Soft Skills as a Female Autistic

This Person (Ottilie) said:

the soft skill aspects of being in a team. Team member has a birthday? Well you're expected to arrange flowers, cake, card, gift, lunch, dinner.

That’s not really soft skills. At least it’s not the kind of soft skills I was bad at at the civil service. Soft skills is finding ways to tell people no without actually saying no. And conversely is the ability to figure out when people are telling you no without actually saying no. Or indeed it’s the ability to predict when they would say no before you even ask the question and therefore don’t bother asking it.

soft skills is the ability to minute a meeting where people have been screaming at each other and vehemently protesting that the proposed course of action is completely unacceptable and make it sound like everybody was okay with the plan and everything can go ahead as expected without out right lying about what was said.

that is soft skills in the civil service.

Peter said:

That’s not really soft skills.

Soft skills include social skills and I think women are expected to have more social skills than men. It's more generally acceptable for men not to organise a birthday card or a gift for a colleague. I probably find social skills more difficult than a NT man but because I'm a woman I'm expected not to. The things you mentioned are soft skills too. Soft skills are defined as "personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people". 

yes and why are 'soft skills' given the name 'soft' anyway? It used to be assumed 'females more likely to display them' in sexist eons gone by but nowadays in the business world it just means 'less direct'. I understand what Peter is saying though as I am also a civil servant and his explanation is exactly what this term means in the civil service and in many other corporate environments I've worked in. Even those environments have now moved on and colleagues now talk about 'communication skills'.  Who in your workplace is expecting you to do this stuff and saying it needs 'soft skills'? Seems bizarre and outdated to me.

This Person (Ottilie) said:

In the workplace it's expected that the female/female identifying colleagues will take care of the soft skill aspects of being in a team

What does this mean? I don't understand it. Do you mean that it is mainly women/female identifying people who usually arrange the colleague celebration life events? If ;you do, then that is not anything to do with 'soft skills' or 'being in a team'. It might just be that some people, who make an effort to understand their colleagues and life experiences are better able to cater for them. It doesn't mean they are expected to do them because of their sex.

yes and why are 'soft skills' given the name 'soft' anyway? It used to be assumed 'females more likely to display them' in sexist eons gone by but nowadays in the business world it just means 'less direct'. I understand what Peter is saying though as I am also a civil servant and his explanation is exactly what this term means in the civil service and in many other corporate environments I've worked in. Even those environments have now moved on and colleagues now talk about 'communication skills'.  Who in your workplace is expecting you to do this stuff and saying it needs 'soft skills'? Seems bizarre and outdated to me.

This Person (Ottilie) said:

In the workplace it's expected that the female/female identifying colleagues will take care of the soft skill aspects of being in a team

What does this mean? I don't understand it. Do you mean that it is mainly women/female identifying people who usually arrange the colleague celebration life events? If ;you do, then that is not anything to do with 'soft skills' or 'being in a team'. It might just be that some people, who make an effort to understand their colleagues and life experiences are better able to cater for them. It doesn't mean they are expected to do them because of their sex.

Actually when you say soft skills I tend to think of soft 'sciences.' You know like sociology and political science. Basically 'sciences' that don't involve maths and or lab work. I assumed that's where the soft in soft skills came from.

Edit ---

So I did some digging. Apparently "The term "soft skills" was created by the U.S. Army in the late 1960s. It refers to any skill that does not employ the use of machinery." (wiki) and later came to apply predominantly to social skills "A definition based on review literature explains soft skills as an umbrella term for skills under three key functional elements: people skills, social skills, and personal career attributes."

So nothing to do with gender.