"Children are children. If you constantly train them to sit down and play nicely regardless of biological sex, giving them stereotypical toy types - that's what they do. If you let them break things, run about in places where it is inappropriate and run roughshod over other children, eewing at any toy that is aimed at girls, that's how they will behave."
But in this is there an inherent judgement intended against the sort of boundary pushing behaviour of pushing forward, of drive, of taking risks, of testing what is and isn't expected in a given context. Why shouldn't girls occasionally test that, run around in inappropriate places, try things out that result in things getting broken, make mistakes in their approaches to others. Won't they naturally, if they are allowed? Why do we think children are a product of adult rules and regulations as opposed to having their own agency and autonomy which we must sometimes restrict and at other times encourage in ways that mean that mistakes will be made and there will be times when sitting colouring nicely isn't the best that can be made of a situation in terms of learning and developing?
What we need is for all kids to test their limits - and yes, that may well involve sometimes running roughshod over other children as we all learn from our excesses in friendship and relationships and love.
Show me someone who has never taken a risk with their own heart or anothers' and I'll show you a liar. I don't want my boys to sit down and shut up and never run about and I guarantee you if I had had girls I wouldn't have wanted that for them either. At the same time they need discipline, boundaries and rules of course.. but not that precludes the possibility of getting it wrong or doing the opposite of the expected from time to time.
I am tremendously grateful to my own parents for not being too prescriptive about what I could and couldn't do based on gender. I sat and coloured, I was nice and polite, I did all manner of expected things and sometimes I was wild and took risks and did things that were "wrong" and paid the price but also sometimes had wonderful times from taking those risks and made lifelong friendships etc.
The idea that it's the ideal for ANY child to be always well behaved, never screw up, never do anything inappropriate is absolutely suffocating and stifling and it's worrying we think it in the first place, let alone that we impose it on girls. The research is clear that authoritative not authoritarian parenting is most effective - and that involves not bloody sitting on them as though they were a lump of malleable material to be moulded at our will but learning how to let go of the reins and allow them to screw up and make their own rules which may or may not always match ours (as ours may or may not always be appropriate for the world they are making, which is evolving all the time).