Did Aponte's gender scare candidates away?

Her role did dude.

You do realize that out of 32 teams we are the only one with this power structure, right?

This has nothing to do with the fact that a woman is involved. If Dawn was a man, there would be the same reservations and the outcome would likely be the same.

 

Put yourself in the GM candidates shoes. If you were told you had to answer to a glorified accountant, you'd have reservations about taking the job as well.

 

To go further in-depth:

Think about it, if you are a GM and decide to pursue a certain FA that you think will significantly help the team out and then you go to Dawn all she has to say is, "sorry we don't have the money to sign this person" and you are screwed. The same could be said about resigning people, etc. Much like any business structure the person in charge of the money is the most powerful decision maker for that company. In our case the GM doesn't have the power, Dawn does.

All in all, we should have hired an excellent scout as our GM as I feel our GM will likely make his influence felt much more through the draft than free agency and resigning our own guys (due to what I pointed out above). That makes it even more mindboggling why we would hire a personnel man...

And I think Dawn gets vilified because she seems very ambitious and power-hungry. She somehow managed to convince Ross that her role is more important than a GM's role and that the structure should be as such. Her positioning herself with Philbin while Ireland was on the outs is very telling too.

 

It's not her gender, it's her role, and how it acts in comparison with the GM and coach, and owner.

 

If the candidates that turned us down did so because they were scared off because of Dawn Aponte's gender, then I'm glad they didn't take the job.