WHEN a Hampshire mother launched a crowdfunding campaign to publish her children’s storybook that helps children see past gender stereotypes, she had no idea whether the campaign would be a success.

But as the campaign comes to a close, the book seems to have touched a collective nerve of parents across the world and is 114% funded.

Cheryl Rickman, 42, from Chandler’s Ford, says she wrote Yes You Can “to show children that all toys/clothes/colours/hobbies are for everyone and encourage kids to be proud to be all that they are.”

Yes You Can encourages individuality, promotes gender equality and challenges gender stereotypes in a child-friendly way. The book aims to counter messages that tell children they “can’t wear/do/play with that,” because of their gender, and tell them ‘Yes You Can!’

The mum-of-one has spent the last two years campaigning and meeting supermarket and department store buyers to ask them to reduce gender stereotypes in store. She managed to persuade stores like Tesco to make girls’ shorts and cardigans more robust and remove boy/girl labels from Halloween costumes, but she wanted to do more.

“I wondered how else we could counter these messages,” says Cheryl.

“Speaking directly to children via a storybook seemed the next logical step. Because, if we can’t shield our children from these stereotypes, at least we can help them see them for what they are.

“So I wrote this book to show children they don’t have to change who they are to suit outdated gender stereotypes.”

The manuscript was already written but would only be published if the campaign was a success. Now that the project is funded, having had support from comedian Sarah Millican, among others, the funds raised will pay for an illustrator, editor and to have the book printed and shipped.

Yes You Can, aimed at 3-8 year olds, features The Climbing Trees Girls: Eva, the outdoorsy one; Maxi, the creative/skateboarding one and B, the football-loving sporty one, who find themselves in a strange new world where people are told what they should play with, what they should wear and what they should do for a living, based on the colour of their hair – an analogy to explain the futility of gender stereotypes to a younger audience.

And, while the three main protagonists are girls, (who save the day) boys who like diggers and boys who like dolls both feature in the book.

“Because,” says Cheryl, “just as there is more to being a girl than being gentle and princessy, there is more to being a boy than being boisterous. There is nothing wrong with “girly girls” or “boisterous boys”, but when that is the only option presented to children, that is very limiting and restrictive.”

She adds: “I hope parents will read this book to their sons too. I want them to see that being ‘badass’ isn’t exclusive to one gender, just as being gentle isn’t either.”

The story is also about finding your spark and standing up for what you believe in, which follows on from recommendations by Raising Girls and Raising Boys author and parenting expert, Steve Biddulph that parents need to encourage their children’s interests and help them to find their spark to make them “feel secure and content” with who they are.

The book follows Cheryl’s success with her non-gender specific clothing range ‘Climbing Trees’ that now has customers across the globe.

Her eight-year-old daughter Brooke provided the inspiration when, aged just four, she asked: “Mummy, how come boys get all the cool stuff?”

Cheryl explains how the idea grew out of Brooke’s frustration when out clothes shopping.

“From when she was three I let Brooke choose her clothes,” she says. “We’d go down the girls’ aisle and she didn’t like it much. It was all lacy, pink and princesses.

“Then we’d go down the boys’ aisle and she’d love everything there – pirates, dinosaurs, Marvel characters – all the stuff that’s traditionally reserved for boys.

“I bought it anyway, so she had a combination of clothes labelled for boys and for girls, which didn’t really matter, but once she could read, she’d ask, ‘why does it say boys?’.”

Cheryl and Brooke decided to write to supermarkets and say that they were limiting children’s choice by putting unnecessary gender labels on clothing. This grew into the idea of launching their own clothing line.

Cheryl is a successful author of business books, has ghost-written for Peter Jones and Anabel Karmel, run a music magazine and women’s business networking website WiBBLE, and written The Flourish Handbook.

The clothing business launched with six T-shirts, with designs including a female pirate, a ‘she rex’ dinosaur and a colourful rocket.

“It’s about how children represent themselves. It’s about identity and exploring who they are as they grow, and it’s really important that that has no limits.

“When you’re very young, you create belief systems from what people say to you and what you notice, and it starts when you’re tiny.

“If you’re told enough times ‘you can’t do that, it’s for boys/girls’ it can deter you from following what you really want in life.

“There are children who won’t pursue their passions, wear what they want to wear, play with what they want to play with, because they’ve been told that something is for a boy or a girl, so their freedom, creativity, even their vital spark in life is being squashed.”

Brooke’s interests have meant she has got used to being told that the things she likes are for boys, from the children’s face painter who suggested she had a butterfly rather than Spiderman on her face to the friend’s parent who said she should have been born a boy because she plays football, and schoolmates asking why she likes ‘boy things’.

“Luckily she is super-resistant and she doesn’t care,” says Cheryl. “It hasn’t stopped her from being who she wants to be, wearing what she wants to wear and liking what she wants to like.

“But unfortunately there are a lot of children who say ‘I can’t like dinosaurs or wear pink because it’s for the opposite sex’ and I think that’s a big shame.”

She adds: “Our mission is to empower children to be all they can be, without limitations.”