Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

1351's new organizational structure calls for an administrative branch of more than 6 full-time people. When we started looking for people to fill these positions, there was a large influx of girls. With the exception of one girl on our team, none of them really seem to be interested in engineering. (But, of course, I haven't had time to meet all the freshmen yet, I think I saw a girl with them.) They will do engineering work, but it doesn't seem to interest them much and they don't seem to want to do the higher level (design type) work. Yes, they are participating in FIRST, but I'm not really sure I would call it a victory unless they did engineering work.

Now, on to why I feel this way...

The higher my classes go, the fewer girls there seem to be. Or in mathematical terms:

lim g(L) = 1/10
L->BS

where g(L) is the female to male ratio of a class, L is the level of the class, BS is is a BS degree. They seem to stick around in the lower level classes, then start to disappear. My classes seem to be getting closer to the 1:10 ratio in industry as I go on. I still haven't been able to figure out why this is though. Our society likes to think that we have gotten over the whole gender discrimination thing, but we obviously haven't. But, of course, there's also the studies showing that the male brain is more geared toward this kind of work/thinking. (Please don't hurt me... I'm only the messenger...) Then again, there's also the women that succeed in engineering/science and show that this might not be correct. But, there's only a small number of them, so it might mean nothing.

Although, I have noticed that the girls tend to go more toward the sciences rather than engineering. There's a lot of girls in physics and chem. Also bio, but I'm leaving that out because I'm not sure if they're going for bio or they plan to move into medicine. There's something strange going on there. Why Physics instead of Mechanical or Electrical Engineering? And why Chemistry instead of Chemical Engineering? I realize that science and engineering are different. Science is more geared toward investigation and theory. Engineering is geared toward application and practice. But that doesn't explain why they girls are in science rather than engineering.

And now the important aspect of this problem: Girls in engineering are hot. There are very few girls in engineering. Phil needs a girlfriend. Supply and demand is working against Phil. Phil is angred and saddened by the situation.

P.S. Phil now speaks in the 3rd person...

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

I think it honestly depends on the kind of atmosphere a team has from the start. Our team is fortuante to have a lot of female leadership in all sub-teams (technical to PR to IT) and because girls at our school see it as a non-discriminatory activity, they have no problem participating.

I think phrontist made a really good point though, when he said recruitment should be gender blind. I'll be honest and say that I think trying to do PR to get people on the team just to fix a gender ratio isn't a wise action. Sometimes, the ability to do what our gender is in a minority of is what attracts girls. I know the opportunity inspired me.

Keep your boys, keep your girls, everybody is a member of the team. As long as they behave at competitions, I think gender ratio is insignificant.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Of course the X-Cats always had good female representation. We've just begun recruiting for this year but we are very good at getting a diverse group (last year we had 18 girls and 14 boys). One thing that helps is we actually expect the girls to do more on our team than just PR. They do work on the robot and a good portion of the major positions on our team (coach, assistant coach, student liaison, scout master, spirit leader, ect.) were held by young women. I believe if you allow them to try out more things on the team regardless of how "qualified" the appear and don't condescend to them and give into stereotypes they will succeed in what they are doing which is the ultimate goal of this program in the first place.

Re: we lost a lot of girls
 

If I were a girl, I would definately be in FIRST. There are mostly guys in FIRST, so you have many options....

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Our big problem is not that their arent girls (we have like 15) but that few of them do technical work (like 5). We actually have people join to be with the girls and don't do any work!

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

you actully took vauleable time you couldv spent working on a robot to figure this out?

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

We had two girls on our team last year and have three this year. I actually have a good number of girls in my classes at school (AP BC Calc, AP Physics, etc.)

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

we had one last year but she graduated. Im going to put up posters with Phil's closing statements and a picture of my hotness. I'd like to talk longer with Phil. He seems entertaining.

Re: how girls will join our team
 

And now the important aspect of this problem: Girls in engineering are hot. There are very few girls in engineering. Jim needs a girlfriend. Supply and demand is working against Jim. Jim is angred and saddened by the situation.
-wise phil sees deeply into the fellow roboteers mind

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

So I have an... interesting question. I have a position open and two people are interested. Is it OK to give a position to one of two equally qualified people because that person is a girl. I mean yes its sexism but I know that this situation happens in the business world as well as with the government so is it OK? I want to try and pull as many girls as possible into technical areas but I have this itch thats making me wonder if its right. Its not that I'm letting sex compensate for anything like lack of skill or knowledge, its just it's the deciding factor. I would like to hear feedback from both men and women.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Two words: affirmative action. If you want to get more girls involved, go for it. But if you don't care, flip a coin. 1351 also has voting. There's people in place to evaluate the candidates and ultimately make a selection. But, they like to see the votes to make sure they didn't make some gross error in their choice, and possibly use it as a tie breaker.

By the way, this reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. The doctor had two patients with the same affiliction and an equal chance of survival. He only had time to save one of them though, so he saved his friend. Because of this, he went crazy. He had problems trying to justify choosing his friend rather than the other patient.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

If you really want to attract as many girls as possible, then don’t let on about that itch.
:( :o

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Yeah.... thanks Sciguy but the truth is it wouldn't matter. I'm not all quite their as it is. So yeah thanks this was helpful and that itch isn't so bad now.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Our Team's President is a girl, and she's the one who does all the main electrical stuff. We also had a girl as a president last year. We have 3 girls in our Structure Division (including myself), and possibly two more joining for this year. Hoping to recruit more, but many get scared away because of all the time, weekends and vacations robotics takes up.
We also have a girl in the website division, and our PR and Fundraising are lead by girls.