Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

In response to all the posts to the thread regarding girls on teams, i just want to say the maority of students on our team have been girls, girls, and girls, every year.

r we nerdy? who knows...we play sports and ace our classes while participating in FIRST

...and we work! everyone built last year, i was one of the drivers.

...and we cheer!! we got called cheerleaders alot last year, and we wore skirts too, but hey...it was a blast and it got all the other boys from other teams to cheer for our team too.

so how can u get girls to join your team?? spread the word, and drag them to your meetings...they tend to stay :D

so girls...we rock;)

yeah i remember your skirts, we almost lost two mentors to desertion because of yall`

128 Rules! Wooohooo!
they were our fan club.

oh lol...west michigan was the best!

girls are icky!

(hmm...and i complain about the lack of girlfriend)

Is that the reason why you where those glasses? ;)

AHHH! The %&#@ profanity!

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
 

I remember talking with a few girls @ Kickoff in Kokomo... I think they were from Ohio, but their team had more girls than they did boys...

BOTCATS ROCK! I hope you all can stop in to help us recruit some amazing, talented female team members, like yourselves! Ever considered a "long-distance mentorship?"

No girls ever come up and talk to me :) I think I'm scary...

Awwww ... I don't think you are scary!

Then again, I don't know you all that well ... ;)

- Katie

FEAR THE WOMEN
 

FEAR THE WOMEN,

One minute u're talkin to a cute one, the next minute your transmission is gone..................................

darn chicks from 128 are hot! hey im me if u wanna chat


Badjokeguy

we lost a lot of girls
 

If anyone went to Philly regionals last year you might remember the diablo girls. They were raising money by selling hugs and kisses. they actually made $83.52 from that. anyway we had 9-10 girls but after graduation we only had 1. we did get 3-4 newbies but that isnt really enough to make up for our losses.

After graduation...we lost our entire PR team. Well...it was two girls. That was a big team.

Re: we lost a lot of girls
 

Umm, ewww. Nevermind what other potential they might have, you can't make up for lost hugging/kissing revenue?

I know you didn't mean for this to sound the way it does, but it sounds that way. It's insulting.

Our team has about 10 girls... it's odd though because our media people are always trying to find a way to incorporate the girl's into the videos and such. Makes me laugh. It's basically because a lot of the girls are involved in strategy and media.. most of us don't know too much about fab(though I'm trying to learn) Should be interesting...
As for the whole grad thing. Next year our team is loosing a ton of people. The vast majority of our team is seniors and most of the people that do the work are part of that group. Our seniors are running the team almost... should be.. interesting next year.
*hugz to all as alwayz*
Ann-Marie -team 783 "Mobotics"

Re: Re: we lost a lot of girls
 

im so sorry
by losses i ment by the amount of girls we lost, and it had nothing to do with the money.
i should edit that to remove all the parts of the kissing/hugging stuff. will i ever get around to it? maybe.

-Ian
dazed and confused after 87's first Robotics academy lesson.

that was us!!!
 

And I remember Adam and Benji talking about them for months afterwards! :D

- Katie

My experience with girls in general hasn't been all that great... my first girlfriend despised FIRST with a passion (since she felt I was spending more time with the robot than with her, which was true because she essentially had 2 other boyfriends while dating me, which I found out about before the FIRST season started, very long story behind that one, but I stuck with her for about 10 months) and with my next girlfriend we were both very happy for 9 months or so, until she went to an acting camp and met a guy almost identical to me (as far as computers, nerdy-ness, looks, and personality go), with the exception of him being an actor, while I was a sound technician. She dumped me with the excuse "I don't feel the same about you anymore." Then went out with him literally a week later. She was okay with the idea of FIRST, but I saw her a lot more during the season (since she lived down the road from our workshop). Eh well, I've only had a total of 2 girlfriends in my life, and that's how the story goes. *sigh* oh well.

Heh...that's 2 more than me.

im 15 years, 6 months, 2 days single. god it sucks.

join the club. there is a possible one on the horizon though :D which would be very nice.

We're getting more girls
 

Our family joined robotics to help a less social member stay in. We had no clue just how much my daughter Angela Barron would thrive in the program. She worked at the machine shop on the robot, co-drove at all the competitions, and is now RUHS president of robotics. Her sister-in-law is amazed because she never imagined Angela doing something like this. Angela’s freshman sister joined this year, fourteen years old the youngest welder ever in the welding class at El Camino College. She kicked her stepdad's butt who also took the class. A male alumni had clued us in that girls make the best welders, which gave us the idea of her joining her stepdad at summer school.

Marygrace is recruiting girls like crazy.

