Sweden: Aiming for Gender-Neutral Society

http://shine.yahoo.com/team-mom/kids-raised-gender-neutral-society-sweden-thinks-033400030.html

While essentially every country on this planet separates gender to two main groups, male and female, Sweden currently is in the transition of developing a more gender-equal society. I believe this decision can eventually lead down the path to a completely gender-neutral society. Attempts to raise gender-neutral children have arise in the recent past, such as the case of Sasha Laxton in the United Kingdom. However, the one fault of their plan was that they live in a country where the ideologies on gender roles are ingrained so deep within their society, and therefore, making it essentially impossible to raise a gender-neutral child without him/her being influenced by his/her environment (i.e. interaction with other children). But by eliminated gender stereotypes, the hopes of one day having a gender-neutral society grows substantially. Sweden has already worked on the development of their gender-equal society by attacking the issue before it even arises and focusing on changing the way they raise children. Teachers are required to address their students as "buddies" instead of "boys and girls." The gender-neutral pronoun "hen" has also been added to the country's National Encyclopedia. But with this transition arises the question, do gender stereotypes have some biological truth behind it? The writer of this article, Charlene Birkeland, believes so. She argues that within certain sports, anatomical differences between girls and boys for "the power and strength of the male anatomy would create problems in a gender neutral environment." However progressive creating a gender-equal society seems from the surface, I'm not too sure how this will play out in the long-run because I do believe males and females are anatomically built in specific ways, even in a society where males aren't told to be tough and mighty and females aren't told to be so skinny.