There is actually a good reason for prioritising women over men, and it's less about gender roles and more about biology.
Men are naturally stronger swimmers, etc, and tend to be physically larger. As such, putting the women on the boats would, conceptually, maximise the chances of the most people surviving - the women take up less space on the boat, and the men are more likely to survive "going down with the ship" than the women would be.
That being said, the absolute "women and children first" attitude isn't how it should be taken nowadays. It should be focused primarily on saving the largest number of lives. If it's a choice between an obese woman who is over 6 foot tall and a guy who is 5 foot tall with a slender build, the slender man should take priority, unless there is good reason to prioritise the woman.
Of course, I'm describing it in a very simplistic manner - it should be more nuanced than that, of course. And before anyone suggests it, no, I'm not suggesting that obese children be left off the boats. Children are a different case entirely - they don't have the choice to not board the boat, they have much more of their life left to live, and thus children should always be prioritised over adults.
EDIT: To put it even more simply - gender itself shouldn't factor into the question - not "50 men and 50 women" - that's not gender equality, that's factoring gender into the choice of who survives. Gender equality would be considering gender to not matter in deciding who gets onto the boat.
