Just an addition to my earlier recommendation for the M-7. Length of the overall peice seems to be important. Shorter is better for small folks. Stay around a 20" bbl if you can.
Although I'm not a big Ruger fan in general, I'm also not a Ruger hater and I like the feel of those compacts. Don't worry at all about lost ballistics. You might lose 100 fps going from 20" to 16 1/2" but that's nothing. (besides you would probably want to load down anyway)
JimF
