What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

Was it removed by the OP, snowflake?

Or was it nixed by the moderators?

I thought we were having some good discussion there, and I learned a lot about different viewpoints and issues present in the FIRST community that I had previously not been aware of.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

The OP deleted it. I would consider it a closed issue.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

Fair enough. I wish it hadn't been deleted though. But if that's the way she wants it.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

Maybe someone should consider creating a similar thread but more for discussion of issues instead of a personal narrative.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

How about this thread?

I don't know what sort of discussion was involved the the original thread but I'll add something.

I was a judge at a couple of FLL and FTC events last fall. At one event (probably an FLL event but I don't remember for sure) I asked the team how they were organized.

The answer was: "The boys designed the robot and the girls designed the T-shirts." I was so surprised by the answer I didn't know how to react.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

There are cached copies floating around on Google if you wish to read the original thread.

Seems that we, as an entire community, have a lot of work to do.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I've heard this more than once judging FLL. "The boys all work on the robot, and the girls work on the project." It is quite disapointing.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I didn't see the thread posted last night until it had been deleted. Some of the responses were disappointing, to say the least.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

In general I find on most teams the boy/girl ratio is poor at best. I think FIRST still has a long way to change the the culture that leads to both less girls joining the team, and more girls leaving. It's difficult to determine how many girls are put off by sexist attitudes both on teams and in society, but I'm willing to say that there are many.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

The boy/girl issue will persist as long as society in general doesn't treat men and women as equals (not just on paper, but in reality).

I try to encourage girls on our team to do building, but they (on average) are more reluctant to. I am happy though that we have several girls who are happy to do work cutting, drilling, building, designing, etc. ...unfortunately there are pretty much only girls on the "spirit team".

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

We can all work harder at reaching out to girls specifically. I find (at my school) that many girls don't want to join simply because they think it's too "geeky". I find that they think FIRST is a bunch of boys sitting in a cave and never talking to each other.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

This has been an issue for us in the past, but as you get more and more girls on the team, it goes away. It's much easier for girls to recruit other girls.

I think it all sort of boils down to the culture you create in your team, and how you introduce new members (in this case, specifically female members) to that culture.

New female members may be hesitant to jump into power tools and robot building, and so may gravitate towards marketing, or spirit, or business/administration departments within the team. I always like to have new members hit the ground running so to speak, have them try to jump into robot design, or our off-season project, or start learning about power tools, just to see how they like it. If it doesn't take, and they want to do marketing and spirit, cool, but at least they tried it.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I didn't see the original thread, but I think everything is a matter of conditioning. I'm a transgender individual and I find if I ever launch into an intelligent opinion of some sort, people tend to gender me male more (no matter what the gender of the speaker). There are many many root issues to fix.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

Surprisingly, even though our team is based at a private all boys school, we have roughly 40% girls. For the most part they are involved in building and they take particular pride in their all girls sub team that this year worked on our floor pickup (which unfortunately did not make it on our robot this year due to weight but they had a very similar design to many of the top teams).

We only have 2 girls that are never actively involved in building but we have about equal number of boys that are not as well.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

Speaking as a girl, I've never at all been interested in doing PR or spirit. That's not why I joined a robotics team. We're never pushed directly away from design or building, but we've often encountered sexist attitudes from other students - not the experienced members, who know to back off, but newbies who seem to think they know everything.

Sometimes our lead mentor makes jokes about us not being able to drive. He never questions our mechanical abilities, and we know he actually doesn't believe in whatever it is he's saying - he's an equal opportunity offender - but his jokes lead others to think that those kind of comments are acceptable.

Many of the girls on the team have grown so sensitive to this issue that any time someone says something that can be looked at as sexist, we jump down his throat. There's a whole culture change that needs to occur to fix this.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

This sort of thing isn't just a problem in FIRST. I take Project Lead the Way Pre-Engineering courses at our high school, and this is the situation:

Digital Electronics: In its first term this year, I was one of three girls of fifteen students. In the second term, I was the only girl of nine students.

Intro to Engineering Design: I don't remember how many students there were first term, but this term, I am the only girl among upwards of twenty students.

