A case study questioned essentialist feminist assumptions about the marginalization of females in technical writing courses. A student team composed of a female (Jane, the team leader) and three males enrolled in an advanced writing course required of juniors and seniors majoring in the applied sciences to investigate solutions to the student parking problem on campus. Data consisted of transcripts of audiotapes from two instructor-team conferences and team- and self-assessments written by the team members at the end of the course. While three members of the team, including the leader, emphasized the team's cooperative research and writing, all four members singled out Jane as their leader, indicating that the primary mode of collaboration for this group was hierarchical. All four members of the group recognized Jane's role as team leader; the difference lay in their depicting her leadership as democratic, motivating, or dominating. Jane may not fit the feminine role of "natural collaborator" advocated by some, but she did succeed where essentialist feminists theorize she would fail. (RS)