Yours competently
In The coded language that holds women back at work, Christine Ro explores words keeping women down, or something like that. It's a fairly typical fluff piece for BBC Equality Matters. One that I don't doubt was previously published elsewhere, and which I didn't find sufficiently interesting to finish reading. But I did skip-read this far:
A study of military performance evaluations showed that more negative characteristics were recorded for women overall, possibly because stereotypes of women didn’t match the conventional mode of military leadership. ‘Compassionate’ was a common descriptor of women, whereas ‘competent’ was frequently used for men.
Christine Ro, BBC Equality Matters
Perhaps I'm just not cut out for military leadership, because I see nothing wrong in being compassionate. But competent? It's a back-handed compliment at best, and that's only if it's not damning with faint praise!*
Describing somebody as competent is rather like saying that they're not outstanding, but at least they're unlikely to fuck up big time. As character assessments go, it joins the ranks of his heart's in the right place
; he means well
; and he's harmless, really
. None of which conjure up visions of outstanding military prowess.
Perhaps it has a deeper meaning in German. But, whenever I see a Swiss professional or business advertising their Kompetenz, I can't help but wonder whether that's really the best they can say about themselves.
* Competent to stand trial is another matter entirely.