What utter rubbish. So getting married isn't something compliment worthy? A compliment based on physical attractiveness is always sexist?
Absurd.
Nice strawmen.
In this context, the personal life of the person being introduced and their physical attractiveness has nothing to do with why they are here. At best it's completely off-topic.
Consider if it was a male presented being introduced with: "...he was an alcoholic when I met him, but now he's been 3 years sober". Completely irrelevant personal details that undermine the credibility of the person for at least some of the audience (not to mention making the person feel awkward).
It's a bloody startup presentation, not a congressional hearing. Making a nod at the person's personal life, on a subject that's typically cause for celebration (are you going to tell me "Congratulations on your new son/daughter" is sexist and eebil now) is somehow uncalled for?
>Consider if it was a male presented being introduced with: "...he was an alcoholic when I met him, but now he's been 3 years sober"
That's a really crappy example. The things we're talking about here are ostensibly positive.
No, but you'll need to find a way to not imply that that's all a woman is good for. This is not easy, so it's easier to just not mention it.
Maybe in a few generations when this isn't as much of a problem we can come back to it.
How in the hell do you read "All you're good for is having kids" into "Congratulations on getting married!"?
Again. Absurd.
There is a lot of tradition of impling that the most important thing for a woman is to be married. That's the whole thing. So when you mention, in a setting with few women (and hence more susceptible to sexism), that someone is married, it might sound half like the old ways.
There is a history women only being viewed as good for marriage and babies. It used to be seen as unusual & unnatural for a woman to not want babies and marriage. It was seen as weird for a woman to want to focus on carrer rather than marriage. Also they were viewed as "nice to look at, but unable to do any real work". Things have gotten a lot better, but there are still bits of this attitude around.
If you compliment a woman based on (a) getting married and (b) physical attractiveness, you are slightly re-inforcing that meme. You are also signaling that you might be the sort of person who thinks the above, or that you support the above attitudes.
After all, would you compliment a Jewish speaker about how much money they had? Or compliment an older man about how they haven't needed to go to the toilet in a while?