Let's face it, it is only when you can completely ignore gender - make it truely irrelevant - that you have true equality (but I can't imagine why you'd want that).
What appears to be the fly in the ointment in this case is those strange little 'accent' thingies some of the southern european languages seem to need. Are they really necessary, or can they be ignored ? - and why are they needed anyway when languages such as English, American and Australian get along fine without them.
In terms of planning for the future - does it really matter? Languages have a habit of dying out with disuse: The Gaelic languages are gradually dying out from the British Isles, Cornish died a couple of decades ago, only a few sheep now speak Welsh - and a handfull of highlanders the old Scot's Gaelic ('Gallic' they call it). Across most of the (civilised) world, English has become the dominant language in business and commercial life. Minor languages like French, Spanish and Italian will probably become irrelevant soon. Most of India seems to be learning Enlish so they can pinch our jobs, so in a few decades there'll just be English and Chinese. But the Chinese are learning English, so give it a generation and only English will stand as an important everyday language - leaving Latin for scientific and legal use, and other languages as folk curiousities. Might as well just sort in ASCII and wait patiently while the rest of the world falls into line.