I think the reason we didn't have girls in the past is a prevailing attitude...
MCHS Robotics’ President Greg Nelson says, “On the issue of girls, there are not many girls involved in robotics period. We had two from MCHS and 0 from Redondo in 2001, and one this past season from MCHS and only a few from Redondo. This season I’m trying to twist some arms to get a few more to give it a shot, but the girls that I can get to come will not be willing to spend the time it takes to do robotics. Another reason that there are so few girls I believe is because of the field of activity. Without sounding sexist here...to be honest does robotics sound like the type of thing that girls would normally jump into? Unfortunately, for most of the girls I know, the answer to this is no. However, as with all rules there are exceptions. I just wish there were more. I think the girls can be just as talented as guys in this program but the problem is getting them to try. If you have any suggestions in this area, my ears are open.”

This year we have 10 girls from RUHS, and one cool girl from MCHS who also happens to be on the MCHS freshman football team - she's challenging MCHS's attitudes about girls in robotics and on the football field.

Raytheon took Angela and I to California Governor's Conference for Women...

http://www.cgcw.org/

We made contacts at the Conference.

LA Society of Women Engineers wrote an article about our team, and gave us inside scoop on funding.

I'm guessing that's your age, otherwards that literslly new-born relationship must of been pretty disfunctional:rolleyes: :D

He could be 50. :P

yes that is my age
no im not 50
tomorrow i will be 15 years, 6 months, 3 days single.


-Ian
Single...and hating it

i know its just that the thread migrated to that.
Still we need more girls. our PR people arent doing the greatest job of advertising robotics. (wait... do we even have a PR team?!?)

Our PR's going great

I'm trying to get there!
Our team is made up of 2 rival schools. As RUHS parent of RUHS robotics' president I'm in the know, can quickly take advantage of publicity opportunities, respond to reporter's requests.
However just the moment before reading your post I was emailed by the other school that yearbook had been begging several times for yearbook photos, and now he was asking my help to get them off his back. Wha?!@?

I think its great having the girls around......they are a lot more into the cheerin aspects and having a good time....especialy team 128.... they came and rooted us on quite a few times and they were a blast to be around.

Je suis d'accord!<----please excuse my bad french:rolleyes:

i will now stop my whining about girls NOT joining our team. We have had a massive exploison of girls joining our team in the past week. we now have about 10 girls! (Maybe the Diablo girls will rise again!!!!)

if they do rise again and arent making money off of weird fundraisers (ie. selling Hugs and Kisses[the real thing not hersheys chocolate] where they made 80 some dollars), i'll try and get them to cheer. multiteam cheering sections are cooler if you are partnered up with that other team in a match.

Ian
-desperately hoping that the Diablo girls will rise again...

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

My team has about 15 girls give or take alil more this year! We started off last year w/ about 9 an this year we have so many more. I know from my school most girls dont care about robotics an think its "a guy thing" but if you look at it in the perspective as jobs when you get older, there are a number of females who do PR work, who finance, who design websites, who program, an those who are engineers! I think some girls are to chicken to get dirty and dont wanna do the building they think robotics is all about. Or maybe they have the perspective its to nerdy. Me, i could care less if i'm called a nerd, but if u look at a number of the teams an people you meet at competitions they are not nerds, or geeks, an have great personalities! They are normal people who enjoy doing things that will get them far in life. If someone doesnt want to take the time see what robotics is all about then they should not talk bad about FIRST and the people in it! We are normal high school students working together, an if you ask me i've never had an issue w/ any team or FIRSTer in my career of being involved with the FIRST program no matter where i went. I am proud of all the girls involved in FIRST and it shows we can do anything if we put our mind to it! To all the girls involved with FIRST way to go an keep up the good work!!! :D :D :D

By the way sorry to bring back an old thread, I wanted to let my opinon on this out there. Take it however you please.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

So far this year MOE has a fair number of new perspective students that are female and 100% of the girls from last year have returned. Every year we go to the all girl schools and do our demos and try to show the girls that they can do the same job just as well and even better then most of the guys. I know that there have been many a time that I have been bested by a girl on my team.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

We have 5 current girls and they are all very important to our team. We are hoping to pick up a few more when we get ready to get new members.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

We just got a huge influx in our female population, which is great for once. I don't know how many will stick with it, but I don't know how many boys will keep at it either.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Well, if it's any consolation to any other team out there...We have one female on our team; and that's our mentor.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Gender
Blind
Recruitment

END TRANSMISSION

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.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Our team has always run about 40% female for the past 7 years. Our success can be attributed to several factors.

1) Provide Strong female role models: We have a female coaches, student leaders and college age mentors for girls to look up to.

2) Provide a safe environment: Girls on our team know that that won't be subjected to the stereotypical comments that sometimes surface when guys work with girls. (zero tolerance)

3) Provide a challenge for ALL members. We have high expectations for everyone involved.

4) Provide Opportunity: Girls on our team know that the potential exists to EARN any job on the team. Last year we had one all-female drive team, a female co-captain, and lots of folks on the build team, pit crew, and just about any other area of responsibility.

5) We Make it FUN!!!: This is universal for all members, male or female. We get a good female turn out every year simply because they hear how fun FIRST and Team 341 truly are.