As a student aspiring to be an engineer, this is what I will have to deal with my whole life. I'll be one of a few girls in science and engineering classes. For example, the boy to girl ratio in AP Physics, another of my classes, is 2:1. This is also how it'll be in the workplace. I'll be the only girl (or maybe one of 2! :ahh: ) on my team.

That is depressing.

It's not that I don't mind working with guys. I don't at all - alright, I do when they make inappropriate comments about me being the only girl there. Not to mention the sexual comments from the boys I work with, one of the hugest problems I've faced in robotics and engineering classes. (Oh my god, she mentioned it AND bolded it!) The problem is... these are some real comments from girls that I received when I invited them to join robotics or sign up for Project Lead the Way classes:

"It's too nerdy."

"But you meet in the wood shop! Ew!"

"Sorry, I'm good at math and science, but I want to go on American Idol."

"Yeah, I want to be an engineer, but I don't have the time for robotics."

"I'm not even going to college. I'm going to be a mom."

"I'm not smart enough for robotics, and I'm never going to be."

There is a serious problem in our society, but I think everyone on this thread - and this forum - is aware of that. As a girl in robotics, I have tried to recruit every girl at our high school I have met.

None have ever come to a single meeting.

There's nothing wrong with going into a non-science career. There's nothing wrong with deciding against college (although it's perhaps not a wise decision in the long run). But these girls I talked to were smart. And none of them - and I have asked upwards of forty girls - even gave coming to robotics, for even a non-technical role, a second thought.

And what is society doing in the meantime? Telling girls they need five pounds of makeup to be pretty. Telling girls the highest thing they can aspire to in life is having a size 0 waist. Oh, no wait - finding Mr. Right so he can support you.

This turned into a much bigger rant than I anticipated, but my main point is this:

It's everywhere. We can either accept it or we can try to change it. And I hate to be a pessimist, so we have to change it.

C

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I want to take this opportunity to brag about our team - out of our 5 student leaders, 3 of them are female. The judges always seem surprised that half the pit crew/drive train are women, but it's just the way it is. Unfortunately we have no female mentors, and next year we will have only one or two (out of 20) members.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I attend an all guys, Catholic, Jesuit college preparatory high school. Our FIRST robotics team is 15 dudes, and gee whiz does it show. Ditto for our high school and academy (7th/8th grade) Lego/Vex teams. Our school is, to put it nicely, bad at teaching us not to be overly-argumentative, boastful and yes, sexist, young men. The problem for my school and the whole robotics program at said school starts from within and crawls outward like the worst kind of monster.

As I reflected on my own life earlier this year, I came to the conclusion that first I, then all the people I'm supposed to have some influence over (as a co-president of the robotics and engineering club), need to work on treating young ladies (and other groups of people who are so frequently tread upon for whatever reason) with the kind of respect and dignity they deserve as human beings.

With that in mind, I've spent this year telling my teammates and fellow students to step it up. Be classy. Stop calling girls "hot" and quit objectifying women like they only exist for your pleasure. Competitions are one of the worst places for this, because, as previously stated, we don't have girls in our school. It is too easy for guys to get caught up in their primal, animalistic urges, leading to stupid comments and generally dehumanizing behavior. It makes me uncomfortable, and I know that unfortunately sometimes the issues between girls and guys at these events go far deeper than a couple of guys quietly discussing just how callipygian someone on another team is.

I don't know the answer for everyone. I know that for me the answer is forcing myself to overcome four years of drowning in an environment where casual sexism and homophobia are the rule. I'm getting there, and FIRST is helping me do so. Having done some work with teaching robotics to middle schoolers, I've discovered that girls are sometimes (that should say 80-99% of the time) orders of magnitude better than the boys at problem solving and teamwork. Even in high school this can hold true, as I saw at the YES! Expo in November, where two girls naturally excelled at driving/operating our robot. It is one of my great dreams to eventually work with an all girls FRC team in some capacity, because if there's anything I love it's destroying cultural stereotypes, and what better way to do that than a program expressly designed to change culture?

Sorry if this is rambling and incoherent at times, but this issue plagues my mind these days.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I'm quite proud to say that I mentor an all-girl FTC team (okay granted, it's a three student team at the moment, but still)

To CLandrum:

Grab those genius girls and drag them to a robotics meeting! ;)

Seriously though, that first step is the hardest part. It took some convincing from my friends to get me to come to my first robotics meeting, but once I was there, I was hooked!

