Girls on Teams
 

Since we are an all-girls team, we have lately been interested in the roles of girls on co-ed teams. Some members of my team were doing a survey of the number of girls on teams and their jobs at the Buckeye Regional. We were very disappointed to discover that on some teams, girls were given only the job of cheerleader, or publicist. Continuing that, just please give the number of girls on your team, along w/ the number of students on your team, and what the girls usually do. Thanks a lot!

This query should probably be in the General forum, since only moderators may reply in this Q&A forum. (Although, now that I've responded, someone else may choose to "Begin [an] additional discussion regarding this question".)

We've got 2 college girls that do PR, fundraising, & spend their spare time in the machine shop. Our team captain from St. Louis was a girl. She's also strategist & did a lot of assembly. Our team captain for the upcoming Peachtree regional is a girl. She does a lot of videotaping & did our chairman's award stuff the previous year. Neither of the team captains spent much time in the shop. We've got 2 more girls (one high school & one college) that are there maybe 2/3 of the time that do a lot of machining & assembly & whatever else needs to be done. I'm a girl & I do a bunch of machining & whatever nobody else wants to do or can't be trusted to do. I think that's all of the girls on our team. There are hardly ever high school boys in the machine shop. I think I heard one of the college students (who did a lot of machining & designing too) say something about not wanting them where they'll get in the way or hurt themselves. Hehe. The high school boys are usually doing driver, human player, or assembly stuff. I think we've got about 11 guys (including the 3 college) on our team. I'm no good with numbers so those might be wrong. But I tried.

6 of 25 students on our team are girls.

Generally speaking, on our team, most of them dont do anything.

But 2 of the cool ones do quite a bit of machining and handiwork.

The problem is, none of them take real initiative to do any of the design work, or fundraising or chairmans stuff. One of the parents on the team blame it on intimidation, most of us guys are pretty scary I guess.

I am trying to make them do more work and get involved, but its hard, Im not quite sure that they have the desire to learn, and if they dont, they are on the team for the wrong reasons.

4 out of 10 students are girls on our team. One does all of the web work, organizes team parties, one does most of the electrical stuff, wiring, etc., one does all of the writing, typing, and cheering for the team, and the last one represents our team by being the team mascot, and does a variety of stuff.

Meanwhile, I did some animation, some work on the crate for the robot, some wiring, some programming, and quite a bit of construction.

I guess you could say that everyone on our whole team did something constructive throughout build period, and outside of build period.

We have about 9 people listed as female members on the list of almost 40 team members. I am the only one you will ever find in the shop, I work on Intelliegence, and I am the operator. The others who are 'involved' with the team are business/PR members.

We have a good amount of girls on my team (actually I think more than the number of boys) and all our girls work out in the shop either doing machining, welding, or such.

This seems to be the most common problem. We only have 2 girls on our team, and they both chose to mainly work on PR and such, even though one of them decided to help out where she could on the robot. In her situation she didn't think she was smart enough to do the stuff that was going on. I tried to get to understand that you don't have to understand all of it to be a great member. I don't know if my message got through, but I tried.

I think recruiting women is an important part of the program. And I do mean recruit. You may be lucky enough to have some girls filter into the team by word of mouth, but many times the best female members will come because they are asked. If you ask them to come and they want to, they are more likely to be productive members for the sheer fact that someone felt them valuable enough to ask them to come.

It's important for team members to follow through and invite them to work on different things if they become seemingly unmotivated to be aggressive. This something that not only mentors should do. Team members should encourage other team members to get their say in if they are quiet. Have the older members mentor the younger mentors.

I think the key to having women on a team is to show them that they can do this and it's not a "guy thing." If you tell someone they are stupid and can't do certain things, eventually they will think that (and women are still often told that in respects to engineering). Break that mentality!

In FIRST as in the rest of the world, apathy is our enemy.

Don't sound so superior. The girls joined your team for some reason. They had some goal in mind. Be a LEADER. Maybe it is NOT you job to "make them do work"... Maybe it is your job to "HELP THEM TO ACHIEVE THEIR OWN GOALS".

