How do men see women.....now and in future.

I have to agree and disagree here.

To me 'upbringing' is primarily the influence parents engender, and to an extent teachers at school. I use the term 'conditioning' so as not to limit the influence of parents/teachers alone. Even peers, friends and extended family, and close contacts can effect much change in an individual's perspective.

Again, the fact that in your case Adara, your dad may not have been influenced as much by his parents/extended family. Even education/level of thinking and intellect need not influence ideals as much as sustained exposure to a wholly different perspective. This is not to nullify the effect of parental influence, but people usually develop ideologies about gender roles in a mixture of surroundings. So it is really a group of factors that cause positive change, and no one approach will work in changing people's mindsets.

I think being exposed to other women who create positive change while still exhibiting pride in performing their 'gender' roles is a good way to start. For instance a woman who stresses on feministic attitudes while 'ignoring' her role as a mom/wife may not go down well, even with many women. The thing is there are some roles women do best, not because we are genetically programmed that way but because we have always seen ourselves doing that and unconsiously caused men to believe they are lacking in those areas. This is changing, but not much. Only when women start believing in their abilities, no not the ones we have been taught to believe, will we move on. Trash the 'Boys Will Be Boys' lingo, know your self worth, be proud of your feminity! Being a feminist does not make me less feminine - in fact, it makes me MORE of a woman!

In short, we women need to work toward changing our own beliefs, and moving ahead of the gender conditioning we have been put thru'. This may help us to teach the Gen next to develop an open mind (by gen next I don't mean just our own kids!).

 

After reading the above posts I had to put down my story here.
I am a Hindu woman married to a Muslim man. Do not mistake me but bringing in religion was to tell the readers the level of difficulty such diverse couple can have in living together and the wrath of parents from both sides. We have been through so much before we got finally married. I will cut out on describing all the hurdles to get married but I can say one thing for sure that if not for education my dh would not have this kind of thinking and open mindedness. Same applies to me too.
He was brought up in a orthodox family where PILs believed in pure male domination in every aspect. Now, I am happily living (we live separately) and enjoying being who I am, and having equal say in all matters, is a proof of what education can do to a person. I cannot dream of any such things if I were to live with my PILs. Dh though brought up in that environment, but education and exposure to the outside world has made him stand out different, kind of made him think on his own and make his own judgements not influenced by his parents.

I think to a certain extent upbringing is responsible for a person's behavior but also education can change the way upbringing programmed the person to be.

Anyway, we still need to do our duty of bringing up our kids with open mind and understanding towards one another even though we give them education.