I asked for evidence that economists associate rationality with   
masculinity. I should have asked for evidence that current mainstream   
economists make that association - some critics clearly do. My point is   
that the abstract rational agent of modern mainstream economics has no   
particular gender.  
  
The claim (or a claim that is made) seems to be not that men are more   
rational than women (that would be really offensive, as Sam Bostaph notes),   
or even that economists think that men are more rational, but that   
rationality is culturally associated with masculinity and that economists   
*therefore* assume that all (abstract, gender-free) agents are rational, in   
a certain abstract sense, and what is more, do so without admitting or even   
knowing that they are influenced by ideas of masculinity. As applied to   
present day economics, that seems implausible to me, though claims about   
unconscious motivation are always hard to disprove.  
  
As I noted in my previous post, notions of masculinity, 'manliness', and   
the like have been widespread in many cultures and have (therefore) figured   
in past economic writings. In the C19 and later, in the West, economic   
rationality was often associated implicitly (and I guess explicitly, though   
I don't have citations to hand) with masculinity. (In other cultures at   
other times, masculinity has been associated with other things - physical   
violence, bravery, defence of honour, contempt for economic rationality,   
and so on.) A historical question which one could ask, is: was the   
rationality assumption adopted in economics because it was deemed masculine   
at the time (and therefore good, strong, etc.) or was it adopted for other   
reasons and then associated with masculinity (to the extent that it was)   
because that was the rhetoric of the time? I suspect the latter.  
  
Tony Brewer