“We are committed to making sure that our show highlights strong women in a way that appeals to girls and boys in equal measure. If we hope to achieve gender equality in our lifetime, we can’t only educate one half of the population,” she said.

“Data shows that gender is on its way to becoming much more of a nonissue, just another human variable such as height, hair color and shoe size,” says Laura Maness, CEO of Havas New York. “This is not to say we foresee a time when gender will be entirely ignored; simply that it will be increasingly less of a focus and factor in decision-making.”

Empirical research shows that no domestic arrangement, not even one in which the mother works full time and the father is unemployed, results in child-care parity between heterosexual spouses. The story we tell ourselves, the one about great leaps toward the achievement of gender equality between parents, is a glass-half-full kind of interpretation. But the reality is a half-empty glass: While modern men and women espouse egalitarian ideals and report that their decisions are mutual, outcomes tend to favor fathers’ needs and goals much more than mothers’.

While it may be tempting to mock, dismiss or even recoil in horror as some of the "as the father of" or "as the mother of" logic enters the public debate, as accounts from parents whose views and actions are clearly informed to some extent by the dynamic of their role as a parent, their gender and the gender of their child multiply, I wonder if there's something to this?

Study after study has shown that polarising gender and attaching stereotypes to children from an early age is damaging to both boys and girls in their later lives; many have linked this to the lack of women in high-power jobs, and the fact that the biggest killer of men under 45 is suicide. So the question remains: would having gender-neutral language in schools go any way to helping create a more equal society?

Although on average the countries tracked have closed 96% of the gap in health outcomes between men and women, gaps on economic participation and political empowerment "remain wide," says the report.

We need to teach our sons not only that sexual harassment and assault are never excusable, but also that it is their responsibility to step up and call out their peers when they act or speak in sexist ways. We need to understand and teach our children that sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual assault are all related to each other and on a continuum. Unchallenged sexism creates the permission structure for sexual harassment, which in turn creates fertile ground for sexual abuse and assault.

But it’s possible that many of the differences between young boys and girls come from the way we approach child rearing, and the messages kids get about how boys and girls should look and behave: the cultural stereotypes we impose on them that become self-fulfilling prophesies of sorts. “It’s almost entirely cultural,” Brown says. Natal sex, in other words, is less predictive of who your children will be than of how you will treat them.

It’s not only fairy tales in children’s literature that perpetuate the gender stereotypes. The majority of stories for children contain a central male character. Once you start looking at your bookshelves with this in mind it’s quite an eye-opener. The Hungry Caterpillar, Where the Wild Things Are, Winnie the Pooh (the only female character is Kanga in her apron) and the list goes on.

It is possible parents use more spatial language with boys because boys play more with blocks and building sets, which are spatial activities. Parents could also be providing boys with more opportunities for spatial play because of unintended stereotypes that suggest boys are better at those activities than girls. Whatever the reason, there is a point at which boys are exposed to more spatial language. Pruden says more research is needed to fully understand why this is happening.

Women were speaking up about their own experiences while men agreed that something should be done to stop the cycle. One of those who spoke up was fitness coach and event host Hilary Isaac. In her anecdote she shared how, as a mother, she’s trying to raise her six-year-old son to be a feminist. This might seem like a new concept to some people so we thought we’d ask her some questions on how she does it and what people think about her parenting style. Read more: http://preen.inquirer.net/60140/the-imp

"I hear the statement “Boys will be boys” far too often. When my son is misbehaving and I’m trying to help him understand why his behavior is not acceptable, another parent might chime in with the statement. As a feminist and an attachment parent, I find the statement and its partner (“You know how boys are.”) to be among the worst things we can say to or about a boy. It’s fatalistic. It implies that boys are inherently problematic. Sometimes it’s said about something minor and silly; sometimes it’s said about something major. But it’s always said to casually dismiss inappropriate behavior."