They've been told that they aren't smart enough for robotics, you need to teach them how untrue that is.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

My team is in the same boat, except we have 4 student leads, 3 of which are female. Up until this year, our male:female ration was around 3:1. This year, we are now 1:1. There's really no divide in technical to non-technical which is awesome. At my high school, we're also in PLTW and everyone's required to take at least 1 year in engineering, but 2 is recommended. Robotics is the varsity and junior varsity sport at my high school. Both FTC and FRC have a course at the school, which allows FIRST alone to reach 40ish kids, equally split between males and females. Keep in mind we're a high school composed of about 380 students.

I haven't personally dealt with sexism at any regionals, but I know in previous years my team has. Our mentors just tell that we know what we're doing and that if people have a problem that girls or boys are doing certain things on the team it's their loss to not see a group dynamic work so well.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I took it down because I felt that the discussion went in a direction that I did not expect. I thought I could spur discussion about the general presence of discrimination in robotics, not my personal story. I thought that was inappropriate so I took it down.

I'm glad it started this discussion though! (:

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

With issues like this, there's often a fine line between education and aggravation. Whether or not you are in the right on a matter, it's often better to pick your battles. You have to be careful to avoid breeding resentment towards your cause. If you call everyone out on each and every thing they do, the result is often the opposite of what you intended. It won't change the behavior, only ingrain it deeper.

You're absolutely right that the culture surrounding females in STEM fields (and in general) needs to be changed. But you can't be overly aggressive in attempting to change it. I'm not saying to let everything slide, but chose carefully how you handle situations.

There's a quote from the movie Lincoln that is relevant:
"A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it'll... it'll point you True North from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp... What's the use of knowing True North?"

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

One thing that does bother me about FIRST is how at nearly every event someone (usually more than one) will hit on one of my female team mates. This is fine, but when they say no, they are very often ignored. Have some respect and listen to what the ladies say.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

We're a decently sized team (and when I say "decently sized", I mean upwards of 80 students) and we're probably 1/4 girls. Which isn't great. But the girls we DO have tend to often be the hardest workers and biggest contributors. 3/4 of our co-captains are girls. Our Safety Captain, Spirit Leader, Drive Coach, and Head Animator are all girls. And we have mostly eliminated the gender bias on our team.
So I'd say we're doing good in some areas, but in others- ehhhh...
There's always room for improvement.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

This is an unfortunate but true fact at the moment. The highest ratio of women to men I have seen in an engineering environment is on the FRC teams I have been apart of. In my ECE college program there were only a handful of women in each class of around 100 students. At my employer there is only 1 female in an engineering or management role in my department, most of the female managers at the site are in a financial or HR position.

Team 842 did an experiment with this back in 2007 and 2008 to give the girls on their team more exposure to roles that were typically male dominated. This topic was particularly relevant to them because of traditional gender roles in Hispanic culture. Their experience is an eye-opener showing how culture change is difficult even in an organization dedicated to changing our culture.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

Interestingly enough, my physics class (AP Physics B) is imbalanced the other way. Not only is the teacher a woman but our class is ~60% girls.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

Team 2046 Bear Metal hosted an off-season event last year called "Girls Generation." It was basically a regional style event put on by the team that had a full game field and stands and played like a regional. The only difference was that teams could send only female members. The pit crew was all female, the drive team, scouting, everything. It was very successful. Maybe someone from Bear Metal can post on this tread regarding it.

Boys were allowed to come watch the event, but they had to keep their hands off everything team related. To gear up for the event, we put a lot of time into getting the girls ready for the competition. We taught them in the shop, and the all-girls drive team was on the practice field preparing. As a direct result, this year we had many more girls working in the shop and trying out for the drive team.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I heard about the Girls Gen project and wish it had been around when I was running a team. It is an awesome idea that is worthy of replication.

Jason

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I hate that people still seem surprised at women taking on technical and leadership responsibilities (in all areas, not just within FIRST), but that's not going to change overnight. In the meantime, while that worldwide change is happening, I do love seeing the surprise on someone's face when they actually see women leaders in action. Because I know that, at that moment, someone's opinion is changing.

The support for women in STEM is present and growing. Again, change won't happen overnight, but it's growing like wildfire. All it takes is one supporter, of any gender, to make a difference in someone's life. Positive impact, one person at a time.