13 of the 20 members of our team are girls. The girls on our team are OUTSTANDING. Were have 4 team leaders on our team... 3 (two sophomores and a senior) are girls. They do everything on the team. Marketing, fund raising, public speaking, Lego League, machining, presentations, organizing the team appearance, team hand outs, spirit, community outreach, organizing the team banquet, scouting, recruiting new members, and everything else we might do. We have about 14 very, very, involved members and most of them are girls. The best machinist on our team is a sophomore girl. One of the best public speakers on the team is a sophomore girl.

Shawn
Team 60

we only have one girl on our team this year, but she is always helpful in public speakings and such. she's also our student mentor this year and her dad is a great help for our team. i know she does what she can, and learns how everything works

Re: Girls on Teams
 

31 students, 9 girls.

15yo Marygrace TIG Welder
18yo Angela Barron Captain, co-driver
18yo Becky accepted into engineering college, co-driver
18yo Tiffany public relations
17yo Breanne painting, spirit, human player
15yo Chelsea machines, working on robot
15yo Veronica painting, spirit
15yo Adriana brand new, has taken auto mechanics
18yo Michelle, working on robot and control board

female captains for the past 3 years, a girl up on the drive team every time.

I think the impact of females is being underestimated. The machinst girls are good at what they do. The PR girls are good at what they do. Same as with the guys.

Whether they are electricians, machinists, number crunchers, or "just do PR" (as has been said) there is still strong impact.

I wouldn't be on my current team if it wasn't for one of the PR girls, and I don't think we could have won Engineering Inspiration at GLR if it weren't for the many projects she and the other girls that did PR did.

There are a lot of jobs that need done and it doesn't really matter what gender fills the job. It just happens that more guys than girls want to do the "dirty work" but it's always accepted when they want to jump in.

One girl on our team moved from PR to working on the mill. Another went from PR to helping me with pnuematics. Another from PR to working on the electronics box and control box.

Just because a girl is doing PR or something not "robot building" doesn't really matter. They are just as important. If nobody knows who you are, what you won't be important to anyone else.

We have 23 members, 7 of whom are girls. Two of our captains, three of our best build team members, and two of our drive team members are girls. Not all our girls are very active, but most are, and the ones who are are crucial to our team.

I agree.
Our TIG welder is responsible for getting the most girls to the team. They don't know they'd be interested. After the fact we find that some of the them have a knack for the "dirty work" they didn't know they had.

We won Engineering Inspiration Award in Phoenix because we have a weekly open house that's been featured in AOL Digital City as #3 pick for Kids and Family in LA. When the public drops in they see the 2003 Animation of the game, the 2001 video of our national championship, our storyboards, our straw and cardboard drive train prototype, our 2001 championship robot, the kids ride on the goal the robot can grab, kids and adults drive the robot. People from as far as an hour away came. I can still hear the father, "This trip was SO worth it!"

Tiffany, public relations, is in particular excellent at PR, talking at all our exhibitions. I remember Veronica surprising all of us talking easily to the public at the TRW Open House (@1000 employees and their families) touring a room about our program.

Our painter, Breanne, is in particular undervalued. Some on the team say, "why spend all that time". She's not undervalued to me. She painted our facilities cupboards , her designs are on our tool cupboards , all sides and top of our crate .

Everytime her painting brightens my spirit, teaches others, current, and new team members who we are (surfing was introduced to US in Redondo, 2 rival teams on one robotics' team).

The girls on our team ROCK! (And i'm not just saying that to win brownie points...)

Lemme think. Our PR coordinator is a college student and her team is made up of 2 college females and one high school male.

One of our Technical Co-Coordinators is a lady, she was the person who ran the team but wanted to have more hands on control so she took that position this year.
On the technical team we have another girl.

We have 1 girl on our IT team who worked extensively on the animation this year. I think she was doing modeling and making textures, and considering she came in like a week before build season she picked up on everything really fast!

