Is This What Dewey Meant by Active Democracy?/Characterization of the Characters

While reading Young's article, "Activist Challenges To Deliberative Democracy", I couldn't help but think of Dewey and his approach to active democracy and active education. Although both the characters have opposite methods or participating in democracy, they both participate. Young herself explains that "this essay constructs a dialogue between two 'characters' with these differing approaches to political action" (Young 670). So they take action in democracy - a pretty Dewian idea, right?

Okay. Let me move on from that for a bit. What I thought was interesting was that she chose to characterize the activist as male and the deliberative democrat as female. She explains her reasons for this and claims that she chose to characterize the deliberative democrat as a women because "this assignment more associates the female with power" (Young 671). I'm not sure exactly how she sees that. Is it because society sees those who engage in deliberative democracy was more powerful and women are so often portrayed as members of the downtrodden minority??

If I may delve into a discipline I am more familiar with (German Studies) for a moment:
Reading this made me think of the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion [RAF]). This a left-wing terrorist group in Germany founded in 1970. Now, granted, the activist in Young's article does not condone violence against people or animals, but the RAF was a pretty powerful group, and one could consider them violent activists. Where I'm going with all of this is that it was co-founded and by a woman, Ulrike Meinhof (although Gudrun Ensslin was more a leader of the group). My point? Women can be powerful activists and aggressive, too.

I find this characterization problematic because it still portrays women in a weaker light even though the deliberative democrat is associated with power, I think. Because, let's be honest, actions speak louder than words.