How did this happen!?!?! 7 new girls in a team of ~20

[sanddrag]

So, right now our team is in total approximately 20 students large including the new students and including one girl returning from last year. Of 8 new students the team took in for the 2006 season, 7 of them are girls! So now we have 8 girls in a team of roughly 20 students. How on Earth did this happen? We have NEVER had this many girls on the team. I don't know what the team did to make this happen, but I'm excited. I hope they all stick with it. We already have at least one learning programming, and at least another one learning Inventor, and there's no doubt a few of them will be building field parts, and most likely one or two will be machining. How exciting huh!?!?

Has anyone else had a strange happening similar to this one?

[KathieK]

Won't it be nice when FIRST finally reaches the stage where there are equal numbers of either gender on a team and it no longer catches our attention?

[santosh]

^That would be nice. Yeah, The Circuitrunners increased our female population by like 9 or ten girls this year. its pretty cool.

[Jon Jack]

The same thing happened to us this year. Last year we had 2 girls on a team of 16. This year our team gre to about 40-ish and half of our team is girls. Not only that but most of them don't want to do PR stuff, they all want to work on the robot.

[KathieK]

Not only that but most of them don't want to do PR stuff, they all want to work on the robot. WHAT??? Say it isn't so! What's this world coming to, girls wanting to work on the robot??? :eek:

[Koko Ed]

WHAT??? Say it isn't so! What's this world coming to, girls wanting to work on the robot??? :eek:
Viva the revolution!

[OnyxFox]

You'd be suprised but from what I see females are more opnionated, they tend to be more vocal. What I'm trying to say is that it might get a bit catty now and than.

[KathieK]

I wouldn't say that females are more "opinionated" but if we are generalizing, yes, females may express those opinions vocally while males may be more physical in expressing theirs. I REALLY hate categorizing people by gender or anything else for that matter.

But that's my OPINION. ;)

And here it is, almost 2006 and I can't believe this conversation is happening.

[Ebolagirl]

We have four girls on our team currently. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it's more than Purple Haze has ever had before. We do just as much as the boys do too. I am the only Inventor person on the team. I am also "head" scout, and I do all sorts of robot and field building. For our other competition, BEST, I was also a driver. One of the other girls is our battery guy. The other two do building and miscellaneous administrative work that none of the guys want to do (like documentation). It is also because of us that our team displays any sort of appearal coordination on competition days. We take care of the spirit stuff, etc. The only thing we need now is a female programmer. I'll have to find one somewhere. Girls rule!!!

[Francis-134]

From my experience, the number of girls on our team has snowballed. It started with a few people and as word got around, more have joined. Personally, it seems as though girls have some apprehensions when it comes to joining FIRST, but after they see a few of their friends doing it, they get more interested.

[Jessica Boucher]

It just happens. Although recruitment efforts do have some effect, there are a lot of outside forces that could affect the team without even knowing.

This is true not only for the female/male demographic, but also for classes, race, education level, family income, etc. We're still such a young organization with a non-franchise layout...thus it's really tough to figure out a why, but congratulations!

As for the rest of this thread, back on topic, ladies and gents. All those demographic slicings not only have their weaknesses, but their positives...and it's easier to learn how to handle them now than later in life.

[tribotec_ca88]

Similar to our team's case...last year there were 5 of us, and since we had no senior gals all five remained on the team til this day. Then along came 4 more out of nowhere lol... I won't deny it, i'm thrilled with the idea. At times it seems as if the guys somehow tend to "take over"...not with the intention of leaving us out of things, but in our case they seemed to want to be more influential when it comes to making decisions. In other words, i got the impression that they always got the final call.
Not that numbers are all that important, mind you...either way it pleases me to see a sudden spark of interest from new students...but an increase in female participants has always been somewhat appealing...

[Lisa Rodriguez]

Girls on team = good
but don't forget, we can also appreciate the guys too, even though there's lots of them
Like Mrs K said, hopefully someday we won't even notice that "so many girls" are joining the team......as for right now, w00t kids are joining teams!!

guy, don't forget not to scare the new girls :p

[Goober!!!]

