Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

So, does this mean, as a boy, I should cancel all my educational plans and catch the nearest plane to the salt mines in northern Russia?
For it appears that the planned lunch discussions are biased against males.

Replacing one bias with another does not solve the gender equality issue.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Team 234 is putting a lot of work into organising and running this event let's not take away from that.

The planned lunch discussions are not biased against males. They are simply discussing bias and its effects.

The idea of gender bias is something that you might not want to be discussed, but it is highly important and a good use of time IMO.

Unintentional and Intentional Bias is prevalent in our world and you would have to be quite naïve not to see this.

If you have any specific questions about the discussions I recommend that you Mr Anonymous should PM Chris Fultz

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I do not object to gender bias discussions. What bothers me is the format of these discussions, which makes it seem as though all boys are already biased, and only girls are fit to enroll in college and STEM courses.

And I believe you have spelled my name wrong. It is not "Mr Anonymous, it is The Swaggy P.

I think there is a huge misconception about what (a large portion) of women want out of bias discussions. Most of us want equality, for pay, for perception, and just in general. Not everyone is biased but based on my personal experience as a girl who is involved in the engineering field there are still people in high places that refuse to accept the idea that my work as a female is on par with that of my male counterparts. Even with all the scholarships and programs to get women into STEM schools females walked away with only 19.2% of engineering diplomas, and 18.2% in computer science (2014). This number needs to be higher- women are still being pushed away from engineering fields because of biasing. I am supportive of these types of discussions about gender perception because FIRST seems to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. While some teams have a female inclusive team others seem to only allow girls on their cheering squad team (which is fine if you want to cheer- it's great!), but don't try to tell me that 100% of the 35 girls on your team want to only cheer in the stands. Inclusiveness comes not from the leadership, but from the students themselves. The males on the team have to accept the female in the build room, and treat her the same. It sounds like you are- good job! Sorry for the rant but this is something that needs to be talked about. (Great idea for IndyRAGE- would go but I'm in NC)


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Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

What bothers me is a troll who is looking to start a fight behind the veil of anonymity.

Back on topic...

I would like to attend and learn some things from the male-focused session, for sure. Thanks for hosting these sessions.

Sincerely,
Andy B.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

The key word in that panel name is unintentional. I'm not going to claim #woke status, but I know I've said stuff in the past with zero malice that now would have me eating my words.

So no, you shouldn't catch that plane to the salt mines as a boy. But as someone apparently not keen on giving your thought process the three-foot-drop test, maybe it's worth checking Priceline.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

I've been on an unintentionally all-girls team--4901's pre-rookie appearance at SCRIW was with all of three girls, literally just enough for a drive team. When a team doesn't look like the community it's based in (on any dimension, not just gender), it's important to ask why that is so*. Good on Indiana for having enough demand to make this a thing.

*I'm not saying you should force a team to look like the community it's based in--but you should ask why it isn't and make a fair attempt.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Sure.

I apologize for the giant image, but I think it's worth posting.



Unintentional and societal bias are a large reason as to why 92.2% of US mechanical engineers are male, and that the ratios are similarly out of whack in most other engineering fields.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Make a new thread to complain and moan if you wish, this thread is about the awesome Indy Rage event.
While your at it, add a team name, and your own name to the account if are claiming that you aren't being anonymous.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

"The Swaggy P" - I understand you may think that the event is favoring girls and pushing them in STEM, but as some people have brought up, engineering fields are predominantly male. I thought for a while that this was because females just didn't like engineering, but from my personal experiences, I can assure that from my point of view that is certainly not the case.

Quick Storytime:
For this summer, I was accepted into a materials science engineering/bioengineering lab to pursue an idea I had for the future of materials engineering. I was so excited to go into the lab and start working! Within the past week, however, I was a bit turned down by the atmosphere. I am the only female in the lab (of about 15 people), and I feel like there is a lot of unintentional bias going on. For example. just today, all the "bros" (as they like to call themselves) made plans to go out for a lab team lunch, and I was the only one that wasn't invited. I'm sure you will say that this might be due to a variety of other factors - but based on the way they act, I'm sure it's out of unintentional bias. There are a plethora of other examples that would take too long to write out, so if you need more PM me. Again, I'm sure what they are doing is unintentional, and I know that in a professional environment, I shouldn't need to be best friends with everyone I work with, but that environment does make me feel upset and lonely at times. However, since I really believe in my idea, I plan on finishing my work in this lab and trying to fulfill my dream of having the idea published - but I probably won't work at said lab again.

Rambling story aside: Some males might not realize they do it because of the predominant influence of males in the field, but this unintentional bias can lead some of us girls to not feel welcome.

I am thrilled that this event is taking place and hopefully the panel discussions can help better the STEM/Engineering Environment for all of us!

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I am not defending Swaggy P here. I don't even know him. He may not be intentionally hiding his identity. If you check his previous post, you would know he is/was from 4692. It matches with the city he said he is in. He said his rookie year was 2013 which was when that team started. He may have just graduated and may have removed his team number because he is no longer on that team. That is his choice. Also many people do not put their real name in their CD profile. It is allowed although I think everybody should put their real name but that was just me.

You and I may not like what he said or how he said it or his stance on certain issue. Let's be more gentle in our discussion and stop the red dots.

I have had parents on the team asked me why we offered free STEM camps to girls only and why we ran the Bloomfield Girls Robotics Competition. My first guess as to why they asked which I was always right was that they did not have a girl in their family. Otherwise they would understand why.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

This graph says nothing except that females seem to gravitate to certain professions and males to other professions. This graph also reflects past preferences and not what students are doing today. It would take a couple generations to change the demographics, say in mechanical engineering, even if only women were allowed to study mechanical engineering starting today. And most women do not want to be mechanical engineers, although those who do apply to engineering programs are pretty much guaranteed a spot. In my experience as a parent of one girl and two boys, I did not see any institutional barriers but lots of encouragement for my daughter to do whatever she chose to do but I saw and continue to see a lot of overt messages against my sons. In high school my sons and other boys were not included in "technology career visits" to local industries while girls, even those who had no interest, were encouraged to join the visit and find out. Now one son is in college and the information boards on campus are plastered with "girls can do anything" type lectures and "all young men are sexual offenders and need to get sensitivity training" type lectures. And of course there are more girls than boys on campus.

It is amazing to me that no one seems to see the problem that "The Swaggy P" is bringing to your attention so I will pose it in a different way. What would you think if the announcement were as follows:

The 2016 SundayRAGE (Robotics All BOYS Event) is set!

Sunday October 2
Jerry Meridian High School
Minneapolis, MN

24 Teams

<$100 entry fee due to excellent sponsor support!

Stronghold Game - All MALE drive team required (including coach).

Focus on MALE volunteers in all roles.

Two Lunch time panel discussions -
* Male Focused - Career, Opportunity, Education, Challenges in STEM
* Female Focused - Intentional Bias and Actions and The Impact on Diversity

More details, registration and volunteer sign up in August / September.

You think this message might be hurtful to Girls on the teams that want to participate? If so, can't you see that the opposite message is just as hurtful to Boys? Why does the encouragement of Girls have to be at the expense of Boys and vice versa? Instituting new biases that favor girls and harm boys from kindergarten all the way through college and into careers does not make any sense for any society.

As an incubator of future leaders in our society, FIRST has great responsibility to not further these types of biases and instead to encourage all of our children to achieve their full potential in any career they choose to pursue. Team coaches and mentors (including parent mentors like me) have the personal responsibility to uplift all our young people, boys and girls alike.

Team 234 is to be highly commended for putting in the time and energy to organize and host an after season competition. But making it a Girls Only event is not similarly worthy.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

You're right, there are plenty of legitimate reason not to have name / team on one's profile. As he was saying that he wasn't being anonymous I was just challenging him to be even more "non anonymous".

Looks like someone disliked what he said even more than you or I though, his posts are gone now. Anyway, this thread may not be a good place for any of this discussion, maybe he'll make his own like I suggested.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

A little while back, I had posted some thoughts in response to the graph put up by Karthik. I had included examples of experiences that my daughter and sons have had growing up to show that there is intentional bias in favor of girls in many activities today and that it is not helpful to the healthy development of our society. It seems that any ideas not exactly in line with the biases of this group are not welcome because my post has been deleted as has the post by The Swaggy P that was the source of much of the discussion. An echo chamber is not healthy for this group either but it seems the forum moderators prefer to keep you in one. Good luck with this game plan.

Again, Team 234 is to be highly commended for putting in the time and energy to organize and host an after season competition. But making it a Girls Only event is not similarly worthy.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

If you want people to have a serious conversation with you, use your real account.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I do have a sister, and she wants to earn her way through life on her own merits and hard work, and does not expect, nor want, special treatment from society.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

That's great! I would love to think that I have achieved everything that I have because of my own merit and hard work.

Of course, if I'm being honest, I recognize and admit that I have received special treatment from society because of my race, gender, and socio-economic status.

It's because of this that I am so looking forward to this event and hope to learn much from it.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I'm glad you're worried about bias, as bias is typically bad. But the thing about initiatives like affirmative action and "intentional bias in favor of girls" is that the goal is to negate bias elsewhere that puts people -like girls- at a disadvantage.

I too enjoy earning my way, because nothing is more frustrating than being told my achievements were only attained because I'm a girl and not because of hard work and long hours that I put into them.

But you know what would suck? If your sister was denied something she had earned because her resume said "Rebecca" instead of "Robert". We still live in a world where a girl's name is perceived as less competent than a boy's name on an identical resume (click the blue and read the study if you don't believe me). So I wouldn't see it as "special treatment" but instead as "making up for a deck stacked against them."

