A waitress in Murfreesboro once spilled sangria all over me/my very light brown shirt. I swear she must have psychically signaled the manager, because before I knew it, I had moist towels for shirt triage and an arrangement for free dry cleaning.

Well, I would argue that what you are identifying is a symptom, not a cause. Those ostensibly gendered behaviors you're observing probably do happen, but they don't spontaneously happen in a vacuum, or necessarily result from ways in which men and women just naturally *are.* There's a whole load of conditioning and reinforcement that happened before your friend turned up and minimized her potato achievement. If many women systematically undervalue their efforts and contributions, it's worth looking at all of the ways in which women might be being rewarded/not-punished for doing so - or otherwise given the message that appropriate behavior for a woman means not standing out, not being too over-accomplished - all along.