What's the gender demographic of your team leadership?

[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?

[pfreivald]

Right now with 22 students, 4 female, we have a 50/50 split on leadership roles.

In 2010, with 14 females and 14 males, we had 75% male leadership.

In 2013, with 19 students, 4 female, we had a 100% female leadership team.

At least for 1551, there doesn't appear to be any kind of correlation. But then, this is the least cliquish and most peer-group mobile place I've ever even heard of.

[abigailthefox]

http://goo.gl/forms/xfaZb4RzCHCK9Ecv1

If anyone is interested, this is the link for a form about team demographics. If you could share this form with other teams who may not be on Chief Delphi, that would be great!!

[Siri]

Originally Posted by abigailthefox

http://goo.gl/forms/UfHiRtMQ5b4Nqyxa2

If anyone is interested, this is the link for a form about team demographics. If you could share this form with other teams who may not be on Chief Delphi, that would be great!!

Suggestions: 1) Change the wording to allow teasm to fill it out multiple times in order to provide data for different years. 2) Separate STEM and non-STEM leadership positions. Not because one is worse than the other, but because this is often a topic of discussion and would provide useful data.

[abigailthefox]

Originally Posted by Siri

Suggestions: 1) Change the wording to allow teasm to fill it out multiple times in order to provide data for different years. 2) Separate STEM and non-STEM leadership positions. Not because one is worse than the other, but because this is often a topic of discussion and would provide useful data.

Can do!

[abigailthefox]

http://goo.gl/forms/xfaZb4RzCHCK9Ecv1

Here is an updated link!

[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!

[indieFan]

I'd like to propose one other hypothesis as to why so many females end up in leadership positions on teams:

Females tend to see the bigger picture rather than focus on the details.

One of my previous teams which was co-ed tended to have females in leadership roles every year.

My other previous team was all-female, so it doesn't count.

My current team is looking at having 2 of three positions be female (actually named by current students and outgoing seniors) based on the leadership qualities the team came up with at the last meeting.

Interestingly, subsystems have been a mixed bag of being led by females and males. Some years we had some really strong, knowledgeable females, others it was heavily male dominated. But it truly was based on knowledge and wanting to lead it.

Finally, to address the mentors:
First team: 1 female (myself), 4 males, 1 male teacher (typical year)
All-girls team: 1 female (myself), 3 males, 1 female teacher (non-technical)
Current team: 1 female (myself), 1 male, and 1 female teacher (currently teaching robotics and programming at the HS, but learning FRC)

One thing that NONE of my teams has ever done has said, "You can or can't do that based on your gender." It has always been, "You can do this, let me show you how," or "You can't do that because it isn't safe," or "You should do this because it's a better way."

I was lucky to grow up with a mother that encouraged my to follow my own preferences. She wanted a girl that she could dress up, instead she got a tomboy. There's a great picture of me at age 2 or 3 in a dress standing on a piece of wood climbing a brick wall in the yard. She always bought me Tonka trucks. She never said, "You can't be (blank) because you're a girl." Instead, she knew I wanted to learn to use my dad's table saw and scroll saw, so she asked another teacher at her school to come over and show me how to use them safely. Because of the environment that I grew up in, I have a hard time understanding females that say they are discouraged or told they can't do something.

And, for the record, she still tries to get me to dress up and wear make-up and jewelry. I'm better about dressing up for holidays, but make-up and jewelry are still arguments. *LOL*

[Green Potato]

Our team is approximately 35% female, and I'd say leadership and drive team are roughly the same. If you sum up our 3 top leadership positions, our CTO, CEO, and CCOO, and the drive team, 2/6 are female: the CCOO and the primary driver.

[jajabinx124]

Team 2052 this year is 35% female counting all students. 80% of our captains this year were female. For next year 40% of our captains are female.

[Europa]

The number of girls on my team has definitely increased with the growth of the team over the past four years. We have had a female presidents in charge of the team for the last three years. Even though our team is only around 20%-25% female, we have always had a more equal number of girls in leadership. This year, we have girls in the roles of President, Director of Business, and Directory of Outreach, and Secretary. We also have girls co-leading in all but one of our five tracks.

[smitikshah]

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.

I think by recognizing that there is a disparity between genders in leadership positions will help us move forward and address those issues by their root causes.

As a woman in STEM, and one that loves engineering, I don't find the lack of women in STEM due to how people are treating us per say. I don't think that kind of oppression exists, especially in the FRC community.

I just think it's the lack of women currently in the community, due to girls traditionally not thinking of it as their place. Now by showing the world how females can be such great STEM leaders, it helps to show girls what they can do. I don't think it really has to do with putting us in such a public eye, but more with inspiring younger generations.

I think by recognizing females in the community as the leaders they are will help boost long term female enrollment, closing that gap.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by smitikshah

I think by recognizing that there is a disparity between genders in leadership positions will help us move forward and address those issues by their root causes.

I agree, the issue here is root causes and future efforts, and what we need are hypotheses and more complete data.

For instance, 1640 is another team in which women are traditionally equally or over-represented in merit-based STEM leadership positions. I'm drawn to the hypothesis that this has to do with the baseline difficulty of joining and staying in a male-heavy environment and discipline. I thus wonder how common the over-representation phenomenon is, and I'd be interested in studies that scientifically test hypotheses like it.

If this hypothesis has merit, there are major actionable recruitment implications. On its face the ability to encourage representative STEM leadership in young women would seem indicative of a team's success in that area--but in fact it could point to extreme gender differences in attrition and recruitment. We could be losing countless girls on the margins that might have joined if they were male. There many stones like this that we cannot afford to leave unturned, and we cannot properly assess our ability to foster STEM involvement and leadership across both genders without accounting for variables like these.

Originally Posted by smitikshah

As a woman in STEM, and one that loves engineering, I don't find the lack of women in STEM due to how people are treating us per say. I don't think that kind of oppression exists, especially in the FRC community.

There are 78,000 students in FRC this year and 3.4 billion women on Earth. Please don't make such sweeping generalizations. I personally had an older mentor discourage me from STEM as an FRC student, not to mention a few male students. I've handled many cases like this from other FRC girls. And treatment outside FRC? Whoa. I hate to say this, but give it time as you grow up. (You're a full decade younger than me.)

[Chief Hedgehog]

4607 is 40% female and leadership is 50/50.

[abigailthefox]

Reading through these posts gives me some ideas. Would anyone be willing to take a survey on their team demographics? I'm interested in seeing some relationships, and looking at some of the theories proposed here.