For some years now, if not decades, girls have been told from a young age that gender is no barrier, and that anything boys can do, they can do just as well - if not better.
And so, rightly, we have seen a remarkable transformation of women's achievement in Western society: in science and engineering, in medicine and law, in politics and policy, in sport and cultural excellence.
The prophecy has been met to a breathtaking degree, not least in New Zealand where during the Labour-led government's tenure, the four pivotal constitutional positions were occupied by women: Dame Silvia Cartwright as Governor-General, Helen Clark as Prime Minister, Dame Sian Elias as Chief Justice, and Margaret Wilson as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
While some will argue there is still distance to go in terms of equality - for example in the discriminatory gap between gender earning power - there can be little doubt that many barriers to success, fame and fortune have been removed for what was once paternalistically referred to as "the fairer sex".
More than ever, girls and women are making their mark.
To turn this success story on its head, it is apparent there is also a darker side to this trend.
There are indications the upending of clearly delineated roles for men and women, and the blurring of the boundaries between them, may have had complex but as-yet little understood consequences.
One frequently discussed indicator is the performance of boys in secondary education as compared with their illustrious female counterparts.
Another, broader and more tangled, issue is to what extent the emancipation of women has raised challenges that society as a whole and men in particular have been unprepared for on the home front and whether, or how much, this has impacted on the nature of families today.
Entire university sociology departments are constructed around such questions.
More straightforward, however, is the observable fact that large numbers of girls and young women are becoming increasingly violent, socially maladjusted or prone to indulging in unseemly behaviour.
On the same day that a disturbing front-page report in this newspaper revealed a 17-year-old had been labelled a "kitchen bitch" on a driving infringement notice in Greymouth - that is to say an official "State" document - the views of a social anthropologist on the behaviour of girls and young women was reported.
Dr Donna Swift, who has been touring the country and raising awareness of the issue for two years, told a group of youth and social workers in Dunedin that the number of violent offences by girls under 17 in New Zealand had nearly doubled between 1996 and 2008.
Dr Swift said that, compared with boys, girls were now more likely to be aggressive towards others and violent towards family members.
They were often caught in a cycle of violence in the family home or were the victims of trauma.
Programmes and services needed to be designed to be responsive to girls' needs if the cycle of violence was to be broken.
Along with the violence now routinely displayed by some girls and young women, there is an increasing edge of insolence - often alcohol-related - historically associated with young men.
Hence the British term "ladettes", with its overtones of machismo and devil-may-care boorishness.
Outbreaks of unattractive or unacceptable behaviour have traditionally been excused with the ephithet "boys will be boys", but when "girls will be boys" society is met with a fresh challenge.
Should we be so surprised? A degree of economic parity, of apparent control over biological imperatives - including motherhood - over sexual activity, and a new and confident competitiveness has long since consigned to the cake tin of history the old ditty "sugar and spice and all things nice".
The new reality is that as much as they have earned full and equal participation in the workforce, in education, in politics, in the police, in the defence forces and in the arts, a proportion of girls and young women have also acquired the inclination to behave "badly".
That does not make it right.
They should be condemned for it, as much as their male counterparts would be, the full attention of the relevant social agencies should be trained upon them, and this disturbing dystopia explored and addressed so that parents and educators better understand the pressures and trigger-points acting upon young women.
And so that, ultimately, the girls themselves achieve a higher degree of self-awareness, restraint, and social responsibility.
As Dr Swift so pertinently pointed out: "These girls are our future mothers."