My team (1501) has no girls on the team and i don't know why??? but 1501 had 7 last year and now we have doubled to 14 i think i have lost count!!! :D :D :D

[Ashley Christine]

I cant wait to hear the ratios for this year, it really does seem like there are more girls. Its exciting.:)

[dhitchco]

Keep in mind that the ratio of boys-to-girls (or men to women) on any team SHOULD be 50/50.

And.....that includes 50/50 split doing the driving, or 50/50 doing the mechanical......the rations shouldn't be biased by things like "let the girls do the spirit stuff".

It's the sharing in the learning process that really counts once you get to the business world! It will never be equal, but it's a graciously-professional goal to aspire to...

[Dan Zollman]

Though this is our FIRST team's first year, the team is part of the larger Lower Merion Technology and Engineering Club. This is the fourth year of the club's existence.
In the first three years of the Tech & Eng Club, the president was a girl. We also had up to three other girls in the club in any one of those years. The club started with around ten people, and last year it went up to 40 or 50.
This year, the club's numbers suddenly rocketed up to over 100 and became the second biggest school organization (about 6% of the school's population). We're not sure why, but it's partly because of a) the large incoming freshman class, and b) the recently started TSA team in the middle school from which some of our freshman members come. This doesn't explain why the increase was so large.
The point is that we also have about 25 girls in the larger club, some of which are on the FIRST team. This is a jump from 2 to 25, while the overall club went from under 40 to above 100.
In short, yes, we have a lot more girls in the club this year.

[Ebolagirl]

I made a post earlier (#9) and since then our team numbers have exploded (for now at least, we'll see what it's like in the middle of build). We have 5 new people that I have counted, 2 of which are girls!! We're a growing team...

[nehalita]

I think an addition of girls is good for the team. No matter how hard we try t avoid it, girls and guys work differently (mentally, verbally, physically) and that's a diversity that I think is needed. A nice mix means more things are assessed and possibly adjusted.

[Mike]

Keep in mind that the ratio of boys-to-girls (or men to women) on any team SHOULD be 50/50.

And.....that includes 50/50 split doing the driving, or 50/50 doing the mechanical......the rations shouldn't be biased by things like "let the girls do the spirit stuff".

It's the sharing in the learning process that really counts once you get to the business world! It will never be equal, but it's a graciously-professional goal to aspire to...
Umm... no.

I hate it when people say for a certain area to be truly "gender-bias free" it must be 50/50 split. If 10 girls join the team, and all 10 of those girls want to do marketing, let them do marketing. Similarly, if they all want to do mechanical, let them do mechanical. Make sure that they really want to do marketing, and not that they are just intimidated by being a girl on the mechanical team.

There should never be a time when someone says "We need gender equality, therefore you have to be on the mechanical team." If a person likes to do mechanical work, let that person do mechanical work. If a person like to do public relation work, let that person do public relation work. Don't let their gender come into play whatsoever.

[GaryVoshol]

1188 took 6 girls and 5 guys to Atlanta last year. It didn't help that some of our guys had grade problems, and were suspended. The drive team was all girls, plus a woman engineer coach. They were asked several times if they were from an all-girls school.

This was after 4 years of my daughter being on an all-girl FLL team. (That came about because when they organized, there were too many for one team, and the boy/girl split was about 50/50, so they divided up that way.) The girls got sick of hearing, "You're an all girl team?" GP prevented them from answering how they wanted, "Yeah, don't you think girls can do this?" They proved they could do it by being runner up for State Director's trophy in their second year, and winning it in both their 3rd and 4th year.