Since I first began to show an interest in engineering, I've had countless supporters and influences that have helped me along the way. I'm not sure that I can ever repay all of them for their support, or that I can ever have that great of an influence on others, but I can certainly try. "Pay it forward," if you will.

As a side note, one tactic that I've found to be pretty effective: continue to ask "why?" when being told you can't do something. Unless there's actually a valid reason for not being allowed to do it (such as not having the proper training for a machine), you eventually force them to say "because you're a girl" - which probably makes them feel pretty bad. Bam, there's another opinion changed.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

As a female engineering mentor for the last 7 years for both FRC and FLL teams, I am both happy and sad to read this thread. Sad because so many of these stories are too true in the way young women are made to feel insecure, inferior, and told to step aside. But happy because of the truly meaningful discussion that is happening here... and so much of it is coming from the students, both male and female.

-- Yes, I have heard this same type of comment while judging FLL tournaments. And I always make sure to point this out in the feedback section of the rubric so that teams are aware that this is not appropriate. I want to note though that as of this year the FLL guide notes that ALL team members are required to participate in the project. This is a step forward.

-- This is a very important point. Just because you say something as a "joke" doesn't mean it doesn't demean those who are the butt of that joke. And many will use that as justification to say what they wish... and to claim that you are just over-sensitive and can't take a joke.

-- I agree. It is our job to change it... and we can as long as we work together.

-- This is an amazing insight from a young man who has essentially been trained to disrespect women and diminish their abilities. This is what a leader is. I hope his parents and his team are very proud... and that he continues to spread this uplifting attitude and destruction of cultural stereotypes. I am proud that (in his own words) "FIRST is helping him do so". We need more like him.

-- Yes! as with all controversial issues it is important to approach the topic with a level head. Shouting and getting upset often just turns people away from even listening to your side. It is difficult when you see it and/or feel it personally but change comes from getting others to listen. So we must remember to keep pick our battles and then pursue them with tact and decorum. [On a side note, I totally loved that quote. I never saw that movie but the quote was insightful.]

-- From my personal experience this is often true. Not to diminish the boys contributions which are also very significant. But the point here is that usually the girls who do join the team are very committed or they wouldn't put up with the crap that they sometimes get. Additionally they are generally willing to do anything that needs to be done, even if it is not seen as important by others. This often leads to them being overworked and under-appreciated. Whereas more of the boys (I am saying more, definitely not all) that join just hang out waiting for their chance to do something fun like drive.

-- When I was in college (a very long time ago, back in the 1980s) and when I graduated and got my first job as an engineer, there were very few women in engineering and sometimes that was good and other times it was bad. It really depended on the attitude of the individual person I was dealing with. Some were rude, critical, and dismissive while others were encouraging and supportive. I'm kind of sad to see that in many ways that has not changed although I think we are moving in the right direction. I'm excited to hear from a young college student that she see it growing! That is great news... but maybe it is not changing quickly enough. I work everyday to try to show young women that I did it and so can they. And this is FIRST, so we will keep on working to change the culture. That is our mandate!

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I have struggled with the female and male issues on both of my teams for a few years now. CLandrum3081 already stated what happens on 3081 and I could add more to it but that is a story for another day.

My experiences mainly concentrate on 2470, the Blitz Team. I have found that female students are much more productive then male students on our team, I'm not sure why but that is the way it works for us.

I was originally a student on the team from 2008-2010; after graduation I became a mentor for the team and this year I was given the official name of "Senior mentor" for 2470. We have always struggled recruiting the female gender like most teams out there. Each year I have tried to figure out why and how we can do better at recruiting more females, and we are finally seeing some results.

I have found the first thing that really helps in recruiting more females to the program is to remove as much sexism from the robotics room as possible. That means all of the mentors and coaches need to be on the same page. No sexist comments allowed whatsoever from the adults, that will set an example for the male students basically don't give them an opportunity to say these comments. That being said I still hear the comments from students occasionally in the build room. We solve this pretty easily by hosting Female Engineering Sessions.

