[jasode]

>What you're doing here is saying you think all women who would have an interest in tech are exactly the same

No, I asserted the opposite by specifically qualifying the women I was targeting with the clause "of substance". That's the part of my quote you left out to make it look like I was lumping "all" women together.

I just showed those supposedly better job descriptions to a female coworker I would categorize as a "woman of substance" and she just rolled her eyes at it. The word "intimate" is groan-inducing and out of place.

I don't personally know Marissa Mayer (ex Google, now CEO Yahoo) or Carol Bartz (ex AutoDesk) but I don't believe women of such caliber require baby talk. In my opinion, it would be quite insulting to them.

>Study: Women Do Not Apply To ‘Male-Sounding’ Jobs

I never asserted that a text can't be overtly (even offensively) male gendered. That part I agree with. However, the over-zealous post-modernism rewrite does not always make the end result gender-neutral. On the contrary, the article shows that the end result looks silly and idiotic. (EDIT TO ADD: the article's author recently commented in this thread and she herself conceded[1] that the wording in those "improved" job descriptions could use some work so I'm not totally off base in my criticism.)

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020992

[DanBC]

>I never asserted that a text can't be overtly (even offensively) male gendered. That part I agree with. However, the over-zealous post-modernism rewrite does not always make the end result gender-neutral. On the contrary, the article shows that the end result looks silly and idiotic.

You didn't read the study, did you?

[jasode]

I did. I contend you're reading too much into the study by American Psychological Association by the authors Gaucher, Friesen, & Kay called, “Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality.”

They polled 96 random women.

The study in its limited form did not (or even try to) differentiate the characteristics of any women who would find terms such as "intimate" in an engineering post as patronizing and incongruous.

I'd prefer not to alienate those type of women. To do so would run counter to the objectives the article is trying to promote!