---

However, this competition has nothing to do with special treatment and more to do with building girls' confidence in STEM, an idea I've explained before (summarized/modified for this conversation):

To explain why all-girls events/teams are not bad, we have to understand that -whether we like it or not- girls are conditioned as they grow up to be submissive and quiet while boys are taught to be loud and "take charge". Consequently, in many situations boys will take on leadership roles/talk more/dominate the space - especially domains like STEM where men are perceived to succeed at higher rates than women. This is not because boys are inherently evil, its just a side-effect of our social environment.

All-girl events are beneficial to girls because without boys automatically claiming the space, they now are able to. This builds confidence, which allows them to be successful when they are in co-ed environments. This is one of the underlying principles behind single-sex education for women. Girls aren’t dumb, they know that they will someday be in a co-ed environment. Having a single-sex environment for developing skills is not a detriment, special treatment, or making them “soft.” It’s just giving them a safe space to grow their confidence and skill set.

For a longer explanation and links to relevant studies, see the whole post.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Presumably both you and her agree that she already does get negative special treatment because she is a girl correct? Separate from the idea of "girls-only-events" do you agree that society does not give women the same treatment as men in STEM fields? If so, are you in favor of that changing so that we are all treated equally?

I have a feeling that you and the rest of us have some base assumptions that differ and we should probably clear that up before anything else.

Girls only events are not going to help our cause at all. The best we can is to support our women and girls in STEM- exclusion (of all parties) leads to nothing. Maybe have a few seminars about being a lady FIRST-er but don't be exclusive. Then we are just as bad as the people who are excluding us


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Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I am loathe to jump into this discussion, but I don't think this is the appropriate location to debate the merits of All-Female Competitions/Seminars/Whatevers. I'm not suggesting make a thread for it, though if you feel there's a need for it, that's your prerogative. I just think that the volunteers and mentors and students (both male and female) that are putting a large amount of time and effort into organizing this event would like for their thread not to be derailed by a debate in which, most likely, no one's preconceived opinions would be changed anyway.

It looks to be a wonderful event that is a step in the right direction, and this thread is one way they're advertising it. It'd be a shame if the event was forgotten in the wake of a good ol' CD discussion.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I've reinstated your post. I'd appreciate it if you'd move discussion of the merit of these sorts of events into a new thread (or one of the many existing ones) so as to keep the focus here on the event itself.

These discussions repeat here frequently and are tedious. Apologies.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Why does this have a very #Alllivesmatter feel to it?

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I won't be attending, unfortunately (IN is a bit too far...) but I would like to say that this post effected me a lot more than any single talk or speech that I've heard. If I was attending the seminar about unintentional bias I would look forward to stories or examples like these.

The thread is only at 2 pages yet. If people stop arguing, regardless of stances or views, than legitimate questions can be asked and answered about the event.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Discrimination is discrimination. To exclude a group based upon their sex, sexual orientation, culture or religion is discrimination. This is a sexist discriminating event. Further, it may actually be negative in the goal the organizers are trying to address. This is my point of view.

The girls have to learn how to play with the boys and the boys have to learn how to play with the girls. After over a decade of working with diverse FRC team I can say this is very very hard. Every one is focusing on the girls. We need to also focus on the boys. They need to learn how to play nicely with the girls and take this forward in to the work place in the future. The girls also have to learn how to integrate into a team with boys on it. It all starts with respect. Respect, respect, respect.

Our team will not participate in a sexist event.


Go ahead and Flame me. I have my flame resistant suit on.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

If you've ever walked the pits at an event, you wouldn't say boys are discriminated against in FRc, and any single off-season event isn't going to change that. That's like saying adults are discriminated against at movie theaters because Seniors and children get cheaper tickets.

For me, this sort of discussion keeps coming back to something one of my former students wrote: http://makezine.com/2015/05/01/build...d-better-team/

Events like this help to build girls confidence, allowing them to go into a mix gendered situation during the season with that confidence and asserting themselves. Otherwise (and as a 10-year mentor for an all girls team, i've seen it way too often) the girls don't assert themselves in those situations, and so the guys run right over them in their confidence. It's nothing intentional by either group most of the time, but rather a result of typical gender stereotyping we all grew up with - since engineering is a "guy thing", girls generally enter it less confident, regardless of their ability, and that lack of confidence causes a lot of the issues. So bring on events like this, help girls build their confidence so they can assert themselves in other situations.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I'm going to put aside directly responding to the ignorant and sexist comments coming exclusively from males who oppose this event in this thread to make a different point for a second. This doesn't mean I agree with them.

But consider this - even if you do think that this event is worthless, a great option is available to you and your team. For the low, low price of $0, you can choose not to attend this event and move on with your lives. That way you won't have to ever consider whether this event is sexist or hurts your team or anything like that. And if it's not your team and it's not your event, it's not your business, right? We say "live and let live" in threads about mentor built robots, but we can't in threads about having women attend a single day of competition without men? Just don't go to the event if it bothers you. Do you really think this event is catering to people who deny sexism against women exists?

This is a one day local off-season tournament for teams that want to give the full FRC competitive experience to women, without men intentionally or otherwise getting in the way of the students' experiences. Women who otherwise wouldn't get to be on the drive team, pit crew, scouting, volunteering, will get to at this event. Whether or not you think this is caused by intentional sexism, unintentional sexism, or you just think it's a giant crazy coincidence that the majority of key roles on FRC teams and key volunteers just happen to be male, in all of those cases women will get an opportunity they may not otherwise have by attending this event. For one day. At an off-season.

If you think this is sexist and unnecessary, I would encourage you to give this event a try, and if you really have to, just sign up for some other offseason and only let the boys go to that one (so it's "fair" to you, whatever). I bet if you compare and contrast the experiences your team gets at those two vastly different events, you'll learn quite a lot about gender dynamics and you'll learn more about subconscious bias.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

It's really sad to see an event thread get bombarded with ethics questions about females and males in our field.

I would really appreciate moving this discussion to another thread, anyone looking for the thread about an event now has to sit and read through all of this? This is not the place.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Your request is our command. :)

Please keep the conversation here civil - mods are keeping track.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I'm not following all of this discussion, but it looks like this was split off of another thread? Please find a way to put a disclaimer at the beginning of the thread when this is done. It's very confusing to people who see the thread for the first time and gives the appearance that the OP (or not, I can't tell!) is starting drama.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I think you're missing the point here.

This is not about discriminating against young men to put young women on some sort of pedestal. This is not about pushing young men down, it's about raising young women up.

When it comes to these sort of discussions regarding differing treatment towards people of different ethnicity, gender identity, or anything else, we really need to see this as an "issue" (it really shouldn't be an issue) of equity, not equality. This means that this event isn't about giving everyone the same opportunity; it's about giving opportunity to those who have had it taken away from them by virtue of their own gender. Women face many challenges in the STEM fields, and while I'm sure there are some that only men face, the problems that face women are discouraging at the very least and quite often debilitating. This event give these young scientists an opportunity to experience STEM without those hurdles.

Finally, I would like to step off my soapbox for a minute and apologize for speaking on behalf of any women who may feel differently.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

You are correct, however I believe the argument being made is that if that is the case, don't separate the workshops by gender. Both workshops are important topics, but to say that young women can only attend the "success" workshop and young men can only attend the "learn to fix your accidental bad behavior" workshop makes one push in the right direction and another push in the wrong direction.

Why not offer both workshops to everyone and encourage everyone to attend whichever one they choose, or even mix the two together into a single workshop? Either way by attending one of the workshops the participants will learn something valuable. I think that if a single workshop that covered career success in STEM fields as well as inclusion in STEM was offered, nobody would be complaining.

A final thought: It is no secret that a majority of the difficulties pushing young women away from STEM come from men, even unintentionally, and it is no secret that because of these difficulties entering the STEM fields can be daunting and deterring for many young women. But we forget that sometimes it can also be young women who accidentally make it difficult for other young women to enter the field, and likewise, sometimes young men see STEM as daunting and deterring. It may be a minority, but it still exists. Just as you can't fight hate with hate, you cannot fight gender roles with more gender roles. Inclusion and equality is the only way forwards.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I've attached two pictures that were derived from this data set, by which I mean, I ordered the jobs by Median income (lower income is on the top)


The second one, I snipped out only engineering.


Point is, percentage is really only half the question. Who cares if a certain group dominates employment in a sector which doesn't pay well such as Library Science?

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

If you want to fix something - do it.

As some statistics have pointed out (that were posted on the thread), most well paying engineering jobs are taken by males. As a woman I reflect upon my experiences and realize I didn't want to do a lot of things because the predominant male influence in the field. Just take an example of say Petroleum Engineering. I don't want to do it because I don't feel comfortable in the field with males unintentional bias against me (they aren't wrong for doing it - it's unintentional after all). Because of that I don't train to be a Petroleum Engineer. I could have been a great Petroleum Engineer that really could have changed the industry. But I refused to because of a culture that didn't harbor an environment for my learning and flourishing. So someone comes along and starts an initiate. "Females in Petroleum Engineering". It helps by fostering an environment I'd want to work in. The reason "Males in Petroleum Engineering" isn't an initiative is because the environment currently supports them in working. Why are you stopping potential females Petroleum Engineers from entering a field when you can fix a easily recognizable problem (unintentional bias)? So by saying "This one guy doesn't feel welcome as opposed to these 50 girls - we should forget about helping the 50 girls optimally". We can combine them but time and resources are an issue. So here is an idea: If you find that there is a problem with promoting Males in a certain field that you would like to see more males in, or if you think Males should also be pushed in FRC - then take your own initiatives to do so! Instead of complaining about how this event, that so many people put so much hard work, time, effort, and emotional costs into is worthless because it doesn't promote real equality - then make your own male counterpart event! In my opinion, people shouldn't so ruthlessly discredit so much work without proposing a realistic and serious alternative.

I'll end with a logic exercise that I used to do in elementary school.

Example.)

Major Premise: All humans breathe air.
Minor Premise: I breathe air.
Conclusion: I am a human.
Sound Logic.

Application:

Major Premise: All genders should be promoted in STEM.
Minor Premise: Females are a gender.
Conclusion: Females should be promoted in STEM.
Sound Logic.

Notice nowhere does this say males should not be promoted in STEM. Males should be promoted but this event is about promoting females. Nobody is trying to exchange promoting women in STEM for males in STEM.

Sorry about the rambling some posts on this thread really made me want to rant.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I appreciate your point of view, and I agree with a lot of what you've said. I have a couple things to say, though.

While in theory, having workshops available to everyone gives twice the number of people valuable experience, it doesn't work out that way. I'm going to overstep my bounds as someone who is not a woman and say that often the presence of men would unintentionally cause these women to not feel as comfortable fully participating or sharing.

And sure, you make a good point about some women who make the STEM world hostile for other women. However, these women 1) are a minority of women in STEM and 2) would likely also benefit from workshops that encourage making STEM more hospitable towards women.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

If solely the presence of another gender makes someone feel uncomfortable, regardless of who they are, that's on them. You cannot say that just having a gender exist in an area is enough to rationalize discomfort. If you cannot speak your mind because another gender is present, that is not the fault of the other gender.

Now I would understand if, for a more specific hypothetical example, boys were in the girl's workshop and they started heckling girls or showing clear examples of bias or prejudice, then yes, it would make sense that others would feel uncomfortable. However to make the assumption that allowing boys to participate in the workshop would surely result in heckling and prejudice is prejudice in it of itself.

We use this program to inspire young adults to be mature and educated individuals who are better prepared for the real world than their peers outside the program. We cannot accomplish this if we use reverse discrimination to solve a problem of discrimination, and we certainly cannot accomplish it if we allow prejudiced assumptions to justify the mindset of irrational discomfort solely due to the presence of another gender.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Major Premise: All humans breathe air.
Minor Premise: My dog breathes air.
Conclusion: My dog is a human.


Some logic may not be as sound as you think. Remember, all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.

That said, boys are already promoted in STEM through our general societal expectations, while girls are not. So if we're going to change the culture and grow STEM, catering to girls on occasion is one very valid way of doing it.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Not to get into semantics, but I think what was meant was:

Major Premise: All humans breathe air.
Minor Premise: I am a human.
Conclusion: I breathe air.

Beyond that, the second logic exercise was perfectly sound.

I personally think that it is fine for this event to take place. However, we should be promoting not only female leadership in STEM careers, but also female leadership interaction with males in STEM. While I'm not sure how it is best to do this, I'm certain that it'd be more beneficial to cater to female leadership interactions.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Yes - thanks Mark. That's what I was supposed to write.

And I do agree with your second statement. While this event has its place, another opportunity could be to figure out a way to promote integration of females directly in male dominated environments.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

IMHO an event like this would be a lot better if instead of an all women drive team they did a 50/50 drive team. I also think if the end goal is to promote women in Engineering then promoting females in the pits is a good tactic.

A concern no one seems to have brought up yet is the fact that some small teams like ours don't have enough active females to field a drive team. For 10-25 person teams this could very well be the case.

Although I can't give my full opinions on this topic I will end with this. The engineering world is primarily male and will most likely be like this for at least our generation. First is about learning. Whether we like it or not a valid skill for females to learn if they want to pursue engineering is working with primarily men. I also feel an event like this may broadcast a wrong message to females. A message that the only way for them to gain an important positions is to get rid of all the males. That's the exact opposite direction we should be going in.

Lastly I had the convenience of being able to select my Co captain this year. Smiti at the time was not near the most dedicated member nor knew the most about Frc but what I saw was a competent person who would be the best at leading the team. Gender never played a factor and imo if shouldn't. The most competent person should be chosen and I believe was chosen.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

With this thread growing, I really wanted to share my point of view. Most of you know my opinion about all female events and mass medias obsession with women in STEM, but I thought I'd share it here.

I think there is a HUGE difference in regards to getting women involved in STEM, with showing them they are capable and striving to teach women spacial reasoning skills at a young age (we get dolls, boys get legos) which is why I love Debbie Sterling and her Goldiebloks program. FLL also strives to do the same. Getting ANYONE into STEM at a young age is the key. Showing little girls they are capable of the same skills is key.

I'd also like to point out how difficult it is to be a woman in STEM when STEM jobs and FRC have this strong male culture behind them. I am constantly told I shouldn't be doing this, that I'm in a man's field, and that I chose the wrong path. You know what sucks? When people see that you're a woman at an engineering company or team and assume you're not an engineer, assume you're doing media or outreach. Assuming you don't belong before speaking to you. And with all of that we also have to deal with CONSTANT harassment from our male colleagues, adults, and volunteers. We have to deal with people constantly hitting on us, making sexual advances, and blatant bullying because we're doing what makes us happy. No wonder so many women walk away from the STEM world after dealing with all of that.

But a lot of media just wants women to feel special without understanding the push for girls in STEM, and when you treat a woman special and superior for going through all we have to, people feel like they can underestimate us. How is someone not supposed to think I know less if I could get in with less? How are people supposed to think I am worth the same when I was worth different going into college?? I'm sure many women in FIRST can agree with me when I say, I want to earn things based on merit and not based on my anatomy. As for FIRST, at an educational POV, getting more women involved is great, I didn't know I wanted to be an engineer until FRC and was told I couldn't do it throughout the journey. But treating all women teams or teams with higher amounts of women as these "breakthroughs" make other teams who are majority male based on region seem like they don't matter. Some teams who are all female and perform less will constantly get coverage. So in an effort for media to not be sexist, they are sexist.

Theres a great silicon valley clip that sums up my feelings.

As this event itself, I see nothing wrong with encouraging women they can do something they've been told from a young age they can't. The same types of events are present in female dominated fields for men.

I think the key here is this event is showing women they are capable and that they have a role in our STEM world. I don't think this event at all is making it seem like as women we are better or superior. These are real issues a woman has to face everyday, I know I have to.

I'm super excited to see another event showing women they can do something they've been told they shouldn't!

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

What you said is a fact I am aware of and that was exactly why my daughter and I wanted to start an all-girls event a few years ago. I have heard from many teams who expressed that concern. It encourages the girls on the teams with low female percentages to ask their female friends to join and grow the team. We made exceptions for these teams the first time to let them "borrow" girls from other teams. When the girls saw there are many other girls on other teams who are so excited about FRC, it further encourages them. I have seen this worked.
In our first year, we had no girls on the team. The second there was one brave girl. Now it is about 1/3 of the team. Keep in mind this is with a no cut team policy and anybody can join. It is easy to make it 50/50 by cutting half of the boys on the team but that would be wrong and we will never do that. We encourage boys to go into STEM just as much as girls.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Against my better judgement, and probably to little avail… I've written a lengthy reply to this post.

Regarding Reverse Discrimination

I would like to think I'm open minded enough to understand arguments on both sides of the coin.

For supporters of affirmative action to “move the needle”, whether by hiring, educating, or supporting historically underrepresented minorities in a given profession, the belief is that our current society still lacks fairness. While it might be technically correct to use the term “discrimination” to refer to any group/event that excludes a another group based on gender, such as males not being invited to an all-girls event, let’s zoom out a few hundred years to get a little context of what systemic, societal discrimination really is. In the US, we have been a country for nearly 250 years. For ~150 of those years, women were not allowed to even vote. For ~200 of those years, people of color were not allowed to vote, or there were unofficial policies inhibiting them from voting. In the 1800s, there were laws that said it was ILLEGAL to teach people of color to read or write. There still countries now where people are KILLED, fighting for the rights for women to just go to school. There are countries where people are KILLED for being gay. In recent history, there were policies that encouraged mass abortions/murder of female babies in preference of male children. Discrimination exists, and while thankfully it is far less damaging in the US today than it was 50-100 years ago, it does exist, and past echos are still felt.

This is not white guilt speaking, and I am not trying to blame today’s white males (of which I am one), for being discriminatory. However, I would hope that we can agree that one of the biggest contributors to a child’s success rate are their parents’ education level and income. Yes, there are plenty of examples of poor students from uneducated parents that buck statistics and become wildly successful, but on average, the system is in your favor if you are born to college educated parents, who by extension are more likely to have a higher income level. So if I had active discriminatory policies that forbid the education of a subset of people, and then tomorrow I allow it, while I am no longer actively discriminating against them, I have dropped them into a society that is stacked against them. If they are not educated, they are less likely to have the means to educate their children, and you get a trickle-down effect of that discrimination that will go away with time, but it does persist. Fifty years or one hundred years feels like SO MUCH TIME, so it is hard to fathom for some today that the effects remain, but you are really only talking about 2 to 4 generations.

Affirmative action policies are based around the idea that unless you truly believe that a woman, a racial/ethnic minority, and/or an LBGT+ person is born incapable of learning math, being an engineer, being active in politics, making as much money, etc when compared to a white/straight/male person… then there is no reason why the distribution of income/professions/etc should not reflect the racial/gender makeups of our country. Because it doesn’t, we should push some groups up (knowing full well that mathematically, we have to lower the % of the majority), to close that artificial gap.

I get why that feels so wrong, and I can appreciate the feeling of “reverse discrimination”. If you are up for a job, and are 5% more qualified on paper than another applicant, and hypothetically that applicant gets an edge “to meet a quota”... for the individuals in question it doesn’t matter… it just feels wrong. However, what if that 5% the slightly more qualified applicant had was because more opportunities afforded them, or they didn’t have to work through college and could study more because their parents could afford to pay for it, or any other number of reasons that have less to do with how “good” that individual is, and more to do with their parents and their society. Maybe their parents had two kids, and as the boy, they got all the attention, worked in their father’s shop, and was trained from a young age that “engineering was right for them”, while the girl got Barbie dolls and didn’t realize until later in life that she too really liked engineering and was perfectly capable of doing it as well, but had to play catch-up. Maybe the person that is 5% less qualified on paper has had to work harder to get there, and would make a better employee. Or maybe it’s all backwards and the (hypothetically white male) applicant was the poor one that worked their butt off, and the minority applicant actually had well off parents and got all the benefits plus an extra boost. All that said, it is a fact that these subtle (or less subtle) negative biases exist, and the purpose of affirmative action really just to match them with a positive bias.

The final thing I’ll say on reverse discrimination before a personal story is I also acknowledge that poor white males get the short end of this stick. I could fathom a poor white male feeling reverse discrimination because they feel like they are not receiving these “magic benefits” that people claim they get as a white male, while other groups are being lifted up around them through targeted attention. When I am out there as a mentor, trying to swing the needle in my own community, that extends to poorer students of all races/ethnicities/genders/etc.

I can remember a time in my life when I recoiled at the thought of affirmative action, but beliefs imprinted on me at a younger age keep shedding off as I grow up and see more of the world. I work a large, multinational company in the facilities engineering group. Our company as a whole is consistently ranked in all the lists as being supportive and inclusive of people of all backgrounds, but our particular group is still overwhelmingly white and male. I have heard first-hand people say things about women/minorities like “they were just promoted/hired to meet a quota”, as well as other disrespectful things. This sort of behavior is absolutely hostile, and I think keeps people out of the door, and chases out others that came in. I mention this in no way to try to criticize my company or the leaders' attempts to make a better workplace, but hopefully because others have seen similar issues and can relate.

As a hypothetical situation, as I’m not involved in recruiting and have no directly knowledge of the process, if my company said… hey Steven, go recruit new engineers… where am I going to go? Probably back to my alma mater’s engineering school, which is mostly white/male, because it is the comfortable choice. I know where I’m going, I know the people there to talk to, and it’s just easier. I’m also likely have a slight internal bias towards people “like me”, and probably be slightly more likely to hire a white man. I’d like to think in an individual situation, I’d have no bias, but I know it exists at some level. If all of our recruiters are white males because our group is all white males… guess who we are probably going to hire… more white males. If HR says we really need to consider hiring more women or minorities, at least we have a reason to fight that natural bias. Additionally, we could (and do) send more women/minorities as recruiters, to help neutralize the bias. If there were no affirmative action policies and we just let nature take its course, I truly believe the needle wouldn’t move. This isn’t an issue just because of a mismatch in statistics, it’s an issue because our group would be missing out on a diversity of people and opinions that make us stronger. If you only hire people that think like you and have the same background as you, you get an echo chamber effect.

Regarding Specific Events Targeting Women/Minorities/Etc

Here, I’ll apologize for a little more direct tone, because it really gets under my skin. I see the same argument drummed up every time a group of female/black/Hispanic/LBGT+/etc wants to form a group to talk about shared issues. “Well if they can have a group, why can’t I”. Why is it acceptable to have a Society of Women Engineers (as one example of many), but I can’t start a group called the Society of Male Engineers? The argument is just ridiculous to me. The reason why not, is because there is literally no other point other than spiteful retaliation against the idea of being excluded from something, or perhaps wanting to maintain the current lopsided gender statistics in engineering. SWE provides opportunities for young women to meet working professionals that are also female, to discuss shared experiences of women entering the engineering profession, and to promote diversity. Flipping this on its head to say we should have the same for men, simply so they don’t get their feelings hurt from being excluded is silly. We don’t need a special group to make it easier for men to be engineers, or to recognize the special hurdles than men suffer trying to be an engineer, or trying to find a male role model as an engineer. THIS DOESN’T MEAN, we shouldn’t support men who want to be engineers, groups like FIRST are already doing this, it just doesn’t mean we need a SME because we have a SWE, or an IndyRAGE for Men to "balance" IndyRAGE for Women.

That also doesn't mean because someone is a male, they don't struggle and don't need support. Maybe they come from a family of limited resources. Maybe they were abused as a child, had a parent that abused substances, or had no parents at all. Maybe they have a learning or physical disability. There are a million factors that generate a need for "extra support" and thankfully, a substantial number of great organizations that provide that support to all people, including males.

No one likes to feel excluded though, and I get it. The whole idea of not being “targeted” for generic support as a white male, and not being a part of the discussion, or invited to participate in the event could very well potentially hurt a boy’s feelings. To be blunt though, that is life, and you will be ok. You are no less likely to have a successful career in engineering because you were only invited to 99.5% of the FIRST events. This is not a slippery slope where some day only 25% of the events will allow men. If we were ever to reach the magical number of 50/50 split between men/women in engineering, the women are not going to take over and try to push it to 10/90 out of spite. Please just let it go and quit creating strawman/slippery slope arguments.

The other group is the parents, and the same thing applies. The encouragement of female engineers is not at the expense of boys. Your child is no less likely to be supported in their pursuit of engineering because they were not invited at an all-girls event. You don’t need to claim that mentors are uplifting girls at the expense of boys. This is all a knee-jerk reaction and a slippery slope argument towards a future that simply doesn’t exist. In fact, if you and/or your student would embrace it, you would probably find that future companies would very much rather hire a male student that embraces diversity and supports events like IndyRAGE, than a student that sulks because they weren’t invited to the party. Teaching your students to be graceful, civil, and supportive in a situation where they don’t necessarily agree is probably more important than forcing your way into the event out of some principle.

The comments about gender dynamics on teams are real in my limited experience as a mentor. I’m not an expert, but I can absolutely support the idea some students are more prone to take charge and lead and others are perhaps equally capable, but less confident to try their abilities. I think as a mentor, it is important to put all of my students in a situation where they feel more comfortable stretching their wings. It could be confirmation bias, but I would say I see this problem more-so with the girls in the club, as well as with younger members. Events like IndyRAGE in my mind are no different than having an FTC starter team that “excludes” 11th/12th grade members so the 9th/10th grade students can take a greater leadership role. It is simply carving out extra space for more people to grow, and sometimes to carve out that space you have to remove the existing natural leaders to find new hidden leaders. This doesn’t have to be to the detriment of the existing leaders, they can continue to stretch their wings in the regular FRC season, it just creates a little separate growing space for other people to reach their potential. Once again, I think any attitudes of “well I should be allowed to compete in IndyRAGE”… or “I don’t care it is a 9th/10th grade FTC team, I should be allowed to be on it”… are just knee-jerk reactions to feeling excluded.

At any rate, I apologize for the essay. I sometimes like to write for the benefit of myself, reminding myself what I believe… as much as sharing it with others. For anyone who happened to make it through it all, hopefully it was worth your time.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

*slow clap* (Bolding is mine.)

Spout all theory y'all want, but we're engineers, and we know that theory doesn't hold up in the real world and we must deal with it. The best way is to practice. The worst thing to do to a budding engineer is to give them a false sense of what reality is. I have never coddled, and will never coddle my students- whether it's about discrimination, workload, etc.

(This is about the direction I feel FIRST is going in in general. I feel there's too much hype and superficiality and quite frankly, disconnect from industry in general...)

Someone mentioned that so many females leave STEM fields after joining. Even if bucking up female involvement is a goal, is false advertising somehow NOT hampering retention?

Personally, I just want more freaking great engineers. I don't care what they look like.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Karthik, everyone seems to be up in arms about the lack of female representation in engineering. In my opinion, that ostracizes men more than anything else. The very graph you posted shows fields with almost no males, and nobody seems to be upset that there aren't more male kindergarent teachers. At the same time, I don't see anyone complaining that men almost completely fill the most grueling jobs on this list. This isn't a very good argument for "equality".

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

There is nothing wrong with this situation. Really, this isn't going against any law or infringing on any of your rights. This is a group of men going out to have fun, it is fully within their right to choose who they want to hang out with. Do you honestly think you have the same definition of fun as them? Both guys and gals like hanging out with people most similar to them, there is nothing wrong with that.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Just because it's legal to be a rude person, doesn't mean you should be a rude person.

Given that she presumably wished to be included, I'm going to go with "yes." Or at least "more than close enough."

So get upset about this! Do something about it! People are missing out on the opportunity to gain fulfilling employment right now, time is of the essence! Start a program to encourage male Kindergarten teachers, and eradicate the perception that men working with young children are automatically sexual predators! Create initiatives to remove sexist barriers to entry and cultural normalization of dirty, hands on work as "a man's job." But that sounds like work, and it's easier to complain about people actually taking these initiatives in other fields. It'd take real passion and concern for these issues, rather than only caring about them for the purposes of an internet argument in favor of the status quo...

The fact is, every heavily skewed datapoint on that graph, in both directions, are simply symptoms of the same, much larger problem: That people refuse to acknowledge that artificial societal pressures and factors generate these uneven distributions rather than some innate biological reality of gender, that in doing so, people reinforce those societal elements that created the disparities in the first place, and that no matter how you cherry-pick careers, these societal pressures are overwhelmingly sexist and present women as generally "less capable." STEM is an attractive field, with very obvious benefactors from gender equality movements, and so it gets a lot of focus. I mean, we're on a discussion board about a nationwide program to get more people inspired by this career -- I doubt you could find a similarly sized "For Inspiration and Recognition of Garbage Collectors," regardless of gender focus. But maybe victories here, and breaking down barriers and perceptions here, can help inpart change across the board. We don't only encourage women in STEM to get women in STEM, we do it because it's a part of the bigger picture in the fight against the patriarchy.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Allow me to put it this way:

Your robotics team decides to go out to lunch all together, as a team lunch. They do not tell you, invite you, or otherwise include you--but you hear about it.

Are you, or are you not, singled out for exclusion? There is no third answer. (For this exercise, at any rate. I'm lumping "oops, we forgot" in with "we don't want this person" because if they definitely wanted you, they would have remembered.)

Now, a "workable definition" of discrimination could be phrased as: singling some person or group of persons out for exclusion. Legally, there's somewhere between 10 and 20 different categories that are protected, depending slightly on which state's lists you read--mighty long list, don't you think? The sad part is that all those categories are necessary to be spelled out in the first place...



Let's go back to that exercise. If we assume that you consider that you are not singled out for exclusion, then I find that a little odd--just human nature here, unless there's some mitigating circumstance. If, on the other hand, we assume that you consider the other way (and, to be honest, many people will!), then you may have been discriminated against. On what basis? Well, seeing as I don't know you, or anything about you, per se, I can't say. And, I'm not willing to make anything up. It could have been that for some reason you had some really bad halitosis that day, or it could have been that you were _______ and they were all ______.

That would be what's going on in the post you responded to. And, I'm willing to bet that it WAS unintentional. That doesn't mean it hurts any less! Am I a male? Yep. But... I have had to help deal with the aftermath of what I'll call "unintentional gender bias", with some good engineering-student friends (and it wasn't just me. Several folks were involved in that discussion). All I'll say is that it doesn't just affect those who are on the receiving end, it affects everybody in the group. Eventually. Can I claim that I'm perfect in that regard? NO.


Remember: It doesn't have to BE discrimination to FEEL LIKE discrimination.


Now, in the situation originally mentioned, if they'd asked and been declined, your statement might have had merit. But, they didn't even bother to ask.



As far as your other post: Let's ask Why they aren't saying anything about that. Then maybe something can be determined about what else is going on. Just for the record, I don't have an answer on that--yet. Without knowing what may be behind that IS situation, we cannot know why people are not complaining that it does not match the SHOULD BE situation. (And, TBH: It could simply be that either the men or the women swarm all the openings before the other group can even get an application together. Stranger things happen...)

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

A lot of companies learned that diversity is important, not because they want to look good and can say they have more women and minorities etc. It indirectly affects their bottom line. It is money. Having a more diverse workforce makes a company more competitive. For most products that are not aimed at a certain gender or ethnicity, you want your engineers to think like and be able to relate to the population that you are targeting to sell your product. If half of the buyers are women, it would be a good idea to include women as part of the engineering design team. I am saying this from past personal experience. Female engineers bring a lot to the table.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

I'll take a gamble at addressing a few of these. Please take a second to consider that I'm really not trying to say you are "wrong" but to just give you an alternative way to look at it. You are obviously as entitled to your opinions as I am to disagree with them.

As an engineer, I'm often asked to look at a data set and explain outliers. In my case (and I know you weren't specifically referencing my post), I really wasn't trying to "spout theory", as much as try to explain a known outlier (% of women in engineering), with a combination of what I've read and heard (theory) with what I see (experience. Many of the things I have read do seem to show their head in the real world, and industry.

You use the term "coddling" in a negative way, which is defined as "to treat tenderly; nurse or tend indulgently; pamper". I would argue that almost every FIRST student has been coddled in some way, and the entire purpose of FIRST is to "coddle" students by providing them a safe space to grow their skills. If you would like to not be coddled, we could make it to where if a team loses a regional, the team folds, the members lose their jobs, they lose their houses and belongings. We could make it such that at every season, you do a performance review of the your team and the bottom 10% are laid off. I don't think trying to make FIRST "more like the real world" in the sense of making it more harsh and "survival of the fittest" is fair, when the world (engineering) currently defines the "fittest" as male, regardless of other attributes.

Why is the burden on the girls to integrate with the boys anyway? History? Why is it that if a girl wants to be an engineer, SHE has to learn to work in a system that tries to push her out. What have we done as boys to earn that luxury of king of the hill. No one is arguing that women should be sheltered and protected their entire lives from working with the boys, and/or that they will never have to do so. It is literally a single event, for a weekend, where the girls can see firsthand that all that is amazing about FIRST can be run by girls. They are not going to go start an FRC for Girls league to get away from the boys, they are going to better integrate into the existing FRC program by stepping up for that lead volunteer role, or pit crew lead, or try out as a driver when they wouldn't have before.

If you are referring to the push for increased diversity and/or encouraging women in STEM, then I would strongly disagree about a disconnect from industry, being involved in a large multinational company for years and being directly involved with our corporate citizenship and university recruiting teams to witness what/why the policies are. It is not to check a box, it is not to win awards in magazines... it is because a diversity of people brings a diversity of thought and new solutions and ultimately makes us a stronger company. The companies that understand this will benefit.

If the thing driving women away from engineering is the feeling that it is a boys club and they are not welcome, then yes, you are correct, advertising upfront that girls aren't welcome will improve retention. Only the most dedicated girls and confident girls will enter in the first place and are more likely to stay. However, retention isn't the sole issue, it is also encouraging girls to join in the first place and give it a try. In that case, instead of advertising that FIRST isn't for them to improve retention, I'd advocate for improving the root issue, by making them feel welcome, valued and respected after they join.

I agree. I just hope you realize that there are probably alot of potential freaking great future engineers that never discover they would have been one, because society told them they weren't welcome.

Choosing to focus a discussion on a subset of a problem does not mean we immediately accept every other problem as "solved". You give the example of kindergarden teachers, I'll add to the example nurses. Nursing is a huge need and a growing field, one that historically men have not been involved in as heavily. I have friends that went into nursing, and there is a degree of "lulz, a male nurse" that is no more acceptable. If a woman wants to be a cement worker, or another physically grueling job, she should be able to. Similarly, there are a lot of other "grueling jobs" on the female side of it, though some perhaps more mentally/emotionally grueling.

*Smiti, I apologize for speaking about you in the 3rd person and if I'm offbase speak up and I'd gladly edit it out.

Clearly, there was something wrong with the situation to Smiti, which is presumably why she posted it as an example of when she felt excluded. Her example is not the only one, I've seen many others.

Is it illegal? No. Should the "boys" be "forced" to invite the girls, absolutely not... personal liberties and what not. Should her desire to be included necessarily override their desire not to include her... debatable.

However, based on her post, I know that she was in a lab, working with boys, and the collective group of them probably have an interest in materials science. Smiti likely has a number of other interests that overlap with her peers, and she felt that the lack of an invitation meant she didn't "fit in". I honestly think I probably do have enough of the same idea of "fun" as Smiti, as she probably enjoys robots, engineering, and we'd have plenty to talk about over lunch. I actually did an undergraduate study in computation materials engineering and haven't talked about it in 10 years... so she could probably catch me up on cool new things in the field. None of this has anything to do with the fact that she is female and I am male, nor should it in a professional environment. If the sole reason she was excluded was because the boys didn't want to invite a girl, I'd say that it is a shame they missed out on getting to meet another one of their lab mates.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Not wanting to hang out with a person isn't rude. Do you actually believe that? Other people should be able to tell me who I can and can't hang out with?

I don't see the logic here. But it's a minor point.

It's incredibly naive to think biological factors don't play a role in the distribution of careers. Biology is the single largest determinant in a persons character. Yes, there are societal pressures, but they are driven by our innate biological tendencies. We tend to enforce the norm as guided by our unique neurological makeup. Men are typically more aggressive than women, women are typically more empathetic than men. Meaning that on the whole, a lot of women aren't going to like working in a competitive environment whereas men will. And in science, you need competition.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I had a whole post typed up but in reading the updated posts I don't think it is necessary to say the same thing others have said over and over. Joe G., EricH, and Steven Smith: I really appreciate your comments in advocating for me on the topic. It means a lot.

"Not wanting to hang out with a person isn't rude. Do you actually believe that? Other people should be able to tell me who I can and can't hang out with?"

In a professional setting, it isn't about having "fun". It was a lab lunch in which you sit around a table and eat while discussing your current advances in the project. I have been to them before. It's not chilling with your friends. It is like any professional work lunch with your co-workers in a work environment.

"I don't see the logic here. But it's a minor point."
Given that I'm working in the same department voluntarily as the rest of them are (we spend 10 hours a day during our summers researching), yes we do have pretty similar definitions of fun. Again, I'm not hanging out with my BFFs here - professional setting.

Also regarding the other posts you made about males are teachers:
http://www.menteach.org/

https://www.oct.ca/-/media/PDF/Attra...Teaching_e.pdf

If you see that there aren't initiatives to push women in labor oriented jobs - then start a campaign if you care about it that much.

About the "it comes down to biology":

Humans are savages by nature. It was embed in our biology to to do whatever we wanted in order to survive and reproduce, including kill. Why isn't it okay to murder if we are biologically wired to do so in times we feel threats on a consistent basis? We are biologically wired to reproduce. Meaning we will try to reproduce as much as they can - being promiscuous. Why is that socially looked down upon now, if we are biologically wired to do so?

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I highly doubt the group of men chose to not invite her because of some "subconscious sexist discrimination bias". If they had wanted her around, they would have invited her. If they didn't ask, they don't want to hang out! It's that simple.

My theory, is that the two sexes have different preferences, ingrained in us biologically and enforced through societal norms. A portion of the population feels that this "status quo" is wrong. To them, unless a field is split 50/50 it is unfair. Here is where the hypocrisy comes in. The majority of the people with this point of view are women arguing that men-heavy fields are the most unfair. The truth is, the reality that most feminists want isn't the reality that most women, on the whole, actually want. When every option is available to women (UC's have a sex split of 50-50), they tend to not choose engineering. Biological differences explain why women enjoy becoming psychologists, and why men enjoy becoming engineers.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

So you're telling us that a fair number of people, simultaneously and independently, decided to hang out together but not with one person, who happened to be different from them? I find it hard to believe that someone didn't at least think to invite that person. Like, really hard to believe.

My crew at work knows that I don't usually hang out with them--but that doesn't mean that I don't get invited, asked, or informed by at least one person!

You're right: Not wanting to hang out with someone isn't rude. And you do have freedom of association. But here's the thing: when a bunch of people all exercise that right, against someone else, then it can become discrimination. And I don't think there's a whole lot of court cases where "freedom of association" has been successfully argued as a reason to discriminate. (At least not lately.)

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Yes, I do think singling out and excluding someone entirely on the basis of a characteristic they cannot control and should not affect the situation is incredibly rude. I've had it happen to me many times, and it sucks. You probably have as well.

If it was about race, we'd call it racism. So why isn't it sexism when its about sex?

Can you quote a scientific study in support of this "theory," which shows such glaring differences that it's worthwhile for everyone to actively work to create/maintain a situation where it's difficult or practically impossible for people of a certain gender to get careers in certain fields or are you just trying to rationalize your own biases?

A majority of women identify as feminists.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

There is a difference between wanting a 50/50 split and not wanting a 92/8 split.

Second of all, if women truly aren't that interested in STEM, then why are events like IndyRAGE and Girls' Generation (1540's off-season of a similar vein) so popular? Do you think it's their mentors forcing all of these girls to go? Or is it because they are genuinely interested and have a passion for STEM?

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Are you sure that that's what you mean to say?

You just implied, very directly, that they DID NOT want her around. Patterns of that nature are what HR departments dread, as they mean discrimination training, possibly harassment training, and/or investigations.

Why? Do I need to say it again? Discrimination based on a long list of characteristics (of which gender is one, in just about every list I've seen) is not legal. So if a bunch of men are deliberately excluding a woman, then that can fit the legal definition of discrimination. And if you're a company, the LAST thing you want is somebody bringing that kind of lawsuit, because it doesn't matter if you win or lose, you've got at least one black eye.


Now, if you want to explain everything by biology, you want to explain why I, a male, am arguing on the women's side? (Trust me, you don't want to go that route. You aren't me, so you don't know what I'm thinking or why I'm doing this.)

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Wow, this thing is off the rails. Lots of people off the deep end from both sides. Everybody take a calm breath and repeat after me:

-Talent can be found where you least expect it. Try to give people a fair shake.

-People can be rude or mean for a myriad of reasons. A person being a part of a protected group is not the only one.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/sc...tifically.html

http://www.simplypsychology.org/gender-biology.html

http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/ge...-and-behaviour

That's a decent summary of my points. I'm not going to do the research for you. Males and Females have well documented neurological differences. There is a reason there are 4x more autistic men than women and there is a reason why the grand majority of chess masters are male. Our brains are not constructed in identical fashion. You can't deny that and you can't deny the hundreds of studies showing obvious differences in a variety of competence tasks between the sexes.

You are employing a strawman argument. I never said that women in engineering roles was bad; in fact I agree that diversity of engineers leads to new outlooks and solutions. I am just trying to explain the reasoning for the trends that women tend to not go into STEM fields. As far as science not being competitive, this is false. Innovation is the process driven by wanting to make some solution better than ones peers. Further science happens in a capitalist economy and thus there is a competition to get results that trickles down from company level contract bidding wars to the scientists themselves doing the science. To say that science isn't driven by competition is naive. Empathy and morality are important to development too but without competition there is a good chance different countries could be speaking very different languages today.



I've decided to keep my primary account focused solely on the mechanical side of engineering. I created this account to direct the ad hominem attacks I would surely receive away from my team and it's members. My views do not represent those of my team.

Additionally, I don't want people who can't be bothered to read correctly making assumptions about my personal beliefs. Not once in this thread have I said women are incapable of succeeding in engineering fields. I said that on the whole, men and women are predisposed to different things. I don't believe biology ultimately controls every factor of a persons life, but I do believe it heavily influences it.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Yet another strawman argument in this thread. I never said all women, I said there is a general trend. But way to go ahead and miss the point completely and then advance the notion that two events is a statistically significant point.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Alright lads, I'm abandoning ship. This thread started with a legitimate concern and has devolved into a mess of accusations, assumptions, and a massive bandwagon.

Not everything is immediately about sex or race.

If you wish to talk about anything, PM me. I'm always up for a civil discussion.

Have a nice evening everybody.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

I acknowledge this. And that would be fine if that's all that it was about. But the scenario was posted in the context of an example of gender bias by a person who knows more about its details than any of us, and the person who first took issue with the scenario then made it very explicitly about gender, by expressing doubt at the idea that Smiti would find enjoyment in spending time with them, and stating that things work much better when boys and girls play separately. Even if the people in the original story weren't discriminating on the basis of gender, it was certainly interpreted as such by readers on both sides here.

I apologize if any of my posts were jumping to conclusions.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Yes he is entitled to his opinion. We formed our opinions based on our upbringing and life experiences. But I do not agree he is entitled to use an anonymous account to hide and express an opinion. If he feels so strongly that he is right about his opinion, he should say it in public. He should teach the students on his team and convince them of his opinion. He should tell the girls on his team and their parents where girls belong in his opinion. in short, be a MAN!

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

I probably could have worded a number of things better after my first couple posts, which were from the heart, versus later posts where frankly I was just arguing on the internet with someone I disagreed with. Someone noted it in a PM, and I agree, and I went ahead and removed a few posts where I was more focused on dissecting someone else's opinion than sharing my own and contributing positively to a discussion.

To your point though Ed, it did read as I was endorsing the use of anon accounts to speak opinions that are unpopular. My intent was more of "I understand" and "please everyone be mindful of what you post, especially if it is (or could be construed as) sexist/racist/homophobic/etc... that might bite you in the future". I can understand some of the uses of anon accounts, but this would not be one of them, and I wouldn't want to come across as endorsing them.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

I've noticed that the 2 most inflammatory posters on this thread are both accounts created in the past 2 days that have only commented on this thread and have very little personal information in their profile. One has admitted it is a second account, and I am fairly certain the other one is a second account as well. And now a quote from the Chief Delphi rules:

It is not a matter of opinion. These posters are not allowed to use anonymous second accounts.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

I am sorry that some teams only ( from the thread of the conversation) seem to use males more than females. I cannot speak for any other teams, only my own, but as I say to anyone on my team 1640, I don't care what bathroom you use, The team cares about effort and ability. We as a team have decided not to go to all girls competition because that is not representative of our team. Admitting that some members of the team, both male and female, took the side of going, the team decision was we are a team, and individuals, but we go as a team, not as separate sexes.

This is my take on this subject.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Of course there are efforts tat support men, male issues, and male membership in underrepresented fields (total or male minorities). They may not have visibility to you [this is a general "you"], or you may wish more existed or that they were more active. If so, I'm sure they'd welcome any help. It's the membership that determines how controversial, active, and effective any organization is. But these groups certainly can and very much do exist whether or not they're regularly mentioned on a robotics forum. As a quick first Google, there's American Assembly of Men in Nursing, American Men's Studies Association, Young Men's Initiative, 100 Black Men of America, the Men Teach nonprofit, and the Mankind Project, before I satisfied myself about the depth. There are also a massive number of male fraternal, social, and religious (not to mention sporting) organizations that support male career and life goals, as well as organizations that focus on male-dominant issues, such as Just Detention International. If there's one you'd like to see and don't, go for it. Every organization ever made was made by a person who felt that.


As for whether people complain that men dominate many grueling jobs on the list, I need to control my temper. Do women push for male-dominate jobs that aren't very socially valued? Not so much, but that's a recursive definition and also applies to low-paid women's jobs, most notably tipped food service (72%). But don't conflate low social value and grueling. Have women fought for access to other grueling male-dominated jobs? Of course. Countless women have being fighting for literally generations to be able serve and potentially die for their country in many military and law enforcement jobs, and for the recognition of women who already did before they were technically allowed. I hope you are not in this position, but I know I could wake up tomorrow to find out that any number of women in uniform I care about are dead for their country on the other side of the world, doing jobs they or their foremothers had to fight just to access, in an organization where they are still far more likely to be discriminated against, harassed, and assaulted. Regardless of what you think of women in combat, to say there's no push to grueling jobs is blatantly ignoring a very, very long and hard history of women pushing just to be able to compete against the same standards of the profession as men.

Phew. And separately, yes, of course there is a National Association for Women in Construction, several for women in mining, Women in Petroleum, Women in Manufacturing, Automotive jobs, and on and on. (Like the male counterparts, these tend to focus on or at least publish more high versus low social value jobs in their industry, but the support network is there.)

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Let's be reasonable now. Posting controversial opinions and/or opinions grotesquely opposite of CD popular opinion will get you neg repped into oblivion. Heck, I've been neg repped for "Harsh tone". Some BS that is.

Point is, the guy probably wants to voice his true opinion without sacrificing his account's reputation. Yes, they're just dots. But all the cool kids have them.


My point is: if we're REALLY that concerned with women in engineering, we need to stop the equality fanfare and focus our attention on changing parenting techniques of "Legos and K'nex for boys and barbie/baby dolls for girls". Little kids are VERY persuadable, and if you want to instill a passion in both boys and girls EQUALLY, you need to introduce engineering to both similarly. Right now, boys are generally exposed to engineering WAY before girls are, and therefore are more likely to want to do it.

There's a reason kids do what they do; it's because their parents are setting them up to do it.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Can we not have the anon account debate in this thread about all-girls events?

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Wasn't this thread started BY an anon account?

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

No, it was split off from another thread

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

This is not an "anon" account. This is the one and only account I've ever used on CD.

I don't post my personal information, purely because I prefer privacy when using the internet.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

I've been thinking for most of the day on how to phrase this. I think I might have it. By the way, this does not apply only to the gender discussion--there are other discussions it can apply to as well.


Men and women are not equal, and will not necessarily like the same things. And, that applies to individuals with the same gender as well. So, each person should be free to find out what they like to do. Everybody with me on that? Reasonable enough?


What happens when one gender strongly dominates one area? Well... The other gender can be intimidated into not even trying. I think that's kind of established. And when they do enter that field--and this is not limited to engineering--they can be the proverbial nail that sticks out (result: it gets hammered down). I've seen a couple of news articles recently on how women are working on just getting interest in traditionally male-dominated fields, or how women in those fields are, how shall I say this, subjected to non-workable working conditions. By the way, I realize that I'm totally ignoring social conditioning. That's also part of it, too.

Now, part of my take is that in order to know it's not for you, you need to try it--whatever it happens to be. If you're too afraid/pressured/etc. to try, then you're probably not going to try--so you're not going to know one way or the other. It takes a great deal of courage to go through that pressure.

My take on it is, if you can pass the test, great, come on in. And by "test", I mean that you meet the requirements to do whatever career field you're entering. (All I'll say is that if I'm in a house on fire and can't get myself out, whoever comes in there better be able to pull me out!)


The question is, for someone who is not interested in trying due to societal pressures or similar reasons, how do you get them to try?

And what the answer to that, according to the event organizers for these events (and, also, according to the '07 and '08 versions of team 842), happens to be to remove the pressures temporarily. LET them try, encourage them to try--and once they figure out that, yes, in fact, they CAN do this, and do well at it, then they will tend to be more assertive at doing it the rest of the time. And the general idea is that if you get one group of a larger group "in the door", more will follow, with a better support structure, until the support structure is no longer needed because it is the entire building that that door is in.

Whether that is the correct answer for all cases, I don't know. On the other hand, it does seem to be a popular answer for the general problem of "Group X is underrepresented in Y", along with "make a support group".

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Siri
Hi, thanks for your response and I always respect your opinion.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

In the medical profession, tremendous progress has been made since 1950s to increase female medical students from 5.5% to 47%.
.
The original article is here.

In engineering, we still have a long way to go.

Team 226 Hammerheads is very appreciative that our near by FRC teams 2834, 469, 33 and 68 have been hosting their annual Bloomfield Girls Robotics Competition in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. As we participated in the competition these past two years, we have seen a 50% increase of our female students from 32 to 48 (We have about 75 male students). Of our 20 leadership positions, 10 are held by girls including the Engineering VP.

I believe these girls-only competition events definitely have helped to interest more girls to join a robotics team and hopefully a career in STEM!

- John

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

While browsing the internet I found this: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2016...ugh-emoji.html

This made me really happy.

This is just one example of "unintentional bias", and a great proposed solution to it!

While I doubt anybody would go "we shouldn't make female emojis representing a construction worker or detective", the end result did end up playing a bit on traditional gender roles. If some of these suggestions are used, we can all take a great step forward towards promoting females in STEM that might not have otherwise joined thinking it's not their place.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

I won't comment on all the debate that's happening with regard to bias etc. Just wanted to make a point I hadn't seen yet.

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't this mean Cheesy Poofs cannot come to IndyRAGE? They're from an all boys high school.

That would seem to be the case, along with any other teams from male-only high schools.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

This sounds very...weird to me. As a woman and former girl, I can assure you that we do not attend all-girls events in any field and think, "oh wow, the whole field must be guy-free like this!" Trust me, no girl old enough for FRC is ignorant about gender situation in society or slow enough to miss it. You cannot fool me with an off-season. Having an single-gender event, regardless of topic, is the substantive equivalent of hanging up a flashing neon sign that says "we have difficult a gender equality problem in this area, and it won't be easy for you. But we're really trying!" Regardless of whether you think this is trying correctly, there is no universe in which an all-girls event or a thousand of them is false advertising. We understand the way the world works; we've lived here for years regardless of where we go on some weekends.


You are free not to coddle your students, just as others are free to coddle them. Personally I call it incubating, which is also what we do with startup businesses. The goal is not to deceive anyone; it's to build up strengths. It's the same reason you scrimmage with your own sports team in addition to playing others. No, you can't simulate everything you face in a real game (in this case handling professional coed interactions), but you have to work on the fundamentals too. This may seem silly when it comes to coed professionalism, and maybe it is for some people. Maybe your students and potential students are all as naturally talented in this as they are in varsity basketball.

But I am not one of those people. My female students (and some of my male students), by and large, were not those people at the onset. You quoted a fellow mentor of mine from a rather successful MAR team that has a bit of a reputation for good coed work. What Gary says about how we encourage integration is absolutely true, and we're pretty good at it. I should know; I got it as a student! But it's not nearly the whole story of what we provide. In fact as a female former student and mentor, I can assure you that much of the strength of our female recruitment and retention is informal friendships and mentorships within the gender. Our integration work is absolutely critical for making successful teammates and future professionals, but it doesn't cut it alone in terms of retention or recruitment.

My own interactions with male students and mentors would have driven off me the team as a rookie in 2006, had it not been for the other girls and young woman to support me. As a student and later mentor, I have relived that situation over and over and over again. In fact virtually all of the best female students we've ever had came to me at some point(s) (usually as rookies when they were least integrated and most likely to leave) to express discomfit, difficulty interacting, or to quote, "I give up, the guys just won't listen to me." And by that they meant both male students and mentors. Fortunately, I, with my previous years of awesome 1640 'how to work work with guys' experience, would walk over each time and build bridges. But you have to recruit and retain long enough to teach students those skills. You have to practice in the safe zone. If I hadn't built that understanding with the girls--that sort of incubation, coddling, girlfriendship, special treatment, whatever you want to call it--many of them wouldn't've felt comfortable coming to me or even known not to just accept it. I know, because I vividly remember not feeling comfortable and not understanding what I was experiencing--and having an older girl/woman there to help.

1640 does all this without attending all-girls events. Lots of teams do so, and lots of others attend. Our system works for the girls on the team, at least without a comparison. And that's okay. But I have known girls I've tried to recruit or girls that've left quickly because even that first hurdle into the proverbial 'incubator' is too distressing. And sometimes you're inside, but things get to be too much and you want to give up. (This can also involve extra gendered pressures above the standard datum.) If an all-girl event lowers that hurdle or lessens that burden for someone, somewhere, well then I hope they're very a lucky future engineer.

You (general "you") can say this shouldn't be necessary, and I agree. (I fault societal pressures, not the individual girls receiving them.) But even if it shouldn't be needed, what do we say to the girls that would benefit from this event? 'Sorry kid, you should've been stronger?' 'Come back if you don't want to be coddled?' 'No, I'm not going to incubate you enough.' Some people need more help than others. I got what I needed, and instead of walking away ten years ago, and I now have an honors BSME and have coached Einstein twice. You can never know who you're not helping.

For the record, if someone cares to articulate an analogous case of why an all-boys event would be of similar benefit, I say go for it. I'll ref. As I've mentioned previously, this case does indeed exist in some other fields, including nursing.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

I was a judge at an FLL event a couple of years ago and I asked a team how they were organized. One young man answered that the boys designed the robot and the girls designed the t-shirts. I was so surprised by the answer that I had no follow up question.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

FRC 3173 is an all male school but has had female team members including a young woman who was their human player in 2013. Teams kind of get around who can be on the team at times.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Are those emoji's really male/female, or just long loose hair/short or pulled back hair? What specifically is it about showing a cartoon face with a hat/helmet on and very little hair showing on the sides that makes it a "male" representation? Why, in the new emoji's, are the "male" representations wearing green while the "female" ones are wearing purple?

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against expanding the standard emoji set, but it's important when we look at stuff like this to recognize that, even in efforts to promote gender equality we can still unintentionally put forward gender stereotypes. When we embark on these efforts ourselves, it's important to ask these types of questions.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

This idea has come up a couple of times in this thread. It is not a realistic option for a robotics event. For a likely CD response, see this thread This was about a one day library reading event in a small town in northern Ontario.

Please don't read my opinion this subject into this post. I just believe in truth in advertising. :]

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

There's nothing wrong at all with this event. There is still a huge social stigma in this country when it comes to involving women in STEM related activities. Many of you, especially mentors, need only to look around your office and see mostly men working there. Actively targeting women to give them an additional opportunity to be inspired to pursue a STEM career is a fantastic idea.

Boys already have plenty of opportunities for inspiration the other 364 days of the year and there are other off-season competitions in Indiana that they can attend.

Giving girls one day to have an event to call their own is something we should be applauding, not trying to tear down. Well done 234!

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Students should especially realize this as well. When I got a sneak admitted students preview of University of Wisconsin- Madison's engineering program this spring along with around a thousand other students, I literally looked around this big auditorium and barely saw females in the college of engineering. It's a major problem still.

Thankfully we have teams like 234, 2177 in MN, etc. and organizations like the Women in Science and Engineering groups in colleges working hard to improve this ongoing social stigma in this country about the lack of Women in STEM. It is still a problem today and events like Indy-Rage will hopefully inspire more Females to go into STEM. Bravo to all the teams and organizations working on making a difference.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

Six pages and no one has pointed out that salt mining in Russia is done more in the mid-Russia area near the Ural mountains.

My mom took my daughter on a tour of a salt mine in Hutchinson Kansas a few years ago. They both recommend the tour and it looks like they have upgraded the experience over the past few years.

Re: IndyRAGE - All-Girls Comp+ - October 1
 

But what is the gender ratio of the Ural salt mines compared to the Kansas salt mines. If you are going to squirrel, you should at least use some relevant data. :]

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Well, Russia has significantly more women than men in general (86.8 men to 100 women) and a higher percentage of Russian women work than American women. So I am guessing the Russian ratio is better than the 98.2% men in "other mining occupations" that Karthik posted but I couldn't find hard numbers. Sorry.


I really do recommend the salt mine tour in Hutchinson Kansas though.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Im fairly certain KK's numbers are just for the US.

From the FiveThirtyEight github repo for that data...

https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/d...college-majors

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

I approve of 234 having a female-focused event to try to ensure that girls and women are getting fair chances to step into various roles... I hope all teams are putting talent first though for role selection during most of the season... and ensuring EVERYONE has an opportunity to gain the skills for the roles they want.

Girls/women should be encouraged to pursue whatever field they want... just as boys/men should be encouraged. Since FIRST deals with STEM most, we should be encouraging girls/women and boys/men. Being cognizant of the fact that STEM fields are largely male-dominated, this may at times involve particularly encouraging girls/women... under the assumption that they're more likely to be discouraged by the male-dominated atmosphere. Really though, I think the bigger battle is probably in getting more female FRC students... by the time kids are in high school, they often already have a positive or negative impression of robotics, science, and math. This is where the academic system, toys targeted for boys vs girls, parenting, and younger programs like FLL really come in.

That said, I would like to make another point... There's nothing inherently wrong with having more of a particular gender in a profession. Every profession should be made welcoming to both genders (and all races and all socioeconomic backgrounds), but just getting to a 50/50 ratio in the nifty infographic that Karthik shared won't make society any better inherently. Making every profession more welcoming will make society a better place though... and hopefully as a result we'll have happier and more capable people in every profession and a lot of those ratios will be a little less split. If they're not less split though, I won't lose any sleep.

What I do have a problem with - and what does concern me - is when people are subconsciously OR intentionally selected based on their race/gender/religion/socioeconomic background. Maybe this is a girl or a boy being passed over by a sexist employer (instead hiring a less-qualified applicant of a different gender) or maybe it's an admissions counselor trying to meet a quota/ratio and so selecting someone of a particular gender or background. College admissions and the job market are not the times to be trying to push demographics one way or the other... I want the best doctors, engineers, business leaders, scientists, teachers, politicians, etc. If we want to push demographics in one direction or another, organizations should be working to motivate and equip people of all types prior to those critical junctures (as FIRST does, and tries to continue doing better).

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

The problem with the "I want the best person for the job argument" is explained by Steven Smith:

(by the way, the whole post that I pulled from is really good and is worth a re-read especially for anyone who doesn't understand why affirmative action is a thing)

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

While I agree a large part of the battle is getting more female FRC students (specifically, more of them involved with build, as they seem to dominate some of the other areas of many, if not most, teams), and getting to them young is definitely helpful, it's way too easy to say "well, it's something FLL will solve for us". Teams can and should do a better job at recruiting females. I've seen 50-person teams, coming from 2000-student schools have no females in the pits at competition across multiple years. My team comes from a 300-student all-girls school, and we manage to get 20-30 students every year. If we can get 10% of the girls in our school involved, why can't mix-gendered teams?

My personal hypothesis is centered around the way teams recruit. Show a robot! Robotics is fun! Look at a video of a competition! All ways to help drum up interest... but ways that can easily be intimidating. Like it or not, growing up as a male is much different than growing up as a female. I witnessed it growing up - I played with Lego's, built model planes, helped my dad and grandfather build stuff, and did countless related stuff with Boy Scouts. My sister, on the other hand, had her easy bake oven, dolls and such. She never built anything. Many (most?) girls today get treated the same way, forced into those stereotypical gender activities. Sure, in the long run programs like FLL will help as they grow. But right now today, we should recognize one thing: robotics can be intimidating. Someone may have an interest, but look at it and say "I don't know how to do that", or "man, I wish I had gotten involved in FLL years ago so I could do that". We need to emphasize with our recruitment training. Emphasize that everyone who starts is a beginner that doesn't know anything, and the whole point of the team is to train you in the tools, give you the knowledge, and help you figure it out. Do whatever you can to lower that barrier to entry (especially since it's almost entirely a perceived barrier and not an actual one) and then to encourage people to keep on with it once they get in the door.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Thank you for linking Steven's post... I hadn't read it all, and I definitely think there's a lot of good stuff there. That said, it doesn't convince me of the benefit of affirmative action... largely because of this aspect that Steven mentions:

Is the goal of affirmative action to reward people who have had to overcome more adversity due to negative stereotypes or is the goal of affirmative action to balance demographics?

I think there is value in "affirmative action" for the former, but not for the latter. Really though, I don't see how it can realistically be done for the former... it seems like to start you'd need to create some "Adversity Index" to determine who has had to overcome the most adversity (which would probably vary by region and profession)... and even then you'd still be generalizing. I believe that determining the degree that someone has overcome prejudice by their resume or college application is not possible without a variety of stereotyping and would prefer to 1) seek to prepare people of every single background for your profession and 2) hire the most capable individuals that result.

No one seems to be criticizing the underrepresentation of men in K and Pre-K Education, Dance, Hairdressing and Cosmetology, and Library work (among others). Should these areas use Affirmative Action campaigns? Why or why not?

I don't mean to imply that FLL solves this for FRC...

Quite frankly, for a long time our team was just bad at all recruiting. Word of mouth was about it. When we had a strong representation of females, we tended to get more females... when we had a lower representation of females, we got an even higher proportion of males. We've been trying to get better at recruiting in general, and recruiting females in particular, but it's very much a work in progress for our team.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

47 people have posted in this thread.
4 of those people publicly identify themselves as not being males.

Edit, 48/4.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

preach.

A lot of the people commenting on this act like they know what women feel like in STEM.
You will NEVER understand what a woman has to go through to be respected in this community until you are in their shoes.
There is a reason why so little women comment on technical threads. We constantly need to prove ourselves, and our male counterparts do not.

So this is a call to women reading this thread, speak up, share your voice. Share your opinions, don't let others share it for you.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

In a similar vein, I think it may be beneficial to hear from a student or alumna who has competed at such an event.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

If you are willing to share, can you tell us how these situations happened?
I am appalled that someone would be rude enough to say that to you, or even still thinks that way.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

...

"Karthik, everyone seems to be up in arms about the lack of female representation in engineering. In my opinion, that ostracizes men more than anything else. The very graph you posted shows fields with almost no males, and nobody seems to be upset that there aren't more male kindergarent teachers. At the same time, I don't see anyone complaining that men almost completely fill the most grueling jobs on this list. This isn't a very good argument for "equality"."

"If you find that there is a problem with promoting Males in a certain field that you would like to see more males in, or if you think Males should also be pushed in FRC - then take your own initiatives to do so!"

"So get upset about this! Do something about it! People are missing out on the opportunity to gain fulfilling employment right now, time is of the essence! Start a program to encourage male Kindergarten teachers, and eradicate the perception that men working with young children are automatically sexual predators! Create initiatives to remove sexist barriers to entry and cultural normalization of dirty, hands on work as "a man's job." But that sounds like work, and it's easier to complain about people actually taking these initiatives in other fields. It'd take real passion and concern for these issues, rather than only caring about them for the purposes of an internet argument in favor of the status quo..."

"Choosing to focus a discussion on a subset of a problem does not mean we immediately accept every other problem as "solved". You give the example of kindergarden teachers, I'll add to the example nurses. Nursing is a huge need and a growing field, one that historically men have not been involved in as heavily. I have friends that went into nursing, and there is a degree of "lulz, a male nurse" that is no more acceptable. If a woman wants to be a cement worker, or another physically grueling job, she should be able to. Similarly, there are a lot of other "grueling jobs" on the female side of it, though some perhaps more mentally/emotionally grueling."

"Of course there are efforts tat support men, male issues, and male membership in underrepresented fields (total or male minorities). They may not have visibility to you [this is a general "you"], or you may wish more existed or that they were more active. If so, I'm sure they'd welcome any help. It's the membership that determines how controversial, active, and effective any organization is. But these groups certainly can and very much do exist whether or not they're regularly mentioned on a robotics forum. As a quick first Google, there's American Assembly of Men in Nursing, American Men's Studies Association, Young Men's Initiative, 100 Black Men of America, the Men Teach nonprofit, and the Mankind Project, before I satisfied myself about the depth. There are also a massive number of male fraternal, social, and religious (not to mention sporting) organizations that support male career and life goals, as well as organizations that focus on male-dominant issues, such as Just Detention International. If there's one you'd like to see and don't, go for it. Every organization ever made was made by a person who felt that."

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

While this debate is going on, I couldn't help but remember an interesting study that I had found a few weeks ago.

Here is the link:

http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built...what-happened/

I felt that it was relevant to the debate at hand and urge everyone to consider the results that were found.

TLDR for those who didn't read, the real problem seems to be that women are more likely to give up at a given field after an attrition event, than men.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Not saying that that isn't a problem or that STEM diversity is not a problem, but the larger overarching problem is the gender pay gap. The reason people are pushing for more women (and more of everyone) in engineering is that engineering is one of the highest paid professions (Most of the other highest paid professions are also dominated by men). If salaries were swapped, then there probably would be a large push for men in hairdressing.

Re: Discussion on All-Girl events
 

Some people do still think this way. Overtly discriminatory comments are less common, but subtle discrimination is pretty frequent. Sometimes people aren't even aware that they have unconscious biases that play out as subtle discrimination.

I'm an MIT alum and I serve as an MIT Educational Counselor (I am an alumni volunteer who recruits for/promotes MIT, shares information/answers questions, and does interviews for prospective students). I can't tell you how many times I hear from students and parents that I am "lucky to be a girl because it must have been sooo easy for me to get in".

In my career and outside of work, and even in FIRST, people constantly express their surprise that I am a "real engineer" and that I'm "actually smart". I've gotten questions like "but you're a girl, you can't actually like this stuff?" multiple times. I've been repeatedly asked to do things like take notes, schedule meetings, and order food because "women are better at that kind of stuff". I've been excluded from meetings and important technical decisions where I am a stakeholder and have relevant expertise.

Most people I have worked with in school, at work, and in volunteer roles have been great. But discrimination and unconscious bias against women in the STEM fields is absolutely real.