I've read of communes where they treated children all the same, no gender-specific behaviors pushed..."
It occurs to me that while a
commune such as this may not have overtly encouraged
gender-specific behaviors, the adults who live there were raised in a society that
does have established gender roles.
This is to say that maybe these roles were too deeply ingrained to eradicate within one generation.
Perhaps the influence was subtle enough that these adults didn't realize their own biases.
Whether these biases are cultural or genetic is beyond our current scientific understanding, methinks, as we still know very little about how the brain works in general, or how physical differences influence character, behaviour, interests, and abilities of men versus those of women.
It seems more useful and less limiting to think of gender roles as merely products of society, and to focus not on generalizations but on the potential of the individual to do whatever he or she is capable of.
The individual is not a statistic.