Here is a strange piece at Forbes which I picked up via Twitter by Anne Doyle, an American woman who is big on Powering Up! women in general.

She quotes what she asserts to be three ‘stunning examples of the cultural headwinds that women are still up against’. 

What are they? We sit – nervously – lest we be stunned.

First, the photo from the White House featuring the US top leadership watching the operation against Bin Laden:

The bad news is the ridiculous angst the photo triggered over the gender differences it captured.   The men were stone-faced, revealing little.  It was only the expression and body language of the most powerful woman in our nation [Note: Hillary Clinton} that most clearly communicated the tension, high stakes and, yes, even fears that every leader in the room was experiencing…

But here’s the astonishing part.  After the now-iconic image was released, Clinton, whose hand was raised to her mouth in the photo, felt she needed to explain the gesture by telling media she was “trying not to cough” at the instant the photo was taken.  Are we still that uncomfortable with powerful women behaving like women rather than “men in skirts” that even she needs to spin her actions that deviate from the male norm? 

Here’s the picture and a reasonable piece about the emotional reactions everyone might feel at such moments.

Various points.

First, why did the White House release that particular picture which to their seasoned spinners must have raised the possibility that the uneasy reaction of Mrs Clinton might be noticed by millions?

Second, why does Ms Doyle assume that powerful women ‘behave like women’? Would Sarah Palin or Margaret Thatcher have had the same reaction? Some women are less openly emotional than others, as are some men. What has power got to do with it?

Third, why did Mrs Clinton emit that foolish attempt to explain her reaction away? Surely her reaction says a lot more about her than it does about any so-called cultural headwinds blowing against women in general. I mean, Mrs C does have form in telling the most stupid self-serving lies when there is no reason to do so.

Scorecard:   Stunned 0   Unstunned 1

Ms Doyle’s second example is the fact that an Orthodox Jewish newspaper in Brooklyn published this picture with the two women in it airbrushed out, as it has a policy of not publishing photos of women out of respect for women:

… [this] reveals plenty about the deeply-ingrained gender biases that women still face – even in the U.S .  

What? No it doesn’t. It ‘reveals’ that a tiny newspaper read and run by a bunch of religious twerps is read and run by religious twerps.

The very fact the story was blown up and the altered picture shown by every major news outlet and gazillion bloggers and tweeters ‘reveals’ that such examples of ‘gender bias’ in the USA are ridiculously few and far between – the only cultural headwind here is a hurricane blowing in women’s favour.

Scorecard:   Stunned 0   Unstunned 2

Finally, Ms Doyle plunges into our very language:

During his globally-televised interview with “60 Minutes” about the Bin Laden operation, President Obama used the word “guys” over and over and over. By my count, he used the male-branded word close to 30 times.  Not simply to refer to the Seals, who were all guys, but to the entire team of highly-skilled intelligence officers, CIA staff, Cabinet members and military personnel who played essential roles in the operation’s stunning success.   

Women Are Not Guys.   I’m tired of being told that the word “guys” is “gender neutral” and includes women.  I’ve heard that before, decades ago when grammarians and most major newspapers insisted that the pronoun “he” included women and the use of he/she was clumsy and unnecessary.  Because enough people understood how powerful language is, today the inclusive “he/she,” flows off our tongues without a second thought.  

… Here’s my test with language.  Put the shoe on the other gender’s foot.  What if we just start using the word “gals” instead of guys every time we are talking about or to a mixed gender group ?  How long would men tolerate that?  They would be insulted and wouldn’t accept for a minute the explanation that “gals” is now a gender neutral word that includes them. 

How absurd is that? The reason why ‘gals’ does not apply to men is that people do not use the word that way. Whereas per contra the word ‘guys’ has evolved from its earlier juxtaposition with gals to be both an affable male term and an affable mainly gender-neutral term.

This has nothing to do with sexist-style ‘he’ meaning ‘he and she’. It’s more like the evolution of the word ‘gay’ to take on a quite separate alternative usage under linguistic and social/cultural market forces.

This, in fact, is so massively obvious that the nine-year olds in remote Oxfordshire prep schools here in England breezily call each other ‘you guys’ to show that they have been listening carefully to the latest cool drivel on the Disney Channel.

World to Anne: ‘guys’ as a word referring to men and women is a proud US cultural export! You’ve won this one! Accept it!

The final whistle blows:

Scorecard:   Stunned 0   Unstunned 3

Ms Doyle boasts that she has just attended an inspiring 2 ½ days at General Electric’s legendary Leadership Development Center in Crotonville, NY:

I was privileged to join 180 women leaders from all over the world for GE’s ninth Leading and Learning conference for its own top female executives and selected guests.  This year’s theme was all about the “Passion and Possibilities” that women bring to leadership as catalysts for solving the challenges of our times and moving culture forward. 

Maybe she should get outside more. She might find that there are fewer cultural headwinds blowing in her face, and more pleasant fresh air than she has come to expect.