[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by rmiko

I've found that a lot of girls who do join the team are less assertive, motivated (whatever you want to call it). There are also far fewer females in leadership positions.

I have also felt that when I, as a female leader, try to be assertive, I get called bossy or catty.

You've touched on a really important point here. There is a social stigma against women leadership, especially in STEM, and women ambitious enough to plow through this stigma have to deal with an extra level of scrutiny that men do not. Your earlier point is probably related to this. Women are already breaking the traditional gender mold a bit by joining a STEM club. Seeking out and pushing for a leadership role invites unwanted scrutiny that students, who are still trying to figure out if STEM is right for them, don't want to deal with.

I don't want to elevate someone just for being female, but I feel this is relevant issue that my team doesn't talk about. Out of our mentors, 3 are male and help with building/designing/programming, 1 is male and helps with administration, and 2 are female and help with administration.

One of the effects of social dynamics, the "leaky pipeline" in STEM, etc. is that by the time professionals make it to the workforce, there are disproportionately fewer women in STEM. This makes the challenge of finding female STEM role models to mentor your team very difficult. I can tell you that having a confident, assertive female engineering mentor can make a world of difference in inspiring certain female students.

I feel like when I go to competitions, I see the same pattern. A handful (at most) of driven females on co-ed teams, and the rest are in supportive roles (not that being in supportive role isn't extremely helpful and useful). There are also very few female mentors, and even fewer technical ones.

I definitely notice this trend too. It's been a problem on my own team as well. We want to definitely be as welcoming as possible, and from what I can tell our work environment and attitudes aren't particularly hostile to women, but few end up joining our club. All of our technical mentorship is male, as has every person who has ever been on the drive team. One year, our team didn't have any female students at all. This year, we have two women on the team, both freshmen, who are some of our most driven and promising new members. I hope we continue to improve.

Teams may be surprised to find that their work environment is more hostile to women than they would ever expect. It doesn't take a lot, honestly. Tolerating sexist jokes, a lack of role models, an over-willingness to push women into the "administrative" roles (media / PR / etc) are all culprits.

By the way, check out this thread. It's a very eye opening look at the way female students are treated in FRC: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/28120

Originally Posted by fox46

I really don't think you have a male/female distinction here. On all teams there is a mix between core members and satellite members. Whether they are male or female in my experience is simply chance. For every group of 20 students there are typically about 5 (this of course is not a rule) who become heavily involved with the team. Motivating more students to become heavily involved is what I consider to be one of the biggest challenges in running a team.

You can't just erase the effects of gender on FRC team dynamics because you don't want to see it that way. This is the kind of thing you have to actively keep an eye out for, as it's really easy for an organization to subconsciously become exclusive.

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

We don't distinguish between gender because leadership has nothing to do with thee amount of chromosomes in ones body.

Gender doesn't either? You're thinking of genetic sex, which is a different thing.

While leadership ability doesn't depend on gender, the social norms and attitudes that affect how different genders are treated matter. Your team isn't immune to these.