Hope that gives everyone some things to think about. :)

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

im on a california all girls team. we are all girls and im very proud of that fact. i personally am what you might call the cheerleader of the team. i run spirit and most people assume im a huge ditz and cant actually do anything involving the robot. well fyi im not just head of spirit. i also head programming and strategy so im well rounded. our team is full of well rounded girls who represent first on many levels.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

OMGosh yes!!us GIRLS are the best...lol i love this atmosphere...i was the mascot/ cheerleader for our team...i want to be driver this year soo badly!..oh and i was the only girl but this year there are lots more...once u get one girl to join, others will follow..lol thats how it was/is for our team...
then again it will be lucky if we even get to do it this year....stupid funding issues... :(

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Ive heard of a couple all girls teams. Is it that they won't let guys join?

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

I doubt it. I'd bet that it's because they're all girls schools.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Ok yeah that makes sense... (looks sheepish)

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

I really havent noticed more girls joining the teams. Even though this is my first year I used to watch my brothers compititions and i havent noticed! Well, Im not complaining!

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Whats wrong with girls joining team? They do just as much if not more work than guys.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

i said i didnt mind. NOT complaining. I personaly like the idea. im sorry if i worded it wrong. :confused: my bad

Re: we lost a lot of girls
 

Considering that our team is an all-girls team, we DO have more girls than boys. Boys = our mentors and our mascot. Hmm...

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

Awsome i love quagmire where did you get him

anyway i'd wish more girls would participate in the building of the robot all the girls we have just do the arts and crafts.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

The men versus women, black versus white versus asain versus etc debates have been going on forever, and unless something changes dramitically in soceity probably will continue to exist. The biggest reason that soceity can't escape them are the paradoxes presented by their supporters, women's rights activists demand complete equality for women, but you still can't hit a girl, that'd be wrong. People who want equality are (for the most part) hypocrites; they only want the positive parts of "equality". Another prime example is affirmative action, it's ridiculous. It is in no way anything but pure racism, however, since it is racism against the majority, it's allowed. The only way to ever eliminate sexism, racism, whatever-else-ism is to ignore it completely, but the average person is not capable of doing that, and it's an unfortunate statement about society.

I apologize if I offend anyone, or even if some of what I say sounds a little extreme, but I'm tired of getting the shaft because I'm a middle-class, caucasian, male. I'm tired of "Women's engineering day" and "Girls 'n Gears", what if I'm interested in engineering? Does no one care about presenting workshops for guys interested in engineering? I took the PSAT last weekend, and I couldn't check the checkbox that said, "Check here if you are of African or Native American descent and you would like the PSAT to send you name and information to more scholarship oppurtunities". How is that fair to me? How can people demand equal rights as long as those checkboxes are still there?

One of my favorite agruments is that we're "making up for mistreatment in the past". Does that mean that if I find out that my father was killed by your father, but by now both are already dead, that you should have to go to jail to make up for your father's creulty to me?

Our team is somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 female, and they are more than just PR. Yet despite my best efforts even our team is not free of this problem, we've even won an award for it. Last year in OCCRA (a small, fall robotics competition, hunt around CD, it's well known), we recieved a judges award, and the judge told us, "It was really down to you and another team, but the deciding factor was when someone mentioned that you were the only team with two girls on your drive team". Is is fair that we won a judges award because our regular human player wasn't there and we happened to grab a female team member to fill in? I don't think so.

The only way that the assorted -isms will ever go away is if people stop paying attention to them. Even if it "has nothing to do with the selection process and is only used for research purposes", why should it matter? Until people begin to completely ignore physically defining charcteristics, people will always be judged by them.

I apologize for using this thread to vent, as well as going out of the scope of the topic a bit, but it is something that really gets to me.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

I haven't even thought of this as an issue until I saw this topic =/

If someone tells me theres a girl on our team I'll just probably be like "Ya? and?"

EDIT:

Holy...major bump sorry just noticed lol.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

I think the original point of the thread aimed for active recruitment of a socially-categorized group that doesn't usually participate in a FIRST-type venture. I still think this is a reasonably valid point, since often times our first instinct is to simply take what we get rather than actively seek a variety of viewpoints from places we usually take no notice of.

From viewing a few of the posts, this is a pretty good reference thread, and I don't think many people would have read it had it not been bumped.

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

We only have a few girls on our team, but they def. aren't just on the team. We bascially run the team, from making sure everybody knows where to be when, to driving the robot, to organizing team bonding activities! OUR GIRLS RULE!!!!! (im one of them lol)
p.s. recruiting girls isn't that hard. let them know that there is plenty to do on a robotics team besides just building. Then when they get hooked on robotics introduce them to the dirty stuff and they love it! (That's how they got me) :)

Re: Why girls ARE joining our team...
 

hmm...no offense to our girls, but at least one girl in the club is dating a current member...strange.

But yeah, girls are a big part of the club,
1. our schoo mentor is a female
2. our co- president is a femal
3. our treasurer is a female.
4. and we have many female builders on the team.