Female Engineering Sessions are used to promote STEM programs for females in our school. The engineering classes offered at Jefferson High School are highly male oriented (recently I found a folder in a retired teacher's file cabinet labelled "Automobiles for girls" needless to say it was very sexist), usually you will have 2 or 3 females in the class at the beginning of the semester and they all drop out for study hall by the end of the first week. The Female Engineering Sessions were designed by a female student on my team and she started leading them last year. The first meeting is a powerpoint presentation on robotics with a concentration in FIRST to recruit females to our team. During the first meeting no males are allowed in the room, not even mentors. The second meeting I will go in and give a basic overview of the team, I take some time to explain how stupid the guys are on our team and I tell them positions on the team. So far I have usually had the entire group go for one activity, this year for example it was programming.

I find that if you encourage females to meet together as a group to accomplish a task it works much better then asking them to meet by themselves or with a few others in a large group of boys. Hopefully that observation is pretty obvious. I also do my best to have weekly meetings during the build season with the females on our team just to talk to them on how things are going and thanking them for what they do.

All of the above being said there are still some things we are working on. One of the big things currently is decorations in our room. We are basically in the metal shop at our school, which means cement walls and flooring with drab colors. In fact I am often told by the female students on my team it looks like a "rape dungeon" so this summer one of our projects is to change that. I haven't been told by next year's leadership what we are doing but I assume it has to do with painting everything.

This year we also partnered with Science Olympiad, most of the Science Olympiad team is female so we offered classes lead by female robotics members on basic shop skills. We helped them build many of their projects and really taught most of them how to build things for the first time. Next year we are going to expand our partnership to include more joint activities, we are going to have female robotics representatives at every Science Olympiad meeting to encourage them to join the robotics team. We are also going to allow them space to build and store what they are working on in the robotics room.

Next year our entire leadership team is going to be female, for some reason I have found females are very good motivators for the male gender. I wonder why? :)

Thank you for sticking with my jumbled thoughts, hopefully it is somewhat coherent.
Evan

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I think it's really sad that this thread needs to exist. What I'm going to say is based both on my experiences, experiences of others that have been related to me, and just general knowledge I've gained in my various women's studies courses.

Obviously, there is a huge societal issue when it comes to women's involvement in STEM in general. Part of this is the historical attitude that women are better suited for jobs that make use of more expressive traits (what some people think of as being "feminine"). Another significant part is the lack of female role models for women in STEM. Yes, there are some very powerful women in STEM, both from the past and present. But look at the speakers that FIRST has at its events. They are largely men. Of the 17 people on the FIRST Board of Directors, there are 2 women. This trend follows for the other organizing and leading bodies of FIRST. I don't, in any way, think this is intentional, but I certainly think it is something that has been overlooked.

As previously mentioned, it's easier to attract underrepresented minorities (in this case, women) to participate if you already have women involved. This goes into group/social psychology. Being a solo minority can be isolating and isolation triggers stereotypes and leads to performance deficits. Furthermore, the minority may act more cautiously because they stick out within the group and are often viewed as representative of their entire social group. One of the biggest hurdles is always going to be getting some initial involvement from female students. This could also contribute why many women flock to the same subcommittee.

In addition to having a lack of role models, popular culture also teaches that nerdy/smart/geeky/technologically savvy women are undesirable and must change to a more "typical" woman. Playing dumb is what makes you attractive. The movies and tv shows that we are presented with reinforce this idea. One of the most popular movies of the past decade, Mean Girls, plays right into this. Cady must hide her proficiency in math in order to fit in with the popular girls and get the guy. This is just one example out of many. Movies that try to challenge this idea are few and far between. The powerful people (in general, affluent white men) do not like to see their power challenged.

Even for men who do not hold these values, there is still pressure on them to conform to these ideas. I can easily imagine a situation where a male and a female both try out for the drive team. If the female wins, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he was teased (whether "jokingly" or not) about "being beat by a girl."

Others in this thread have already brought up how many female students are treated at the events. Though their own teams might treat them with dignity and respect, there are young men who relentlessly flirt with them, even when they are implicitly or explicitly told to stop. This, again, goes back to a gender roles/scripts issue that we have in our society. Men are the hunters and women are the hunted. When a woman denies a man, they are just playing hard to get and the man should just try harder. These are the types of things we learn and see in our everyday lives. It's no wonder they spill over into FIRST, as FIRST is just a subset of society. Honestly, I don't blame the women who choose not to participate in FIRST because they have better things to do than get treated inappropriately by students on other teams.

