[icegreentea]

I don't think that that was Ahl's intentions when she labelled those terms as 'male-gendered'. I do not believe that she meant they were male-gendered like say.. 'he' or 'him'.

Likely, male-genderedness is suppose to mean something along the lines of "without additional information, most people would assume these words refer to a male rather than a female". The point isn't that you can't use these words to describe females, or that all males can be described by this, but that people just associate these words with males. For example, "chopsticks" -> asian, "NBA basketball player" -> African American.

This could actually be studied (though I can't find any studies... my social sciences research-fu is apparently really weak), and could actually be proven (as much as such things could be proven).

That said, without the proof that they actually are male-gendered, it's kinda flimpsy.

[Crito]

> "without additional information, most people would assume these words refer to a male rather than a female"

Surely that is the problem. The problem isn't that those traits are seen as desirable or common for entrepreneurs. The problem is the people think those traits can only be found in men.

Particularly the idea that "self-reliance" is a male trait is a classic example of something that feminists have been successfully refuting for decades. It should be very clear that the notion that women cannot be self-reliant is very old fashioned; if that attitude is still present in the bay area, then it needs to be stomped out.

[icegreentea]

Maybe. So there are two branch points for this, and one little thing first.

Firstly, I don't think anyone ever thinks that those traits can only be found in men. It's just that they believe that its more likely men to have those traits. Like the chopstick example I gave, no one is ever going to say only asians use chopsticks, and if you told them that the person in question was actually white, they likely wouldn't bat an eye. But their first guess would be asian. So it's not really a problem, because that situation doesn't really exist.

But say we adjust and say the problem is that people think its more common for men to have those traits. Then:

A) Someone comes up with a very good way of measuring those traits. Say it actually turns out to be pretty objective and repeatable and consistent. And then they go out into the field and test a representative sample of North Americans. And then they find that amongst North American men and women, men do score higher in those traits by meaningful measurements of "higher" (say both a higher mean, and an asymmetric distribution shifted towards the higher end).

Now, I'm not saying that that's true, nor do I want that to be true. But if it -is- true, then it turns out people are right! Their intuition matches reality. Now what? Maybe the problem is that its actually true, and we have to dwelve into nature vs nurture and all that "good" stuff. And this is honestly something we have to consider. Given the self-reinforcing nature of society/cultural pressures, and the non-trivial possibility that there are actual biological differences that will bias the traits of the genders, it's actually possible that some sort of difference could be found.

B) Same thing as above regarding reliable tests, but the tests come out negative. No meaningful differences between genders. Well then yes, we have a problem.

[Crito]

I don't think that skill with chopsticks is a good comparison. Chopsticks are an invention with an invention date and location that give them a very tangible cultural association to this day.

The traits listed in the article are not skills with a certain tool, they are more accurately described as personality traits. Men didn't invent and popularize them. There is no inventor of self-reliance, that is something that anybody can exhibit. (And even if we look at so called "traditional" gender roles in society, how many single men raising children are there? How many single women? Anyone saying that women cannot be self-reliant is delusional).

If we want to stick with a 'skill with invention' analogy, why not plow? If I told you that somebody was skilled with a plow, would you first guess that they were Egyptian?

[ars_technician]

No, that's Ahl's intentions. Check the previous quote: "celebrating masculine concepts of control, competition, rationality, dominance, etc."

Apparently she believes being rational is a masculine concept.