Unfortunately, Bjohn, your comment of "vibrant and growing" congregations of religious women is not quite as solid as you present.  In the US and throughout Europe, women religious - both contemplative and apostolic - are in and have been in a steep decline for fifty years.  In both types of orders, women who enter and make it to the profession of first vows, only a very few will stay to profess final vows.  The exact same case is true of male religious.  The growth is numbers of sisters globally is centered in developing nations - particularly Africa, the Philippines, parts of South America - and the sociocultural conditions are almost the same as what women who entered convents in the first half of the 20th century US found: very few options for women, dwindling family resources that a entrance into religious life would help alleviate, etc.  The "recently professed" and a whole lot of others have, indeed, been interviewed at length.  What do you think they know that others don't?