What's the gender demographic of your team leadership?

[bmoore]

Originally Posted by 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.

If there's anywhere you're gonna get the data, I think it would be here. Unfortunately, it's probably going to end up a bit skewed due to what types of teams are on Chief Delphi. I would also be really interested in such demographics and I'd be happy to pass it along to other Minnesota teams that may not see it here.

[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.

[abigailthefox]

Our team membership consists of ~25% girls this year, which is way down from last year. Most of last year's outgoing seniors were female, which brought down the percentage quite a bit for this year. Also, we did major recruitment last year, and our team is larger than it's ever been, but most of the new recruits were male (some females, but many stopped coming due to involvement in other activities).

That said, our leadership is predominantly female.

Leadership positions:
Team Captain: female
Mechanical Lead: female
Programming Lead: female, male
Media Lead: male
Strategy Lead: female
Social Media Lead: female
Safety Lead: female
Communications Lead: female

7/8 of our leadership positions were female. Our leads are chosen by nominations, elections, and confirmation by our lead mentor, so girls don't have positions just because they're girls.

I would attribute this partly to the higher maturity levels of girls in high school, at least on our team. Many of the boys who sought positions, and weren't elected remain bitter and upset about it...nearly a year later. Overall, I would say on our team, girls bring a higher level of maturity and dedication to the team, and therefore win lead positions.

Additional Info:

Drive team:
Driver: male
Manipulator: female
Human Player: male
Drive Coach: male

Last year's leadership:
Leadership positions:
Team Captain: female, male
Mechanical Lead: female
Programming Lead: male
Media Lead: female
Safety Lead: female
Communications Lead: male

A little more balanced, 4/7 were female. The drive team makeup last year was demographically identical to this year (including respective positions).

[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.