So, first of all,
samatha just means
calm or
calm abiding. It's a quality of mind or a quality of the meditation, not something one "does". And when samatha or vipassana are referred to in the Pali suttas by the Buddha, they're mentioned as qualities that
both must be present in meditation leading to awakening. More
here.
Samatha should be distinguished from
samadhi, which means
concentration. In the Pali suttas, this is another aspect of awakening, namely the one that follows upon right mindfulness. In the decades and centuries following the Buddha's death, apparently "concentration practice" became it's own thing, until by Buddhaghosa's time in the 5th century, he's describing two, distinct, maybe even mutually exclusive practices - prajjna and jhana - which lead to different ends. This way of looking at things seems to have been corrected somewhat by the concept of
vipassana jhana, though what U Pandita calls "vipassana jhana" is probably just what the Buddha called "jhana", i.e., meditation itself.
Still, if you go to a retreat center like IMS, you might be quickly disabused of the idea that jhana is regarded as feminine. I was told on a retreat there that jhana is the meditation equivalent of authoritarian communism - hardly a goddess-centered, matriarchal image - which, unlike vipassana (= good, feminine, passive, meek), cannot help you in your day-to-day life. And if you want to get better at life, do a practice like vipassana which makes you supple, accepting of your inability to do anything, accepting of your inability to change anything, accepting of your utter defeat as a human being, accepting of your pale, nearly-translucent complexion, on-the-verge-of-death, etc., and don't waste your time doing manly, macho, controlling practices like jhana, which are brutal and don't help anyway.
If you find John Peacock's lectures on dependent-origination, they're otherwise very informative, but he jhana-bashes in there, too. He says things like, concentration just forces the mind to do something, it doesn't help you gain wisdom.
The weirdness surrounding jhana goes all the way back to Buddhaghosa. Open up the Vissudhimagga, and he says only one in a million can enter jhana, so you wonder why you'd even bother. But then you open up the Pali suttas, and Buddha never, ever says "go do vipassana", he always says "go jhana" (as a verb - I can't remember the verb form), which is really the only meditation he ever tells anyone to do. And people are doing the jhanas left and right, getting awakened
as a result of doing them, and one is just left wondering how things could have gone so wrong.
But why are you even worrying about this? Have you even gotten over the A&P yet? Where's your actual practice at?