This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
As someone who'se been in guilds of all types, been in positions of all types within those guilds, and even been a guild leader myself, I have a few (more than, but I'll be brief) observations.First of all, male leaders tend to be more laid back, even lazy. Female leaders tend to be more proactive, but even slightly obnoxious about it.I (as a female) have been a guild leader once, but I've been a raid leader a number of times. I'm currently one of the raid leaders of our guild. The other main raid leader is male. I have noticed male raid leaders tend to be a little more patient, and female raid leaders a little more micromanaging. I try to be the former, not the latter, but I fail at reiginging myself in some days.I've seen more male guild leaders, but when I SEE a male guild leader, I rarely see them take an active role in the guild, and sit more as a figure head. Again, I've been in *counts on fingers and toes* like 10 or 15 guilds? The female guild leaders tend to try to take on too much work for themselves, while males tend to delegate a considerable amount. This leads to male seeming to be lazy, and only stepping in while needed, and female leaders leaping into the fray immediately, but also burn out the quickest as leaders.This goes the same for raid leading. In guilds with predominatly female players, tend to prefer raid and guild leaders to also be female, while male officers and leaders tend to be at more of a loss on how to control the situation. In guild where there are mostly guys, they usually have at least one female in an officer or leader type position, as a voice of reason and someone to push other people to do their jobs. I'm not saying anything negative to either gender, but this has been my experience in the game over the last 6 years. As a side note: The reason I have been in so many guilds, is the break down of guilds over expansions, major patch changes, bad temperments, and any other number of reason for guild breaks downs. The guild break downs do not seem to be related to wether the leaders were male or female, but rather the management style of the leaders as a whole, or the unability to cope with changes this game has put forth. I have noticed that females tend to take things more personally than males, but that males tend to instigate a lot of the problems. I could write books on the dynamics of each guild I've been in, given how much time and effort I spent in each one. I also admit my own temper in certain situations.
Another thing to take into consideration...is an investigation by comments to a forum post likely to give you an accurate answer on a question like this? Since people who come to communities like this and who decide to reply on topics like this tend to be quite a heterodyne group of people. I'm not trying to troll here or anything yust trying to help you analyse the data. Also choosing to look at the raidleader is likely to give slightly tilted results if you want to be able to apply it to leadership in general since different types of leadership tend to favour the sexes differently. Men are known for a more hands on, iron-fist kind of leadership which makes our better suited for raidleading where you have to take decisions on the fly and you want to have the kind of authority that people listen to you even if it might not be the best decision in this case (because having arguments mid-raid is even worse). This is the same kind of leadership that figure amongst people leading troops in the army. Now women on the other hand tend to be calmer, more diplomatic and more organized, attributes that are more suited for behind the scene management, like guild leaders or other people who organize the guild without taking up hands on command.Now I'm not saying that men can't do this and women can't do that because there's a big range of these abilities within the sexes but speaking on general terms this is the scenario we get. I'm also not saying that a battle general might be the best raidleader there is (in fact some of the best I've had have been quite the opposite), I'm yust speaking of observations I've made and that I believe are fairly accurate for the overall population of guilds.Now as you've probably figured most raidleaders I've had have been male (in fact only female I've had lead a raid was when my sister co-lead one with me). The ratio of officers on the other hand has been more or less 1:1 and if you compare it to the men:women ration in the guild as a whole I'd say it's probably been in favour of the women since there is slightly more men than women in WoW (or at least in the guilds I've been in).
My GM is female, and is usually the RL of the progression group, but most of the time the person who starts a raid in the calendar gets to be RL, even if the GM is in said group.
I don't think it really matters, anyone can be fantastic at their job in the raid or guild, regardless of gender.
Djane leads my raids, with plenty of girly screams from the raiding group :3
There have been a lot of replies to this and I couldn't possibly hope to personally respond to every single one. I unfortunately need to sleep. (damn this curse of flesh)There seems to be a bunch of themes running through the comments though and I'll try to address the most prevalent ones.I think that, you can't possibly attribute statistics to one individual, nor sweeping stereotypes. I think there are men and women that can possess any combination of attributes and personality features and behaviours and as such I don't think you can ever say "female raid leaders are better at X and worse at Y". Nor was that ever my intention or interest. I think that my curiosity simply lies in understanding the social dynamics at work.
we've got 4 raid leaders in our guild 2 are female 2 are male, but all are about similar in our leading styles, thus why we works so well as a guild :3
Regarding the question at hand, I am neither an officer nor a guild leader, but I until recently with Patch 4.0.1, led 5 different raids every week. It wasn't always because I was a girl, I don't think. I was consistently told that I do help keep the raids going, strategies were researched beforehand to keep things running smoothly, and poor players were replaced by the next week's worth of raiding.If anyone had problems with me leading a raid, I let others do it in my place; unfortunately those attempts led to disaster with disgruntled PUG raiders and a lack of communication from the "sub raid leaders" who tried to fill my shoes.Seemingly in WoW, it's not whether you're male or female as much. You -do- get the players who think that female = @#$%s = hawt = must hit on, but those at least on my server don't really exist. Especially with more and more usage of voice chat and ventrilo, it's about impossible to raid lead without revealing one's gender, but past a point, gender's irrelevant. My PUG raiders have told me that my voice calling out commands and cooldowns on vent is much more distinctive than any of the male raiders, for the most part. So they only pick out and listen to me. I'm not afraid to call someone out for screwing up; I'm not afraid of telling someone that their strat on this one fight doesn't mean everyone in the raid knows that strat, even if "it's how my guild does it and it works for us."I've played healer, main tank , and random anonymous ranged DPS, and from what I can tell at least, your experience in the game/fight is what raiders will pick up on the most not whether you can sing a high C note or not. It's something of the right combination of the mental state of mind to lead a pack of 9/24 other cats to herd, along with the confidence to lead and back up what you're saying, and subsequently prove it to the 9/24 other raiders in the group. Respect is earned and not given, after all.Needless to say though, spineless raid leaders don't last long as leaders, male or female.
I experience 2 kinds:- The pushy underskilled players with their LOLm8s. They try to bully better people into boosting them with severe demands and reserved loot. If the raid does not fill up fast enough their demands drop.- The patient and (somewhat) skilled players. They cling to some level of demands. If the raid does not fill up fast enough they cancel the enterprise.
There are actually quite a few women in the top of my guild, but the guild leader and two top officers (now kinda one top officer) are men.Generally, the raid leader is a woman in my guild, although she splits it about 60/40 between her and the Guildmaster.
I rarely know the gender of the raidleader. Not that it matters, nobody listens anyway.RL: Okay, now we go left.If a raid actually listened to the leader and the leader uses a workable strategy and tactics, it would be unbeatable.