Gail Walker: Why do we still believe women are 'fairer' sex?

Article here. Excerpt:

'When nursery school teacher Vanessa George from Plymouth and Angela Allen from Nottingham - together with Colin Blanchard from Rochdale - pleaded guilty to sexually abusing young children, everyone was 'shocked'.

There's been no end of thought pieces in the media, focusing on how the crimes were made more chilling because two of the three offenders were women. And that the three, who had never met before their trial, goaded each other to act via the internet. A shocking, yet so modern crime.

Of course, it's hard to believe that anyone is so depraved. But commentators argue it's even more shocking because females were involved - the nurturing, caring,'fairer' sex. It goes against nature.
...
Evil - like 'gentleness' - is not the prerogative of one sex only. And it's time to recognise once and for all that, when it comes to abuse - of power or position or trust or of the elderly or children or the weak - it is stupid and dangerous to rule out anyone simply because of their gender.

What's scary is that this has probably been true all along and most of us are only finding out about it now.'