There were many lingua francas of which French was supposedly the first global lingua franca. That changed and it became English (from what I understand). We will probably see another language become the lingua franca, so my question is: should it be English? Are there better candidates out there? Why / why not?
This isn’t gender though, this is just personification. The thing about grammatical gender is that it is *not* personification. For instance, Germans don’t view a table has having some kind of male quality, nor do the French view a table as being somehow female.