What's the gender demographic of your team leadership?

[abigailthefox]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

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

Formalizing leadership also helps resolve disputes. If a student is qualified and well-suited to lead, and is offered such a positions and accepts, they deserve respect as a leader. FRC is full of teenagers, who might not be the most complacent to a student leader in the same way they would be an adult (not every teen is this way, and some teams don't really have this problem, but it does happen). Offering a formal position can come with an outline of "here are your responsibilities, and here are your privileges". For example, maybe a CAD leader can delegate CAD duties to people on a CAD team. While all team members have input, the delegation and final approval of parts might be the responsibility of the CAD lead. If the CAD lead is given an actual title and formal position, as well as some authority to make the decisions in their jurisdiction, things often flow quite smoother, and the design process can be streamlined.


This year, the person leading our CAD was not really given any way to enforce their responsibilities. Thus, people who disagreed with the CAD lead didn't bring their ideas or designs to her to discuss before finishing them and adding them to the final assembly. Soon enough, a few weeks had passed, and there was no time to go back. Despite the frequent queries from the CAD lead to inspect and discuss design ideas FIRST, the design ended up being cobbled together. Consequently, the mechanical parts constructed from those designs didn't work very well together.

TL;DR: Actual leadership titles and responsibilities that are actively backed up by mentor support can really matter when disagreements arise

[NickKerstens]

There's already been a significant amount of great conversation and well written points made in this thread, but I thought it would still be worth putting my and my team's two cents in.

One major change that our team faced this year was how most of our veteran members either graduated or left the team, leaving us with an abundance of rookie members that knew little to nothing about FRC, FIRST or even STEM for that matter.

Because of this, along with other factors influenced by the amount of team drama built up over the past few years, 4343 opted against creating leadership roles for each department of the team (finance, electrical, etc.) and instead only having two student-lead positions: Director and Assistant Director. The Assistant Director role is filled by two students rather than one, lightening the load on the Director and the Assistant Director.

These positions are filled through a written application including a resume, cover letter, and three references, with an unbiased third-party interview with applicants conducted later. Our director for the First Stronghold season is Male, and both of the co-assistant directors are Female. On 4343 we don't consider gender when the selecting the candidate, and we have had Females holding the top position in the past.

It's also worth noting that it's more common of the female members on our team to demonstrate and utilize leadership qualities, regardless of their experience or knowledge. When they want to get things done, they get things done!

[kristinweiss]

Originally Posted by Pauline Tasci

Honestly,
In a way this thread is backtracking on everything women have STEM have worked for.

We want to be recognized as just engineers.
Not these special creatures that need to be shown in a public eye.

Defining your leadership based on gender IS NOT moving the fight for equality forward

It makes the gap larger.

THIS! It shouldn't matter if your leadership is male or female as long as they are the most qualified and best suited individuals to lead the team. As soon as you start pushing people into roles, especially if you try to push girls into technical/ leadership roles they are not going to self commit to, you are just hurting your team and making the gender equality gap larger. If you truly want to help women in STEM, don't give them special treatment or recognition just because they are females doing the same things males are doing.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by NorthernTaco

THIS! It shouldn't matter if your leadership is male or female as long as they are the most qualified and best suited individuals to lead the team. As soon as you start pushing people into roles, especially if you try to push girls into technical/ leadership roles they are not going to self commit to, you are just hurting your team and making the gender equality gap larger. If you truly want to help women in STEM, don't give them special treatment or recognition just because they are females doing the same things males are doing.

That isn't what this thread is about at all. Complaining about identifying girls/women in FRC leadership is like complaining about studies that examine gender variations in business and academia. We can't know what isn't measured or investigated, and just because something shouldn't matter doesn't mean that it doesn't. We can't assess this one way or another without developing hypotheses and ways to collect good data.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Pauline Tasci

Defining your leadership based on gender IS NOT moving the fight for equality forward

It makes the gap larger.

We do not define our leadership on gender; we strive to base it on dedication and leadership ability. However, as the primary mission of FIRST is to inspire, we should look at who we are inspiring, and who we are not inspiring. These sort of statistics help identify those who we may be able to reach but currently are not -- and inspiring those who begin on (or outside) the margins of STEM makes a greater difference, certainly in improving the STEM workforce and probably in promoting equality.

[Pauline Tasci]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

the margins of STEM makes a greater difference, certainly in improving the STEM workforce and probably in promoting equality.

My entire point is that to promote equality you can't also promote being a female in STEM is special.
We want to change a culture and make women feel more comfortable in STEM from a young age, but to make us feel truly equal we need to stop bringing our gender into everything we do.
I just want to be a leader, an engineer, an inspiration to ALL.

This clip shows my feelings on the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dek5HtNdIHY

[Madison]

Mod note --

Can we please avoid rehashing a debate that's happened here many times previously and focus the discussion on the original questions?

If you feel strongly about discussing effective methods for promoting STEM careers to girls and young women, please search and revisit an existing discussion (e.g., http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=147043)

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Madison

Mod note --

Can we please avoid rehashing a debate that's happened here many times previously and focus the discussion on the original questions?

