Teacher:In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? Solve this instance: When this happens -- and it happens more often than I like -- I think about a Gloria Steinem quote a friend posted on Facebook. It read: "We've begun to raise daughters more like sons ... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters." 
  
 The pants mock me. I usually keep this pair hidden -- underneath my 18-month-old son's jeans and sweats, under the hand-me-down khakis with the embroidered hearts on the butt. But today the pants, those pink pants with the flowers, lie exposed in an empty dresser drawer. The only clean pants. For my boy. 
  
 Pink is the most loaded color, at least in a child's world. Once a fierce boy color, pink has for decades now been insidiously marketed and pushed as the epitome of a kind of frilly, marginalizing girlhood. Small-scale boycotts have popped up in England and elsewhere as people finally push back against what the former head of UK's National Consumer Council calls this "gender apartheid." And according to Slate, gender neutral clothes are making a high-end comeback, a possible way out of the pink prison. 
  
 And now there is some buzz about a book by Cordelia Fine called "Delusions of Gender," a volley in the nature-versus-nurture wars firmly on the nurture side. Fine argues that men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus. In fact, she says, we are way more alike than different. All those supposedly entrenched gender differences, the ones we read about in popular literature and scientific journals alike? Just a product of oppressive "neurosexism," she says. 
  
 This sounds like a great reason to get girls away from pink and all the socio-corporate limitations it imposes. But what about boys? What about the flip side of that gender apartheid, that boys are shunted into blue and trucks and trains? We do not perceive them as the victims -- likely because masculine traits are traditionally perceived as more active and positives -- but they are limited nonetheless. 
  
 Why can't boys wear pink? 
  
 For better or for worse, pink has come to stand for the feminine in the baby and toddler world. And let's not throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. The stereotypes run both ways -- feminine may be perceived as weak and passive, but it is also seen as gentle and sensitive. And if men are going to make it in post-industrial society -- and there is much fear that they will not -- they need these interpersonal and nurturing skills, both at work and at home. 
  
 Could we raise gentle and sensitive boys without the feminine symbols, without pink? Probably. But what's wrong with a little pink, with a flower here and a butterfly there? So, Ms. Steinem, I'm on board. I get it. I can't just toughen up my girl. I also need to make my boy confident with his softer sides. I need to embrace a metaphorical pink. 
  
 So during my recent nine months of paternity leave (thanks, Sweden, for helping me reverse gender stereotypes myself), I fostered my son's love of dolls, cuddling and kissing them when he reached them up to me with expectations in his eyes. And I regularly put him in the shiny pink dress at the local "open preschool" when he asked for it. And I still cuddle and kiss him until he can't take it -- no stoic, unreachable model of masculinity here. 
  
 The dude looks good in pink, too, not the least bit effeminate. (Wait, that is bad, right? I should say that he looks effeminate, and I love it. I have a ways to go on this one, it seems). For even if he is a pretty boy, he is not a "pretty boy," if you know what I mean (D'oh! There I go again, getting all macho about my sweet son.) 
  
 He wears plenty of pink, mostly in the details -- flowers on slippers, details on pants, collars on shirts -- all hand-me-downs from big sister. It would be financial insanity to just give all those clothes away. For while the Swedish state takes good care of families with small children, my paternity leave pay wasn't that good. 
  
 Back at the dresser drawer, however, before the pink pants, I falter. There must be other pants in the dirty laundry that would work. What is a little dried oatmeal on the leg? 
  
 At the park or at preschool when we pick up his older sister, if he has on pink, I see the looks, the glances. In the sandbox the smallest butterfly on his pants creates confusion. 
  
 You can see the gears working in the other parent's head. Is this a boy or girl? Should I ask? Maybe I shouldn't. 
  
 And this is in Sweden -- a country far more equal and less focused on gender than the United States. This is a place where men take more than 20 percent of the most generous parental leave in the world. This is a place where two 13-year-old boys took on Toys "R" Us for its sexist toy catalogs. There is no pink-blue tyranny here (babies are dressed in shockingly neutral colors, plus lots of stripes, which raises other fashion issues), and people usually know to ask, "What is your child's name?" instead of, "What is your son's name?" 
  
 But the code of pink thrives here anyway, and I am slowly buckling under the pressure. My son's pink shirts get worn as pajamas at home or only on cold days when I know his black San Francisco sweatshirt will never come off. 
  
 Standing at the dresser, I ponder that pink reflects my own masculinity -- all silly and sensitive at home but strong and silent in public. 
  
