And I am hoping that the changes I have seen regarding attitudes towards men and women in high tech, and their family lives, persist and continue where it is no longer odd if dads take paternity leaves or spend time with their kids and women are not seen as inferior to their male counterparts - and maybe that will translate to the children not seeing STEM as a boy/girl thing but rather, just as an option that anyone can pursue if interested.
I do think men are better than women at some things on average (chess, programming) and that women are better at some things than men (verbal ability, including foreign languages). It's strange that an assertion about being better in a single domain on average is treated as an assertion of general "superiority". That would only make sense if we agreed that the abilities to play chess or program a computer are the only important ones. They are not, of course.
Hm, hm... and I guess you have never been in a workplace that was so slanted to the opposite gender (male or female). Or (over)hear comments where it was clear that for instance, the new female hires were picked partially for their looks (that was a long running joke about one hiring manager for marketing - that he was picking women more on looks than on their abilities)... that does tend to set up the sense that some groups lean towards a superior/inferior mindset regarding gender (not just gender either - I have seen cultural clashes where we have to deal with sites accusing another site within the same group of not thinking they were as capable and so on). Those are the mindsets that I hope will change over time - where people look past gender/race/religion/culture to leverage their strengths and value what each person can bring.
We are very far from that, and I doubt we will ever get there, but we can certainly try to work on understanding stereotypes, how they affect us and our children.
