The AFL. Nope, not the American Federation of Labor, the now-defunct American Football League or the still-kicking Australian Football League. Brittany McDonough played boy’s ice hockey in high school and in her second year on the team, created the All Female Line (The AFL) as the second line. (As she says, “We were great!)
Brittany, the manager of Business Development for the Massachusetts Office of International Trade and Investment (MOITI), shared the term in a conversation about an upcoming event. The panelist were both women…an AFL. It’s just something that happened because the awesome people in the appropriate roles happened to be women. And, with a two-person panel, this happens.
Meanwhile, mathematician Greg Martin has analyzed the probability that a speakers’ lineup including one woman and 19 men could be random and not the product of bias. Check out the fantastic interview with him in The Atlantic.