I'd agree with some of that, but not all. In particular, some of my examples were non-random. McCaffrey's brain-ships, for example, very often fall into very gender-typical roles (and certainly have strong gendering; they also almost invariably get paired up with an opposite-sex partner, but hey...). There isn't any consideration of the gender issues, or even of the technological issues - it's just a plot device to keep one major character fixed in place all the time.

But I should probably have expressed myself better in the original post :)