[BandChick]

We took about 8 girls to Atlanta last year. I'm excited to see the numbers for this year. We have at least 3 new students thanks to one of the girls on our team. She basically bothered her friends all year to join, and they've stayed so far! :D Danielle even wants to learn how to wire the robot, and she's the head of our media committee. Chrissi is the head of our spirit committee and Sarah is the head of our Records & Business committee. Carli (who I hope will be back on our team soon!) is the head of our Fundraising/Events Planning Committee. So who says girls aren't essential to a team? 1089's girls are!

I agree with Mike. Our girls prefer to do the spirit, media, marketing stuff, but we do make sure to include them in building if they want to be involved. The best part about our team is we strive to let everyone have an opinion. This year we divided up into four groups to strategize and start brainstorming our robot design, the girls had the most to say.

[sciencenerd]

I haven't counted, but it seems this year 1318 has at least as many girls as guys. Last year we had two girls that came to Portland with us, and another that was involved with the build. We lost a couple, but got... many* more.

*I can't count worth beans. It is one of my flaws. :rolleyes:

[nkauj_ntxoo16]

That's really awesome to hear. :ahh:

For the past couple of years that I've been on the team, continuing with my third year, there has been some changes. Currently, we have been having more girls on the team than boys. Out of 28 students, 15 of them are girls while the other 13 are boys. Last year, we had one more girl on the team than boys. I do wonder what will happen in the near future.

[santosh]

The Georgia Robotics Alliance, a team comprised of students who are homeschooled kids and kids whose schools don't have enough money to start their own teams., is about 80% girls.

[StephLee]

Our team had 11 members last year, 2 girls and 9 guys. Two of the guys left for different reasons, and now we've gained 3 new members. All girls. As far as I know, we didn't gain any new guys this year. So now there are 7 guys and 5 girls, which is a good ratio as far as I'm concerned.

[Jak DiGriz]

Wow, Sandragg, our team had a really similar experience this year! We had some 25 or so members last year, and only one was a girl. This year the mentor wanted to sort of equalize the gender balance and practiced affirmative action, which is pretty dumb and would not be tolerated in the working environment (There were a number of well, more than qualified male applicants wishing to be exposed to the world of engineering, and their dreams were denied for the "greater good" of balancing the genders... and by the way most of the girl applicants were not voluntary applicants. Rather, the mentor pressured them into joining. Oh well, I guess it's ok to practice gender-biased acceptance).

So, all of the veterans who graduated and went off to college were replaced mostly by female rookies. We got only 1 new male rookie, and maybe 9 female rookies. Is it possible that suddenly all the males became idiots and couldn't fill out an application for robotics? I don't think so. Affirmative action.

Hey, and I'll state two facts:

1. This year we had maybe 25 members, maybe 10 of which were female.
2. We had more internal team communication/management/fabrication problems than EVER BEFORE.
3. Our robot didn't get finished, we had to scrap a crapload of stuff, and basically a lot of stuff never got done.

You put 2 and 2 together.

Now, DON'T GET ME WRONG. I'm all about women in robotics... in fact some of the greatest engineers were women! What I am NOT ABOUT is practicing non-EOE style employment with gender-bias! IT IS AN INSULT TO FIRST ROBOTICS to do this. If a female wants to join a FIRST team, the bar should not be lowered to let her in (as in our situation). She should demonstrate the same qualities and meet the same requirements as the next applicant, male or female.

Now, Sandragg, how were your girls accepted? Did they get any special acceptance treatment?

-A supporter of Equal Opportunity Employment

[Sila741]

Our team is all girls and pretty solid. We work well together. What I am annoyed by is the fact that people linger over this more than our actual performance. We got some publicity at our regional that, in my opinion, should have gone to other teams. Jak, you are right. If a competent and interested girl wants to join your team, good for her. But uninterested or worse, inocompetent, girls should not be pressured or allowed to join simply for the sake of having female members. I can't wait for the day when it isn't so special that a team has new girls, when the fact that they have new people is more important..

[Dan Petrovic]

Won't it be nice when FIRST finally reaches the stage where there are equal numbers of either gender on a team and it no longer catches our attention?

A few years ago there were actually more girls on the team than guys.

Times have changed...