He&#x27;s not just showing appreciation. He&#x27;s rectifying a problem of her being underappreciated by society at large.<p>So a) there is a well-known societal problem of women being underappreciated, especially leaders. And b) he added gender to his essay by talking about how they were dating and she was the mom and how her special skills were the kind of thing that get called feminine. (Note the many comments here explicitly relying on that.) He also talks explicitly about how people don&#x27;t notice her contributions because they read her as a secretary, which is a very gendered phenomenon.<p>So whether or not gender is the formal thesis, the essay is shot through with gender-related issues.