I guess a male counterpart would be sawing and chopping wood. You can do excersizes to create muscles that look like the muscles resulting from chopping wood, or you can chop actual wood.
You will probably have much nicer muscles, with the excersizes. If you chopped wood, then you would have the wood, but you also risk chopping your fingers off and you probably won't stop chopping until all of the wood is chopped, even if you're exhausted and half-frozen. And then someone can come and steal the wood. And you won't be able to burn the wood, effectively, for months or years. And it may rot, in the meantime.