Can anyone give any details on what to expect next in Barbara Anderson's case?
I just read about the questioning of how a woman got into a researcher position at Bethel. I have a few questions on this myself, based on the level of involvement I've heard claimed. It would have been almost unheard of while I was at Bethel.
My primary job at Bethel was related to illustrating and typography for the publications. However, I rarely saw a woman on the Writing floor or even in any of the Bethel or Gilead libraries, for that matter. Of course, that was back in the late 70's and early 80's. There were probably more, but I knew only one sister at the time who said she wrote an article for Awake! magazine. (It was about brushing your teeth, so I doubt it even needed much editing by the brothers.)
I also knew a sister in an important proofreading position who was therefore involved in certain editing issues that revealed some of the factional thinking going on in the Writing department at the time. I still have most of a revision copy of a JW book manuscript where some edits, corrections and suggested "clarification" is written on almost every page. (Requested edits can be revealing, and sometimes even the foreign translators would need to be involved when only slight differences in English meaning could result in bigger differences when translated.)
Karl Klein gave a presentation once around that time that supposedly showed just how humble the writers had to be, so he chose a manuscript that had gone through a couple rounds of massive surgery-slash-editing. Turns out that this was not really true of the better writers. At least one able brothers at the time rarely had even a single word changed in his typed manuscripts and I understood that this was evidently a point of jealousy for some of the others.
I also did some work at the Branch office in Greece in 1979 and sisters were handling a lot more of the work there at the Branch in Athens, but I have no idea if sisters were allowed any level of involvement in Branch writing, such as certain research assignments they are sometimes asked to do, or those offerings by "Awake! correspendent in [Branch country]."
A personal aside: I was once asked to do some Biblical research for a GB member, but no further such work ever came my way after I failed to find anything supporting what he wanted to prove. However, he kindly continued to let me use his office library for research.
Gamaliel