BATTERSEA PARK -- When I dropped off my giant 5-year old son at kindergarten this morning, he was surrounded by chatting boys.  I asked him for a kiss.  They snickered and he compromised with a running hug.

Now we're at a sports day for my older daughters.  My eldest wins the 800 meters by half a lap, (proud dad)  and I run into a group of boys from her year in the men's loo.  They're wound up like crickets on coke.  They could no more stand still than I could dance a rumba. They are all energy and motion like buzzing bees.  It would take fireworks to divert their attention from the joke at hand.  Whatever it is.

And they're big. They are only 10-11 but I reckon they could take me.

The girls, meanwhile, wander about in tight-knit circles, whispering and casting an eye over each other's shoulders.  They are women in a Jane Austen novel.

The groups of boys and girls couldn't be more different.  And they may be young, but they're only slightly less practiced versions of me and you as working adults. 

For every argument I can make that boys and girls, when they become women and me, are much more complex than that, and we don't behave by gender stereotypes...  I see two indications that we do.

We are boys and girls for life.  If we start to factor that into our business dealings, we'll make a lot more progress, faster.

/df