What's the gender demographic of your team leadership?

[GeeTwo]

Quite similar to many of the posts I've seen above - last year, all of our veteran female team members were in leadership positions, including team captain, drive coach, and head of programming. Our team is recently about 25% female, but that fraction moves towards 50% at the leadership levels.

Despite a few attempts at targeted recruitment, all of our female mentors to date have been non-technical.

Edit (hopefully obviously):

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS

Hopefully not derailing the thread here:



Some reasons I see things like this happening to females who are completely capable of mentoring in technical roles:
1) Someone believes that they are not as qualified to do/mentor X as someone else - this could be the lady in question or someone else on the team
2) They don't have the energy/don't care enough to "prove" that they can mentor X
3) The team needs mentors in the non-technical roles that the person either is pushed into or settles into (see 1 and 2)

and possibly relevant to your specific problem: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=14

We do recruit mentors with skills we need, regardless of gender. We get all three of your points above with male recruits as well; we have a mechanical PhD and a pneumatics tech/former electrician (both male) who are doing mostly non-technical functions the last year.

[Katie_UPS]

Hopefully not derailing the thread here:

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Despite a few attempts at targeted recruitment, all of our female mentors to date have been non-technical.

Some reasons I see things like this happening to females who are completely capable of mentoring in technical roles:
1) Someone believes that they are not as qualified to do/mentor X as someone else - this could be the lady in question or someone else on the team
2) They don't have the energy/don't care enough to "prove" that they can mentor X
3) The team needs mentors in the non-technical roles that the person either is pushed into or settles into (see 1 and 2)

and possibly relevant to your specific problem: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=14

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by Madison

It might also be interesting to learn similar information about a team's mentors.

For the 2016 season, the CyberCards had four male mentors (three technical, one nontechnical) and five female mentors (three technical, two nontechnical).

We have not met another team with >50% female mentors - even the "all girls teams". I would love for somebody to prove me wrong!

We would love to find out similar data for other FRC teams. I'm not sure if HQ tracks mentor demographics or not; does anybody know who to contact for data?

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Taylor

We would love to find out similar data for other FRC teams. I'm not sure if HQ tracks mentor demographics or not; does anybody know who to contact for data?

We don't have student leadership on our team, really, so I don't have anything to contribute to that conversation.

With respect to our mentors, however, there are 7 women and 11 men. Two of the women are technical mentors. All 11 of the men are technical mentors. Our lead advisor is a woman.

[smitikshah]

Originally Posted by abigailthefox

http://goo.gl/forms/xfaZb4RzCHCK9Ecv1

Here is an updated link!

Maybe we should get a way to get more fair of a sampling throughout the community. Most people that see that link are those that go through this thread. I bet a lot of people are women and/or leaders on their respective teams, and so to get a less biased data we figure out how to distribute this link even outside of CD.

I really want to get an accurate representation to have an idea and think the survey is a wonderful idea! In fact, I was looking for these statistics somewhere just to get an idea about the topic myself.

For the distribution I'll send it to some teams I know in my area (that aren't that active on CD), and I hope others can do the same!

Can't wait for the data!

[Siri]

Originally Posted by smitikshah

Maybe we should get a way to get more fair of a sampling throughout the community. Most people that see that link are those that go through this thread. I bet a lot of people are women and/or leaders on their respective teams, and so to get a less biased data we figure out how to distribute this link even outside of CD.

I really want to get an accurate representation to have an idea and think the survey is a wonderful idea! In fact, I was looking for these statistics somewhere just to get an idea about the topic myself.

For the distribution I'll send it to some teams I know in my area (that aren't that active on CD), and I hope others can do the same!

Can't wait for the data!

I suggest betaing the questions first. Maybe give it a few days of submissions to ensure questions are worded well and cover everything worth asking. For instance, the thread has now brought up a similar question for mentors. Should the survey ask for this data as well?

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Madison

We don't have student leadership on our team, really, so I don't have anything to contribute to that conversation.

With respect to our mentors, however, there are 7 women and 11 men. Two of the women are technical mentors. All 11 of the men are technical mentors. Our lead advisor is a woman.

You don't have student leadership? That seems like a really big lost opportunity to teach new leaders.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

You don't have student leadership? That seems like a really big lost opportunity to teach new leaders.

Student leaders naturally emerge. We recognize that and will often give those students additional responsibilities and privileges, but the process for doing that isn't formalized.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Madison

Student leaders naturally emerge. We recognize that and will often give those students additional responsibilities and privileges, but the process for doing that isn't formalized.

Why not? A student leadership title is very helpful come college applications.

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Why not? A student leadership title is very helpful come college applications.

What's more important than students developing leadership skills for their college applications is simply the fact that they are developing leadership skills.

[Pauline Tasci]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Why not? A student leadership title is very helpful come college applications.

A student leader should not be chosen because it looks good on college apps, that's not what leadership is about.

Leadership is when anyone steps up to the plate and takes initiative for the improvement of their own team not for a line on their college apps.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Hallry

What's more important than students developing leadership skills for their college applications is simply the fact that they are developing leadership skills.

Well of course. I was more addressing the fact that they were leading without it being formalized.

[Knufire]

469 went a similar route. Instead of having formal leaders, those that lead naturally emerged and were respected all the same by their peers. Teamwork was one of the most important principles taught to the students; the team operated on the basis that everyone, mentor or student, was an equal member.

In terms of college applications, most of these student leaders (for the four years I was on the team) went to Michgan, MIT, or Rose to pursue an engineering degree, so I'd say the lack of formalized titles wasn't a detriment.

IMO, this process also avoided a lot of internal drama that afflicts other teams when leaders are chosen/elected for specific positions. It also reduces the amount of scramble when an elected/appointed leader doesn't furfull their duties; without formal leaders the responsibility natrually progresses to someone else.

To contribute to the original intent of the thread, 469 was roughly even on the gender split of student leaders when I was on the team. 5188 has always had a female team captain and non-engineering lead, and male mechanical and programming leads.

[5113sean]

Our team is over a third female. We have two co-presidents; a girl and a guy. Mechanical had mainly male leads this year, but next year, due to more freshmen girls joining, there should be more female leads. Our electrical lead for next year will probably be a girl. Our software lead this year was a guy. The marketing lead is a girl. Our Integration and Safety lead is a trans guy. Our girls tend to show up more and become core members (probably since we had a really tight group our rookie year and the girls are just really inviting and friendly). Really, whoever befriends marketing tends to stay for the long haul? Marketing is so nice, gosh!

[tab1a]

Thanks everyone who has responded so far! It's interesting to see the hypotheses about why in some teams, the girls seem to do quite well comparatively. The theory that the girls who can stick it out in a male dominated environment are also the girls who have the motivation to go for leadership and have leadership skills makes sense to me.

It's also interesting how people have observed that there's less girls on teams that are wishy-washy about their dedication to robotics. It's that way on our team also. We have so many boys that come about half the time and don't use their time very well, while most of the girls on our team are heavily involved.

By the way, I would really love to see the results of that survey!