There is little evidence to suggest that parents pay attention to their child’s gender when funding their education. Over the last few decades, the prevalence of single-child households in China has made parents less likely to favor boys over girls when it comes to their children’s studies. Indeed, the majority of Chinese students in the U.K. are enrolled in postgraduate courses, a trend that signals their parents’ willingness to invest in higher education. But does parents’ readiness to send their daughters abroad also herald growing domestic support for gender equality?

Racial and gender imbalances persist. But education leaders said the data show a significant advance in a quest to banish the stereotype that computer science is mainly for coding geeks who tend to be white or Asian American boys. “We’re trying to diversify a field that for whatever reason has remained not so for generations,” said David Coleman, president of the College Board, which oversees the AP program. “Really, what this is about is computer science breaking out of its narrow role.”

Kimmel says the program, which will be offered exclusively online, will explore the research on the impact of media representations on men. As an example, he points to the transformation of the action figure G.I. Joe, which has gotten significantly more muscular through the years. "The effect on a young boy of seeing these kinds of unbelievably, sort of hyper pumped up guys is, 'I feel small. I feel inadequate. I have to get bigger. I am not big enough,' " Kimmel said. "We have a lot of good research on the effect of these kind of media images on girls' development ... so now we have to have that parallel conversation about boys because we basically ignored them," he said.

In the case of gender, research across disciplines shows that believing an organization or its policies are merit-based makes it easier to overlook the subconscious operation of bias. People in such organizations assume that everything is already meritocratic, and so there is no need for self-reflection or scrutiny of organizational processes. In fact, psychologists have found that emphasizing the value of merit can actually lead to more bias in favor men.

“It isn’t saying that everyone has to wear the same uniform – it’s saying that whatever the uniform is, there can’t be any difference between genders. Instead of saying boys have to wear trousers and girls have to wear skirts, schools can say pupils can choose between skirts or trousers. “It’s not about dictating the way anyone dresses. ‘Gender-neutral’ can be quite an alienating term, but all it really means is not treating people differently because of their gender.”

An M.B.A. education is no longer just about finance, marketing, accounting and economics. As topics like sexual harassment dominate the national conversation and chief executives weigh in on the ethical and social issues of the day, business schools around the country are hastily reshaping their curriculums with case studies ripped straight from the headlines.

"So at one point she interviewed Susan B. Anthony, and Susan B. Anthony declared that she stands in salute every time she sees a bicycle. She said that bicycles did more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. And I thought, 'Why is this feminist icon talking about a piece of athletic equipment?' "

On the surface at least, women are thriving in British universities. Female students now outnumber men in almost two-thirds of subjects, and nearly half of all academics are women. But a closer look at the figures show that the higher echelons of academia continue to be stacked with men. Only 24% of professors are women, according to the latest data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

We need to look at the gender norms that suggest men are worth more than women. A recent study found that children around the world are “straitjacketed” into gender roles in early adolescence, led to believe that girls are vulnerable and boys are strong and independent. Girls are taught to emphasise their physical appearance and are seen as potential targets and victims, while boys are viewed as predators. The good news is that because these are learned views and behaviours, they can be changed.

Women who grew up in an area where women held a higher share of patents in a certain field were more likely to themselves get patents in that area when they grew up. Strikingly, it was especially important for children to see people who looked like them as innovators for them to pursue the same career path—girls in an area with a lot of male innovators wouldn’t necessarily envision themselves in the same career, while boys would. If girls were as exposed to female inventors as boys are to male inventors, the gender gap between male and female inventors would fall by half, the researchers estimate.

The first all-female college in Rwanda is making strides in empowering women from all backgrounds to become the nation’s next business leaders, part of an effort to leave behind an image of a violent country, wracked by genocide. At the Akilah Institute, students prepare for well-paying jobs and financial independence and learn gender equality.

Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research launched a large-scale study of dual-career academic couples in 2006. The results are alarming: “68% of all male survey respondents report that they consider their own career more important than that of their partner. Less than one-third of women did so.” Similarly, women list their partner’s careers as their No. 1 reason for turning down tenure-track positions. It may be tempting to write off female academics’ lesser career prospects as entirely self-inflicted. But academia is saddled with norms that disadvantage women, and it’s impossible to judge women’s choices without taking this context into account.