 And then I remember the bag of extra clothes in the extra diaper bag -- the one that I no longer use. I rush over. The pants inside are too short and a little frilly. 
  
 But they are orange. 
  
 Nathan Hegedus writes the Big News column for The Faster Times and also blogs at Dispatches from Daddyland. He recently returned to work in Stockholm, Sweden after nine months of paid paternity leave. ||||| Masterfile / Radius Images / Corbis 
  
 The fact that the average American working woman earns only about 8o% of what the average American working man earns has been something of a festering sore for at least half the population for several decades. And despite many programs and analyses and hand-wringing and badges and even some legislation, the figure hasn't budged much in the past five years. 
  
 But now there's evidence that the ship may finally be turning around: according to a new analysis of 2,000 communities by a market research company, in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group. In two cities, Atlanta and Memphis, those women are making about 20% more. This squares with earlier research from Queens College, New York, that had suggested that this was happening in major metropolises. But the new study suggests that the gap is bigger than previously thought, with young women in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego making 17%, 12% and 15% more than their male peers, respectively. And it also holds true even in reasonably small areas like the Raleigh-Durham region and Charlotte in North Carolina (both 14% more), and Jacksonville, Fla. (6%). (See TIME's special report on the state of the American woman.) 
  
 Here's the slightly deflating caveat: this reverse gender gap, as it's known, applies only to unmarried, childless women under 30 who live in cities. The rest of working women  even those of the same age, but who are married or don't live in a major metropolitan area  are still on the less scenic side of the wage divide. 
  
 The figures come from James Chung of Reach Advisors, who has spent more than a year analyzing data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. He attributes the earnings reversal overwhelmingly to one factor: education. For every two guys who graduate from college or get a higher degree, three women do. This is almost the exact opposite of the graduation ratio that existed when the baby boomers entered college. Studies have consistently shown that a college degree pays off in much higher wages over a lifetime, and even in many cases for entry-level positions. "These women haven't just caught up with the guys," says Chung. "In many cities, they're clocking them." 
  
 Chung also claims that, as far as women's pay is concerned, not all cities are created equal. Having pulled data on 2,000 communities and cross-referenced the demographic information with the wage-gap figures, he found that the cities where women earned more than men had at least one of three characteristics. Some, like New York City or Los Angeles, had primary local industries that were knowledge-based. Others were manufacturing towns whose industries had shrunk, especially smaller ones like Erie, Pa., or Terre Haute, Ind. Still others, like Miami or Monroe, La., had a majority minority population. (Hispanic and black women are twice as likely to graduate from college as their male peers.) (See the top 10 female leaders.) 
  
 Significantly, the conditions that are feeding the rise in female wages  a growing knowledge-based economy, the decline of a manufacturing base and an increasing minority population  are dominant trends throughout the U.S. "This generation [of women] has adapted to the fundamental restructuring of the American economy better than their older predecessors or male peers," says Chung. While the economic advantage of women sometimes evaporates as they age and have families, Chung believes that women now may have enough leverage that their financial gains may not be completely erased as they get older. 
  
 The holdout cities  those where the earnings of single, college-educated young women still lag men's  tended to be built around industries that are heavily male-dominated, such as software development or military-technology contracting. In other words, Silicon Valley could also be called Gender Gap Gully. 
  
 As for the somewhat depressing caveat that the findings held true only for women who were childless and single: it's not their marital status that puts the squeeze on their income. Rather, highly educated women tend to marry and have children later. Thus the women who earn the most in their 20s are usually single and childless. 
  
 The rise of female economic power is by no means limited to the U.S., nor necessarily to the young. Late last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that for the first time, women made up the majority of the workforce in highly paid managerial positions. The change in the status quo has been marked enough that several erstwhile women's advocates have started to voice concerns about how to get more men to go to college. Is there an equivalent to Title IX for men? 
  
 See poll results on men, women and society. |||||
Student:
Finally, some good news for women when it comes to the gender gap. A new study shows that in many of the biggest US cities, women are out-earning men by a median of 8%. In Atlanta and Memphis, the difference shoots all the way up to 20%. One researcher attributes this reversal to education: Three women get a college degree for every two men. The bad news? This “reverse gender gap” holds true only for under-30, single, childless women, Time reports. Even so, that researcher says women are gaining enough leverage through this trend that they may not lose the gains as they get older and start families. But this news should be taken with a grain of salt, writes Tracy Clark-Flory on Salon. “When we talk about young women out-earning men, we are talking about averages,” she writes. As the researcher told her, “It does not mean that a woman holding the same job and the same degree out-earns men.” For more on that, click here.