossible, especially when there is a significant physical distance between friends. For example, there might be small kids to take care of and no money or person who can easily take care of them, so a wedding celebration or another major life event just can’t be arranged. Still, over a long period of time, there is usually some way to make at least one important moment in a friend’s life. It sounds like it has been one too many (or many too many) of your life events that have been bypassed and that you are now estranged from a previously close friend.

But you need to examine your feelings. Are you truly ready to “break up”? Or, if she apologized, would you still want to keep the friendship? If not, then ask yourself a second question: If you stop responding to her would she just let the friendship quietly drift away? Or would she feel hurt and think you ghosted her? If the latter is true then the kind thing to do is to contact her. You will have to tell her unambiguously that you want to leave the friendship and why. You could soften the situation by telling her how much you have enjoyed your friendship in the past and say a few positive thoughts about her nicest qualities, but you ultimately need to tell her the truth: that you were disappointed that she was unable to show up at important moments in your life and that her absences damaged your feelings for her.

If she still imagines the friendship to be profound, she will be shocked and sad. She might want to heal the rupture between you, and you must decide if this “Hail Mary” move would change your negative feelings about her. If it makes you feel different, great, but don’t go back if you can’t forgive her. If you are really “done” for the reasons you have stated (or others) then be firm and just say I wish you well, but it is best that we look fondly back at the past but go our own ways in the future.