This week’s cover story looks at new measures intended to help lift New Zealand women higher up the career ladder, and asks whether they can make a difference.

Joanne Black talks to former Telecom head Theresa Gattung, now transplanted to Australia. Says Gattung:

It’s part of our psyche that everyone, every child born here, should have a fair crack at achieving what they aspire to and everyone gets to have a go. I felt terrible as a Kiwi realising that Australia has gone ahead in leaps and bounds on this and we’re lagging. Although it’s part of our psyche that women should have equal opportunities, it’s dawned on us that that is not what’s happening.

Elsewhere, Barry Humphries talks about bidding farewell to Dame Edna. Medical ethics expert Professor Bob Klitzman tells Ruth Laugesen about tackling the big issues: genetic testing, doctor-patient relationships – and sorcery. Kim Hill writes about her digital disaster. And Audette Exel tells David Leser about her extraordinary life.

Hamish Clayton writes about the new Listener Book Club choice: Sydney Harbour Bridge Upside Down by David Ballantyne. Wrongly shoehorned into the social realist tradition of New Zealand fiction, the title is finally being recognised for the subversive classic it is. Other books From John Edgar, Alice Te Punga Somerville and Ron Palenski; and editors Sean Mallon, Kolokesa Mahina-Tuai and Damon Salesa.

In theatre reviews, Man in a Suitcase and At the Wake. In dance, Black Grace’s Waka.

And all the rest.