My last thought on this is that we also must be careful about engaging in benevolent sexism (seriously, read this article). When young women join robotics, they are treated differently, even if this different treatment is positive. This just reinforces the idea that women need men to help them along on the path to success. This is one of the reasons I'm on the fence about all-girls teams (except, of course, for teams that are all girls because they go to an all girls school). Is this an example of separate but equal? Part of me views this as an example of benevolent sexism. It's not reflective of the real world and it could potentially be harmful to both men and women in that women are set apart as being "different." This could potentially teach women that they can only succeed in all-female spaces. It could also teach men that women cannot keep up with them and never gives them the opportunity to experience working in a diverse group including different genders.

Edit: If you need further evidence that some of the young men in FIRST need some education on how to properly treat and talk to women, look no further than this thread.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I always feel weird when I meet a girl who is cool enough to be nerdy/smart/geeky/technologically savvy, because I feel like it should be celebrated on so many levels, gender being one of the less important if not the least important one. To me, any person brave enough to stand up before the prevailing culture of anti-intellectualism is a hero. To add generations upon generations of sexism into that mix is an even greater accomplishment. And yet, it's difficult for me to celebrate that with that person. I can't tell if this is clear or not, but it bothers me that I have to stop and consider whether I'm being sexist or otherwise degrading in appreciating a girl's geekiness.

I am by no means an expert in this field, but I have heard of some studies that show girls being more successful in at least science classes in single sex environments. I do agree that that sort of environment is only so useful, however. It's a stepping stone at best. Having been in single sex classes for all of high school, I am beyond ready to be in an environment where unbridled displays of testosterone fueled dude-age are frowned upon or at least checked by the presence of the opposite sex. FIRST is not an end in and of itself, but a stepping stone, like all of education, so if it's helpful for girls to work on a single sex team, I'd gladly support it.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

-- Thanks for sharing that article, it is very interesting. I think that mutual respect is the only way that this will eventually work better. And working together toward a common goal (like building a robot) can go a long way toward building that kind of respect. Often it is when we see what each of us brings to the table that we can see the value of that ability. I don't think that men need to be trained to be more sensitive and I don't think that women should need to change to fit into the existing male mold either. And let's not forget that there are men who are more expressive and women who are more ambitious... and they too are valuable assets. We all need to learn to accept and value our differences and what that diversity brings to the task at hand... and not to pre-judge anyone's aptitudes and skills based on their gender.

Re: What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?
 

I've taken the time to look up a few studies on sexism in education, with a particular focus on STEM.

One study found that instances of sexism were actually greater within single-sex schools. In all girls schools, female teachers had a tendency to encourage their students to be dependent and sometimes lowered their standards, while male teachers treated the students like little girls. In the all boys schools, there was certainly reinforcement of men as powerful aggressors who objectify women. I'm wondering if this extends to single-sex FIRST teams, as well. (Source)

Overall, the consensus seems to be that teachers (or in the case of FIRST, mentors/coaches) need to use gender-inclusive strategies.* This means paying equal attention to males and females, evaluating all genders based on their abilities, and be aware of the different experiences of men and women. A lot of this sort of sexism probably isn't intentional, but it is a trend that can be reversed. It's important to remind women that being good at or interested in STEM isn't "abnormal" and doesn't make them any less of a girl. The boys on the team also need to be careful not to reinforce gender roles or scripts, as well.

From this, it seems like a lot of the problems start in the classroom and spill over into FIRST. If a science teacher is reinforcing the idea that men are best suited for engaging in hands-on activities, then it's no surprise when a male student on a FIRST team reacts with surprise when a young woman wants to get involved in the more technical areas of the robot.

I'm wondering if it's possible for FIRST mentors and coaches to try to implement strategies that normalize female involvement. For example, there are plenty of women represented in the photo slideshow FIRST's FRC page, but the one picture of people actually working on a robot has two male students being led by a male adult mentor. So girls can be on the team (and some maybe even drive the robot!) but there's no indication of their involvement with the technical parts of FIRST. This trend is seen throughout the FIRST website. They probably thought they did a decent job of including girls in their photos, but only one of them shows a girl working on the robot (it's on the FTC landing page).

*Source