This is an article written by myself about what the all female End of Round team at GP Cleveland meant to me and how it was everything I didn't know I needed. Hosted on Sean Cantanese's blog. Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/seacat/not-a-gimmick-gp-clevelands-all-women-judge-team/

Edited Meg Baum (July 4, 2017 12:18:10 AM)

Great article. I've retired from judging a while ago, but this was still an interesting read for me.

“Most of all I want to see the mindset change. Next time, or sometime in the future, I want, “Wow! Look, a team of all female judges!” to just be, “There’s one more team of professionals in this event.””

For this to happen, women in MtG and judging must not be a rarity anymore. There's only one solution: Get more women involved.

I don't believe there is a one size fits all solution. More women in magic would surely help, but it isn't the only solution. In doing a little research for the article I went back and looked at many GPs I have been to have had enough women to make a team like this happen. Numbers are not a prohibitive factor as much as they used to be.

Love the article! Really eye-opening to read about how different an all-female team is experienced.

For the first time since I started judging, I had gone a whole day without having someone on my team steamroll over me in a conversation. I didn’t have to worry a suggestion of mine would be taken as being bossy or too assertive.
…
Story after story of being unintentionally (or intentionally) belittled, of being boxed out of conversations, and it just went on and on. I asked them if they had ever received the feedback that they were intimidating, sometimes without being given a reason why, just that they intimidated other judges and players by simply being there and judging.

Just to clarify something, are the bolded parts (steamrolled/boxed out) a separate issue from the cursive parts (perceived as bossy/intimidating) and if so, is the first one solved when the second is solved, or does the first require its own measures as well? If you can be assertive without that being seen as negative, will you not be steamrolled like that anymore?

Put another way, if I were to summarize the Practical Tips for the Clueless Person I would currently say:

1. Do not help women more than you would help men (when they're doing their jobs)
   
2. Don't judge women for being just as assertive as men.
   

Or should that otherwise be:

1. same as above
   
2. same as above
   
3. ???
   

This brings us to the next part: How this event made me feel. Emotion isn’t something a judge usually brings to an event. Our feelings are usually outside the expected topics of conversation. It’s a professional environment for judges. We’ve been hired to do a job. But at the end of the day, how I felt was all I could talk about.

I believe feelings are not often topics of judge conversations because the game itself is very attractive to logical-minded people, so when talking about the thinking vs feeling personality trait many of us will fall in one of the personality types for which emotions simply have less focus. Less urge to discuss it. But that should not withhold others from doing that if it's important to them!

Just wondering, is this perhaps another topic worth discussing? The role and perception of emotions and feeling in the judge program? I kinda get the vibe from the above that you feel you need to justify/explain bringing feelings into the discussion, but maybe I'm completely off here.

Edited Toby Hazes (July 14, 2017 08:52:52 AM)