Lists don't do it
Not really - even the ones created with the best of intentions can have unintended consequences. Lists don't tell a story, they are merely a compilation of different things grouped with the specific intent of cataloging.
When the list is hierarchical, it highlights at best one characteristic of the items in question thus potentially reducing the intrinsic value or worth (to you) of each to that item's relationship to the others. What happens when there is really no equivalence? You get lost in compilation.
Statistics don't do it
Even though there are more women than men online and women are well on their way in the career realm, women are still under represented everywhere. The truth is that women are catching up to men in school and from there on in most fields.
I look at Gen Y representatives, even at people much younger than that like my niece, who is turning 18 this year, and what I see is the deliberate practice and pursuit of interests as wide ranging as music, chemistry, medicine, jurisprudence, and research. What happens when you consider only the tip of the iceberg? You find that what is and what you believe is are two wildly different realities.
Stories don't do it
The ones with the vested interest in keeping the usual suspects front and center keep things that way. We cannot worry about those. This kind of propagation is akin to taking statements such as "that's the way we do things here," "that has never been tried" at face value. What happens when you take what you think you know as the norm? You miss the future.
We are back to the Middle Ages, when chaos and change where the norm. What we thought we knew is being challenged regularly today. And that is good. From the Middle Ages blossomed the Renaissance, a period of tremendous growth and cultural change. This is a Renaissance were all individuals can find opportunity and meet their possibility, when we let them.
It is in periods of tremendous transformation that old assumptions are challenged. I smile at the thought that it was heresy to put the earth at the center of the universe. Yet, if we do not do that today, if we do not put the earth at the center of our universe, we are in for a surprise and it may not be a good one at that.
Today's polymaths, the individuals who are well educated and excel in a number of fields, those who can do all things they put their mind to, those who understand the textured and interactive process built in modern learning, those who thrive on the human connections that new media tools afford to develop knowledge, physical and mental fitness, social accomplishment and the arts are increasingly women.
Mothers and earth have always had a special connection. Society was matriarchal at some point as a consequence of that connection. Today we do not discount men - we celebrate women. For all they have given and done and all they have still been untapped to do, for we can accomplish much more and we will. Happy Mother's Day.