Traditional gender roles have been shifting over the past few decades and that’s probably for the best. Not just because society’s expectations for a binary gender system are outdated, but because it might be bad for you.

The 30-minute 1952 film Mother Takes a Holiday was produced by the Whirlpool Corporation to sell washers and dryers. Whether it achieved this goal or not I really don't know, but it's a fascinating artifact of post-war techno-utopian thinking, slathered with a healthy dose of sexism.

A young boy feels powerful when he pretends to play the wicked sorceress in his backyard games, but the laughing of his next-door neighbor leaves him feeling powerless. Can he convince her to join in on the gender-bending fun?

This is one of those things that won't surprise, but it's still certainly interesting. What you're seeing in the image below is a word cloud, modeled after commercials for boy's and girl's toys. Stark differences laid bare, and all that.

In many cultures, girls play with dolls more often than boys do. Now chimps have been observed treating sticks like dolls. Is there a gender imbalance in the way chimps play with their dolls, too?

The 1910 film Looking Forward, directed by Theodore Marston, imagines a crazy dystopia where women rule the world. Because, as this film accurately predicted, women naturally became a political majority after getting the vote.

We seem to have been waiting for the smart cupboard/fridge for quite a while now. Though the continued spread of RFID chips makes such an idea more plausible today, the future kitchen isn't yet quite what we imagined.

The July 1, 1928 San Antonio Light (San Antonio, TX) ran a syndicated story titled, “Romantic Old Maids Can Hear the Words of Love They Long For.”

The November 21, 1955 Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (Fairbanks, AK) ran a short piece with the predictions of Mrs. Ivy Baker Priest. She predicted that by the year 2000 there would be three female members of the Supreme Court and a lady vice president. Priest also predicted that half of congress would be female.

The April 25, 1950 Yuma Daily Sun (Yuma, AZ) ran this picture of Moulton Taylor's "Aerocar" which could be converted into an airship "even by a woman, without soiling her gloves." So easy, a woman could do it!

The January 2, 1968 Lima News (Lima, OH) ran the third in a series of articles based on research by the Commission on the Year 2000 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The third in the series dealt with life, work and family issues humanity would face in the year 2000. As I've discussed before, major social…

The January 4, 1959 issue of Parade magazine published a piece by Sid Ross titled, "Will Robots Make People Obsolete?"

This house of the future was illustrated by Fred McNabb and comes from the amazing site, Plan59. It features personal helicopters, giant-sized fruit, glass walls, dust-free floors, ultrasonic laundry and, of course, picturephone.