Aug 18, 2015 4 min read

I was for gender equality long before women made it a cause cèlébre in the ’60s. Growing up in a household in which the father didn’t carry a house key because the mother couldn’t drive – and thus was bound to be home at whatever hour he chose to sashay through the portal – probably had something to do with it.

Yet, even though women made substantial strides toward true equality with men over the last 50 years, they still are paid less than men when holding down jobs of equal status. And, covertly or overtly, women may be refused opportunities simply because they were behind the door in heaven when penises were passed out. That’s because gender bias is subtly pervasive.

For example, Aug. 10 retail giant Target announced its stores would no longer use “gender-based” signage after a mother of three tweeted a photo of Target’s in-store signage that listed “Building Sets” and, below it, a separate sign for “Girls’ Building Sets.”

Exactly why this led to the mother’s outrage is anyone’s guess. Maybe her father also didn’t carry a house key. The bigger problem, in my mind, is that as an issue worthy of a call to action, separate-but-equal building sets pales in comparison with the wholesale degradation, dismissal, repression and subjugation of women – sexually and politically – worldwide.

That this woman took to Twitter to vent her anger over an issue that as little as a decade ago would have melted away on the ride home illustrates precisely how social media enabled each of us to fall into his own personal Slough of Despond at even the slightest perceived insult.

But you can also blame her reaction on male-female stereotyping, which starts with the seemingly innocuous practice of dressing baby boys in blue and baby girls in pink, and which continues to plague us.

In a recent study, researchers showed women two pictures of the same identically dressed man, one in which he leaned on a pickup truck, the other in which the vehicle was a subcompact sedan. Nine out of 10 women perceived the man in front of the truck as “sexier” and “manlier.” Men do no better.

Put a woman executive in a power suit and male employees run screaming from her; deck out the same woman in a short, tight skirt, 4-inch heels and a low-cut blouse, and they run after her like pigs to the slop trough.

I do, however, agree gender-based signage should be unnecessary. If, as an adult, you can’t pick a suitable toy for a child, you simply don’t know the child well enough. Neither should it be necessary for bookstores to makes suggestions for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day gifts. It’s OK to buy a cookbook for Dad, or to get Mom lessons on how to field-strip her AK-47. If you don’t know what to buy your parents or a kid, ask. At least, tweet them.

Bad Target! Putting up signs suggesting boys and girls can’t use the same building sets is a little like putting watermelon, collard greens and chitterlings in a “blacks only” aisle in your food section. Each reinforces stereotypes and, even worse, assumes that shoppers are so devoid of imagination they must be told what to choose at every turn in the Great Supermarket of Life.

I know it’s tricky, but understand women and men, although very different, are equally capable. Like I said, I came early to gender equality. In fact, I always tell females who don’t really know me I have always believed women in power can screw up things just as badly as men.

Always gets a rise.

Dames are so emotional!