2016 Annual Conference

Roles, characteristics, and biases are associated with women as mandatory equipment where bureaucratic and political organizations deterministically integrate females into male dominant, high performing teams. This session explores adult learning in promoting individual and team mixed gender human performance optimization (HPO) under conditions of cultural change, chaos and uncertainty.

This session is of interest to organizations, institutions, and trainers conducting research or providing adult continuing education and leadership training to military units and high risk outdoor teams such as wild land fire fighting education teams with focus on HPO, the integration of females into male dominant teams, and team cohesiveness while under prolonged, uncertain, disruptive conditions.

Literature refers to this style of mixed gender management as "women as mandatory equipment" (Kay & Faberge, 2004; Rusch & Yeager, 2014). The session uses outdoor adventure racing and wild land firefighting team scenarios where historically male dominated teams are augmented with at least one female. These teams must then function in disruptive conditions over prolonged periods of days or weeks. In 2016, selected Army female officers undergo gender neutral training and integrate into previously exclusive male infantry, armor, and special operations teams. Female enlisted soldiers begin integration in 2017. The session explores previous research where deterministically mandated mixed gender teams face non-stop, self-sufficient, multi-day, environmentally harsh, mental and physically stressful conditions. Under these conditions, the lack of optimal team cohesiveness and poor HPO lead to mission failure and possibly injury or death. The session draws on qualitative research and literature on gender management, micro-aggressions, efficacies and resilience, cultural change, and biases regarding the roles of women within high performing teams or high reliability organizations (HROs). The session concludes with suggestions for facilitating adult learning to enhance mixed gender teams’ optimization.