If you feel strongly about discussing effective methods for promoting STEM careers to girls and young women, please search and revisit an existing discussion (e.g., http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=147043)

Originally Posted by Madison

This is bizarrely passive aggressive and not at all helpful.

welp

I'm not the police but if the impression Pauline got from the thread was that this thread did a disservice to the community because of some implications, it should probably be discussed?

I guess she could go to the thread that you linked; it just so happens that it was one that was filled with some impressive posts like this one on why we should be ok with gender-based harassment at events

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Lets keep in mind that this is natural.

There are quite a few socially awkward male and females in robotics so these situations can get worse. And, the lack of females with the interest can extenuate the situation but regardless this is life.

I am not advocating for creepy behavior but normal flirting and tries at a relationship with other members or members from other teams are to be expected.

We all are high school students after all.

and this shiner of why thinking this behavior is terrible and shouldn't exist is "unrealistic"

Originally Posted by Philip Arola

Yes, life sucks. That's been plain to me for years. As a mentor, you acknowledge that you don't want the students' life to suck. Great. I don't know if this is an uncharacteristically blunt post of yours, but it seems that you're far too unrealistic with what you want life to be like. There are lots of things that are bad that girls, indeed, all teenagers, even all people have to deal with. Even if change is what you are working towards, it is shortsighted and irresponsible to not teach them how to deal with it in the meantime.

Culture change? This statement implies that FIRST (and even more unrealistically, STEM) is monolithic. Not only is this a fundamental untruth at a team level, but on a geographic level. This is a cop-out, a meaningless phrase.

but I mean, whatever. I guess that was an acceptable level of discourse for Chief Delphi, but not this tangent. Gazing into the crystal ball of the Chief Delphi Moderating Corps would probably render me blind and mute.

---

I believe Pauline's concerned with this solicitation of information potentially being weaponized into an objectifying statistic. It's not a position I agree with, but I see where it's coming from. On 422 our senior leadership historically identifies around 1/3 female, 2/3 male. As more people have joined the team, I expect throughout leadership next year we'd be at 50/50. It's not consciously based on how the members of the team identify their sex or gender, but the underclassmen girls are pretty much the only reason we executed a successful program this year.

[evanperryg]

Total team members: 50-something
Total number of girls: 12
Co-captains: 1 male, 1 female
Asst. captain: male
Scouting leaders: 2 male
Mechanical leaders: 1 male, 1 female
Programming leader: male
Electrical leader: male
Business/Outreach leader: female

Total number of active mentors: 15
Female mentors: 4
2338 alums: 3
No engineering background: 3

EDIT: oops, I messed up and posted in the wrong thread. All these threads about the same thing is getting confusing. Here's that post:

I'm an awkward high school student (well, high school graduate now I guess) and awkward people do awkward things. But, just because I'm awkward doesn't give me the excuse to flirt with people unnecessarily. Although I've had ample opportunity to flirt, I wouldn't consider it. Why? FIRST competitions are a mostly-professional setting (For the sake of keeping this on-topic I'll skip why I said "mostly"), and keeping it professional means keeping it in your pants. Now, that doesn't mean avoiding girls like the plague, trying to make sure you don't come off as "flirty," as that would just perpetuate the issue of alienating girls in FIRST, and in STEM as a whole. Even if you don't intend on flirting with someone, basic perception of body language can tell you if someone thinks you're flirting with them. Know when to chill out, and don't overstep boundaries. If something does go too far, then yes, the offending party should be disciplined.

Some food for thought: We have FTC teams that all prospective FRC students who didn't participate in FLL spend one season with before they become a part of the FRC team the next year. (basically, if you were in FLL, you can join FRC in your first year of high school robotics. If not, you do FTC your first year and FRC for the remaining years) I noticed something kind of interesting, though- the proportion of girls on the FTC teams was much higher than the FRC team. This would seem to indicate that the issue of getting girls involved with FIRST is due to the environment on a FIRST team, not recruiting methods. It could also indicate that somewhere in the difference between FTC and FRC lies the reason FRC teams struggle to retain girls. So, what could a team do to make their shop, and general team dynamic, more welcoming to women?

[caume]

3324 used to be majority female, but since our women in engineering workshops, that has begun to change. In the 2015-2016 school year, our team of ~65 students had about 2/3 females. Over 75% of our leadership team was female.

Here is the breakout for main leads(non-assistant leads):
Project Manager - F
Treasurer - F
Secretary - F
Robot Lead - F
Mechanical Lead - F
Design Lead - F
Co-Electrical Lead - M
Co-Electrical Lead - F
Programming Lead - M
Strategy and Scouting Lead - F
Fundraising Lead - F
Media Lead - M

Our Drive Team for 2016:
Primary Driver - M (me )
Secondary Driver - F
Human Player - F
Driver Coach - M

[dirtbikerxz]

Our team only had 3-4 girls maximum each year (given we only have 7-12 students combined each year) throughout the 5 years of our existence. Most of the time they are simply not actively involved enough to be in leaderships roles (simply the fact). The one role that is sometimes filled by a female is media head (person who takes care of all the media stuff to report back to school/social accounts), but this year even that role was filled by a male.