Outside my professional role, I'm shy. It's often a problematic condition, as Sian Prior testifies in Shyness isnt nice, but shyness shouldnt stop you.

Shyness is not the same as introversion (a superb description of which can be found here). Introverts are not necessarily shy. But the two characteristics certainly complicate each other.

We once had three cats. One was extravert and confident, everyone's friend. The second was introvert and self-contained, very much running her little furry life on her own terms. The third was introvert and shy. She had the sweetest nature, but everyone (except us) found her just a bit difficult. Her shyness made her distrustful and nervous. When she needed an X-ray, she had to have a general anaesthetic... Cat No I would have loved having an X-ray: lots of things to sniff out, and all those people making a fuss of me...

It's not fair, but it's true: the outgoing and confident make their way more easily in the world...

Which brings us back to women and confidence, a theme from a few weeks ago. Gap or trap? Confidence backlash is the real problem for women, by Rebecca Mitchell, pushes back against the idea that women intrinsically lack confidence by emphasizing gender stereotypes:

'Studies suggest that women who engage in self-promoting behaviour are perceived as more dominant and arrogant than men displaying the same behaviour... [A] lack of confidence may [therefore] not best explain womens decisions around self-promotion. Avoiding backlash appears to be an explanation with at least as much evidence in its support. And it seems likely that womens avoidance of backlash is likely to precipitate reluctance to express confidence at least until it is incorporated into our view of a functioning female stereotype.'

Whatever the nuances of nature or nurture, the fact remains (just to quote the tip of an iceberg of stories) that Male graduates earn more than female graduates, and Female leaders are missing in academia. Which, in 2014, is all rather depressing.

Nor does the social obsession with women's bodies, in its multitude of cultural guises, show any signs of abating. Anorexia, one of the many outworkings of this distorted focus, is not the exclusive purview of women, of course, but they are the target audience for a shockingly powerful anti-anorexia campaign, entitled You Are Not a Sketch.

When we're not beating up on women, it seems we're beating up on youth, as Camilla Nelson's Images of Australian youth: from symbols of hope to disposable lives makes horribly clear. Interesting... I don't really see this happening here. I guess you've got to value youth in a land where there are so many of them...

With all this depressing stuff about, we clearly need more "cat cafes", and Australia's first is about to open in Melbourne. I'm not totally sure why you have to go to a specialized cafe to hang out with cats. We seem to come across them everywhere. And they're always looking gorgeous: