Why cant we get girls interested in joining our team?! Advice please!
 

We have a team that is almost all guys. one girl to be exact. For some reason we just cant get them to join. Now I know it is not because girls aren't interested in FIRST because I see plenty at competiotions on other teams. So what is the problem? Do other teams have a similar problem? does anyone have any advice to solve it? Ladies I would really like to hear your thoughts. (guys are welcome too) I realy would like to see more girls participating from my high school!

Thanks,

-Robin Madsen

I will think about it more, however one quick thought for the moment. I am the only girl on the build team. I know that our team gets more females for such groups as newspaper/web/photo/scouting, etc. Try to get them involved in such things as business/sponsorship/accounting, too.

Tell them the'll get free A&F posters if they come for a meeting, then use duct tape to trap them....:)

Not all girls are that shallow...

Duct tape in general interests me...

I've found that on our team, often one girl will join the team just because she's cool like that. Then she'll bring her friend along, who will eventually start showing up on her own, eventually with one of her friends. It keeps going like this, at least enough to keep a couple girls at a meeting at anyone time. Duct tape has seldom been needed. How ever, if you must duct tape someone, don't tape them to the back of the elevator and forget about them. They probably won't be to happy...

You also may want to include the one girl you have in any demostrations you put on at schools. Seeing a girl in a public and important role may convince others that they can be important on the team to.

-Andy A.

Re: Why cant we get girls interested in joining our team?! Advice please!
 

Heh. I'd like to see more people of either gender participate from my school :) I'm the only person. It's sad. Almost. I get a free trip to Florida provided no one else joins from my school. Yay for $500 grants :)

I happen to like the Abercrombie poster and duct tape scheme.

Or get their boyfriends involved. That's how a few girls ended up on our team. (Or tell them it's loaded with hot guys...*cough*...I'm irresitable!)

I think Andy A. has the right idea. I got roped into being on the drill team with the marching band before I even started High School because I just went to a practice session with a friend.

Also, we had this group of super smart guys on campus. Some I guess would call them geeks. I personally would have given them the sun and the moon if they had ever gotten over thier shyness to ask me out.
I think the problem here is just getting over your shyness around the girls in general. sometimes that shyness trasnslates as "The cold shoulder" and they feel unwelcome.

CLUE OF THE DAY: Brains are attractive to most girls. Believe it or not. We just don't tell you guys because you never let us get that far. Y'all look like you're about to pass out if we so much as say hi to you.

So just be friendly and they will come.

I agree with Andy A...go out and recruit, especially from those clubs with already active people who show dedication but don't spread themselves too thin. I have very very little interest in science and engineering but I was recruited solely for organization/management since in was in student gov't. I will admit I learned a thing or two in the whold building process and I loved being on the team.

Girls can fill different niches in the team so its just a matter of going and finding them. There are a lot of girls on my former team's animation team and I really think they're gonna be awesome this year.

Also, if you do find girls interested in the design/construction part of the robot, make sure they feel included. I know a lot of guys on our team unintentionally shoved the girls out of that field or spoke to them in a rather condescending manner (could it be the male ego thing, I don't know!) and it really turned a lot of girls off and they all ended up in management with me. Hopefully this year things will change!

So what if girls don't say hi to me? :) I think the image scares em away.

Re: Re: Why cant we get girls interested in joining our team?! Advice please!
 

I have found that the girls are usually only there cause their boyfirneds are when you do that, they arent actually interested in the team. There are of course, some exceptions. We recruited the 3 girls we have because they saw us driving the robot around and working on it (actually, thats how we recruited most of the team, although this method also gets you those people who only want to be there to drive the robot, but not to help build, or fix it, so be careful). From my experiences at Timberlane (my school) many girls arent into the whole robotics/ technology/ mechanics/ electronics etc thing. They are more into art, music, fashion, sports or boys (again, not true for all, but thats what most girls at timberlane seem to be like). We've got about 3 girls i know who are actually into robotics and robotics related stuff.

About 85% of our team does nothing[/font] :mad:

I think the trick to getting anyone involved is to make it look interesting and TO GET ATTENTION. (sounds so simple it might just work)

For instance, last year when my school was first getting into the competition (after not competing in a good 5 years) we got one of our old robots out and turned it into a little car (which we dubbed the 'Segway 2'). We drove that around the halls between periods, and a ton of people saw it and got interested.

If people are interested, hold a meeting, show some FUN videos (not boring stuff) of competitions and stuff. If you can, make your own videos, put good music to them, show people having fun at the comps. It will get people interested.

Once you get a firm member base (guys or gals) just get them to tell their friends that arent already involved to get involved.

Last year we only had a few girls on the team (5 to be exact). Most of them were on the media team (chairmans award, etc), but a couple helped out w/ fab and all that stuff.

This year those 5 girls are back, plus at least another 5 so far. Once people start to see that this robotics is fun (and "cool") more and more come out - both gals and guys.

Most of the time, girls get top treatment, even if they do nothing. Why? They can fill a four person hotle room. That's especially true if you have 4 girls on you team.

Also, if you show your robot, turn on the spinny light. It attracts throngs of people at a time.

Also, good word of moth always helps. Just say that you can join robotics, have fun, compete, and go to WDW. Do you know a football team that does THAT?

The going to Florida definately helps getting people to come out.

Yeah...especially when they're free :)
Best plan to enlarge the team:
1. Get a bunch of hot girls on the team by giving them a free trip to florida.
2. Find guys attracted to hot girls and lure them onto the team
3. Force them to build a robot...since if they make it to Florida, they may be able to go to the beach and see the girls in swimwear :P
4. Sit back and watch your team grow.

Too bad our team failed at the 'find hot girls' part :P *runs*

(edit: on second thought, maybe 'largen' isn't a word :P)

Re: Re: Why cant we get girls interested in joining our team?! Advice please!
 

*cough* are you implying something? *cough*

/me runs away to burn my newest bikini

- no swimwear for you next year!

How to get more girls to join the team? Easy. Just tell em that Mandy Moore was at nationals last year:D

Really though, we just got about 10-15 girls that joined our team this year, and it is all from explaining what we do, showing them pictures of past competitions and especially closing ceremonies from the 2001 season... they seem to really like this and this

some of the girls that joined our team this year even are asking us to teach them how to use the tools and they want to help with the construction of the robot. Its still a wonder to me......

Don't mention Florida when recruiting.
If they're not going to join for the sake of the team but only to go to Disneyworld believe me, you don't want them!
It shouldn't matter if they're boys or girls as long as they are eager and enthusiastic about participating in FIRST(our team was girl heavy, particualrly the PAW room which was all girls except for me and the other animation mentor. The only problem that presented was having to chase lurking boys out of the PAW room so the girls could get their work done and the boys could go get their work done:rolleyes: ).

Ed you sound like a teacher.......Which means you are of course right...lol

Definately you want the hard working type of people on your team, but, you need to convince the would-be hard workers to come out in the first place.

I've found that if anyone actually joins the team, once they get out and doing something they do a good job at it - regardless of how they came to join the team.

As for florida, its a good way to get people to come out....And if they don't do anything for 6 weeks, they wont be expecting to come with the team to florida (that they know). So Fl gets the interest, but in the end its the Robot that will determine if they actually join the team or not.

if i didn't tell my friend that the team goes to florida....we wouldn't have a programmer

My wife is a teacher at Wilson. I work for Xerox(therefore it's a marriage of convience:D ). Wilson will do some recruiting for new members and Florida will not be mentioned . If the kids aren't interested in the X-Cats because want to be X-Cats then nothing else really matters. The team comes first. Disney is a reward(some teams cannot even afford to go to the parks, so selling Florida is really nothing more than a cruel joke).

You are soooo crurel it's not even funny. We got our principal and vice principal to come with us to WDW. I got them on Test Track (quite the most funniest moment durring the whole time there.)

I saw teams at the Nationals that were slapping together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their kids to eat and did not stay at the All-Star resorts but had to stay off-Disney instead and had to leave immediately as soon as the cometition was over. They just don't have the money to go to the parks or feed thier kids overpriced Disney food.
The company I work for has lost millions in recent year and laid off hundreds of people but still pays for FIRST and the kids(and adults) to go play in the parks.
Florida is a blessing, not a privlidge.

It's not such a wonder. We're out there, just to repressed to now that some of us might have a true calling in tech, etc.
I was an artsy theater, type. I spent years in training as a classical soprano. But let me tell you, I was constantly finding myself hanging around with the stage crew because I had this really overactive sense of curiosity about how everything worked.
I just had to know. (it actually got in the way of my singing career sometimes because I would rather have worked on the nuts and bolts, so to speak.)

I was always interested in how things worked and still am. It's shocking to think that even as recently as the mid-80's when I was in High school, I was still being told, "No, no, no, dear. You can't do that. It's a man's job."
Oh I was sooo angry! (still am sometimes)

I defied everyone. I went out and learned how to do all the tech jobs at the theater and got hired on professionally, but even then, I was always relegated to the housekeeping jobs (even after two years) because I was a girl. "Hey girls are better at it than us! You're the best one suited for the scrubbing." They would say.
I would leave the room and hear them snickering behind the door.

I finally quit after two years of being treated like garbage by my male counterparts. I never once got to do anything on a show other than set up the house, and clean up afterward.

I'm not saying all of this to whine. I'm just saying that there are girls out there with hidden talent that don't know they have it. When they come around, be patient and give them a chance to discover if they have the knack for the mechanics etc. You could change thier lives so much for the better, I can't even begin to tell you.

I was on Rambots for 3 years and it was all guys. Well..that's cause we were an all guys school. Shrugs......Now I don't have a team.:(

And....anyone know what's Nutron's site is? Or how I could contact their leader?

If you went to an ALL GUYS school, I would really really hope that everyone there was actually A GUY...lol

Does that not make sense? :p

Implying something? *cough* me? no...never!

We had one team member who conviced his girlfriend to join the team, and while this meant that during most of our meetings these two were off in a corner making out, his girlfriend did manage to convince a number of her female friends to join.

Yeah finally. I've found that mentioning the possibility of Florida, or just driving the robot around does get a lot of people interested, but not in the right way. The are either there a) free field trip (miss school), or they just want to drive and play with the bot, not actually work on it. So you have to be careful

What about those of us who live in Florida?

I will now agree with the team leader (always a good thing to do...heh) ... Yeh, we live in florida and don't have girls in bikinis.....might have somthing to do with it violating the code of the techie to expose himself to the sun....::shudders at the thought of the evil sun::

However, i must say that we do have 3...(yeh...i think it's 3....) girls on our team who are there for the team. One is running for eletrical manager this year as a sophomore.

Sadly however, there are none on my animation team :( Oh well....maybe electical needs some help this year...hehe

(And before you ask me mark, that is NOT why ill be working with electical, ill be helping them because i wanna actually help with electronics...no twisiting my posts this time you!)

Oh, and btw, to all girls reading this, we may come across as being just interested in having girls on the team if u look at the forum lately, but thats just because its the off season and we have nothing better to do...Come january, these forum messages won't appear for another 6 weeks, heh

i have an good story :p.

last year, we had two, maybe three girls on the team. i'm friends with one, and the other two i didn't really know (they graduated). so that left us with one girl (my friend, who is a junior too). so, i went off and talked to another girl i know, and over the course of the summer, somehow managed to get her to join robotics. don't know how that worked, but i guess if you talk about it enough, they become interested :p. so that made two, before the school year started.

once school started, mrs. champey convinced yet another girl to join (this girl is soley business, no technical), and then another girl from the video editing class for chairman's award. so, that makes 4. then, my first friend (the original girl on the team) started talking to her friends, and from what i hear now, we have 6 or 7 girls definitly joining the team. and it all started with just one, maybe two girls. so they will join, you just have to make it fun.

and you can't forget to mention all the sexy guys they'll meet ;).

Considering that's about all I talk about to my friends...it doesnt seem to work :)

And yeah...show those girls my picture :D

Oh...wait...you said _sexy_ guys...I'm just studly.

ok, let me rephrase that then...

remember to tell them about all the guys who might not be all that sexy, but will probably do anything to go out with them :p. it's almost as good.

lol.......thats horrible :-P

I like to think I have SOME class....Altho I suppose that could be argued :-P

You have class harrison? since when? :P

Sorry my team doesn't have that problem. We've got a pretty large amount of geeky girls in our school.

you might have geeky girls, but do you have hot geeky girls is the question ;) ;) ;) and when you see the girl, what do you look at first. her, or her laptop?

You can look at a laptop all you want... but you should always ask the owner for the specs...

I am such a geek.

hehehe the former hot geeky girls hehe in all my honors classes the ratio to boys to girls (maybee except for physics) is unbalanced towards the girls side:) then again:)

::sadness:: Dillard High dosent have that.... :(

How exactly would you describe a "geeky" girl nowadays?

Me

Robotics before boys any day...

So deeper than the average still applies. Cool.

robotics alone, or does that include those robotics boys that you're always raving about? :p

Well...robotics boys are better than other boys Ian :P


But geeky girls are the girls that find more to life than boys, shopping and such...I mean robotics and latin are my life if anyone of you people know me at all and well roboboys are apart of the robotics experiance...

/me goes to her little geek corner

my thoughts exactly! :D

Girls..
 

I havn't read through the 3 pages, so i may be repeating what someone else has said.

Get a picture of a guy and a girl from your team.
Get a picture of your robot or other teams bots.

Photoshop, Photoshop, Photoshop

Make yourself a little FIRST ad and post it throughout your school.

I'll give a sample at a later time when I can get it hosted somewhere.

Basically, get something out there that will tell girls 'hey, join FIRST, it's not just nerds' and you have a good chance of getting people. (Guys, too)

AHHH!!!

I'm back at last, and wow I have a lot of cathcing up to do...

First off, and this is just my personal experiance, you don't need girls on your team. You don't need boys on your team either.

What you need are people who have dedication, and can help the team with their skills and willingness to learn.

I would'nt "target" women just for the fact they are women - THAT, I think, defeats the purpose. Robotic is defityly for both sexes, and once you have chick or 2 on your team, it grows exponentially.


Of course, if you *really* want to attract cheerleaders, put out a flyer promising a free 8x10 glossy photo of Harrison for all participants.:cool:

I am serious.

ONE SIMPLE BUT TOTALLY WORTH WHILE WORD.....
 

CHEERLEADERS!!!!





And for those of u who know me.... The Lawnmower;)

Cheerleaders?...
Why do you guys want cheerleaders on your team?

Other people can have just enough spirit and looks as them...

Yeah...we're looking for _smart_ girls. :D *runs from mass hoards of cheerleaders*

LOL!!!!!!!
Cheerleaders!

We used to smuggle in several bags of those large sized marshmallows into the assemblies and quietly pass them around. Then we would pelt the airhead squad with our fluffy little white missles while they tried to do their cheers in the middle of the gym. We were soooo bad!
I wonder if it's still a tradition at my old High School.

P.S. All the smart girls were on the flag/drill team. Maybe you should look there.

OH SMART GIRLS!
 

Sorry, i heard girls and... well when i hear the word girls i think of those kinds first:D So, yea, i guess i can't help you with the smart kind, but if u need any of the others let me know;)

Not all cheerleaders are smart and not all of them are interested in Robotics if you haven't noticed. So in other words, not an excellent choice. You're better off getting those actually INTERESTED in Robotics.

I was seriously thinking that you could ask some of the girls on the robotics team to join...but then I remembered that that was the point. Hey. I'm allowed to be stupid on weekends.

Our flag/drill team are just cheerleader-wannabe's :) They want to be cheer leaders, they just lack the morale or something. Muah.

Our flag/drill team was cool. Even though we were considered an extension of the cheer squad, we weren't restricted to the PC rules the chearleaders were so we could razz the other team all we wanted. We trained hard were really tough (ten pushups if you made a mistake in the routine, nobody wanted to go up against the little flage girls in an arm wrestling match).
The instructor coach was this awesome guy who had come from (I think) Lincoln High in San Jose.
Five of us who were senior team members were ASKED to join the Velvet Knights drum and bugle core. No audition was necessary. Some of the cheerleaders even quit thier squads to join us.
I guess every high school has a different social make up.

Our drill team doesn't exist and our flag girls are only there b/c they didn't make the step team or band...

Don't get me started on cheerleaders...

Like I said; Every school is different.

I can remember some news report coming up on CNN a couple of years ago about cheerleaders getting scholarships and stuff for college because they were on these top national squads that worked really hard and were disciplined.
The girls over at Valley Christian (San Francisco Bay Area) were supposed to be a team like that. We had one girl transfer over to our school who had been on their squad and was really disappointed with the condition of ours. She was really nice and tried to help them out and motivate them, but they just sort of ignored her. It was sad.

When I first logged on ChiefDelphi, I didn't think it would be like other forums. I certainly didn't expect the first thing I saw to be advice on getting girls. Hehe, but it turns out I was wrong.

Our team has quite a few great girls with spirit and skill and brains and very good looks. But as to how we got them? Well, we didn't. They came on their own. In fact, I only joined Robotics because a girl invited me .

If I had one piece of advice, it would be to get one especially smart or enthuiastc girl and do anything to get her on the team. Then she will invite her friends and there will be swarms of them before you know it! And of course, advertising is key.

Crazy women...who knows what they're going to do?

::nods::

- Katie