This piece in today's Sisterhood at the Forward is the result of many recent conversations I've had with women about the picture we have in our mind when we hear the word doctor, or President, or Jew. And what we can do to change those pictures.

When I was a kid, we had a famous riddle that I heard/told dozens of times. It involved a man and his son who were in a car accident. The man dies instantly, and the son is rushed to the hospital. The surgeon is about to operate on the boy, and suddenly exclaims, “I can’t operate on this boy. He’s my son.”

There was a delicious fun in watching as the brows of those listening to this riddle would slowly furrow, heads tilting. I’d be giggling inside, full up with the knowledge that they would surely kick themselves when they heard the solution. Because, amazingly, they almost never came up with it on their own.