On the technical team we have 4 girls. 1 is on the electrical/pneumatics/controls/programming team and she is our trainy this year so that when we graduate she can take over for us. We have 1 girl on our team who has extensivly worked on our robot for the last 3 year and is a master on the lathe. And we have another girl on the tech team that does alot of work all over the robot. And the last technical girl is also our human player and a member of our scouting team, she has been on the team for 3 years also and does alot of work, i know she did some work doing angle brackets this year:) All of the technical girls did extensive work on Inventor and are all fluent in CAD.

Our girls do just as much as the boys and alot more then some of them.

My team has 3 girls out of i think 15 members (we're kinda small). One only joined for spirit purposes, wasn't forced to do spirit. Another one brought Sobes for everyone and played HP one round at comp ( don't remind me ), and also came in on most saturdays, when some guys never came. the third was the only returning girl we had the previous year, she was a veteran leader, CAD drawer, historian, and actually helped "swiss cheese" sprockets which impressed the male mentors. the girls on are team are more helpful than some of the guys, and they were great to have around when i get tired of hearing the guys talk about their computers, i'm more of a sports person myself. I hope next year more girls will join, cuz we view everyone equal ( though the freshmen don't feel that way )

My school, University of Central Florida, recently had an artical in the school newspaper where they talked about women in male dominated science fields. (somebody brought up something about intimidation above) One former female engineering student actually said that the reason she quit was because she felt intimidated by the fact that there were so many men around. I wonder why this doesn't happen in the college of education where the ration of men to women is 1 to 5?! I still havn't heard of a man being intimidated by too many women around. Anyways, I think that does an injustice to some of the women I know in engineering who are much smarter than the guys and put in a lot of work to earn the place they've gotten to. I seriously doubt there is any intimidation by having a lot of guys around and it's a cop out to blame quiting engineering on us men rather than themselves for not trying hard enough in this very challanging field.

From what I think, and what I did see on my former robotics team, is that there are just as many women in RATIO that put in the same amount of work in a project as a guy does. What I'm trying to say is, on a team with 50 guys and 10 girls about 25 guys do work and 5 girls do work. The same ratio 1/2 puts in work on the robot and the rest seem to be tag alongs. (just my personaly observation from my old team but I'm sure this can be disproven case by case). It just seems like the guys are doing more work on the team because obviously there are more of us to go around.

:confused:

Well, I am the only girl on a team of three. And lets just say, I am probably the most active member of the team, even though it is my first year and one of the guys second. At the beginning of the comp, I did recording of the kickoff, even though I wasn't in town, did the check list, and all that fun jazz, helped design the robot, come up with quick fixes, build it, sanded, drilled, did invetory, am a cheerleader, Mentor to University, team socialist (ask Suike on 312, haha) electrics, helped with programming, did driving, operating the lift, Human Player. I basically do anything you can do. I did the wiring, crimping, pricings, designing, web site (thoguht my teach hasn't put it up yet), wriote the Award essays we went for, and all the fun stuff...needless to say the girl on this team does everything, hee, they have called it my robot at times...odd, neh?

We have 13 girls, 9 guys.. students that is - and teachers we have 4 female, and like 6 male. Of the 13 girls, 9 are primarily on PR, although we do see most of them from time to time while we're working on the robot.. the other 4 girls are on both PR and Engineering, -- im lucky enough to be in this group, it's insane when you spend that many hours working on the robot and then any remote spare hours you may have are spent with PR, and then there's always the meetings that cause scheduling conflicts.. I love it that way! And 8 of our guys are solely on engineering, we have 1 who helped PR with the chairmans award :) It works out well, everyone on our team is somehow involved in every committee a little, and the girls on our team are definately just as big of a part of the team as any of the others - so when people claim PR doesnt do anything, we just show them our chairmans award trophy :-) the neatest thing is that everyone on our team is somewhat involved in every part, and we all know how hard each faction works so there's a huge respect shared between all our team members, guys and girls, students and mentors...gender isnt a qualification for anything on our team, and i think thats how it should be~!
- jacqui, team 388

When I was on a FIRST team the coaches made it very very clear that the girls on the team may help out in every area and aspect of the team. Whether it was building the robot, doing scouting, cheerleading, designing the robot, team logo design etc.

When students join a FIRST team they should not be limited to what they're abilites are but to expand and improve on them !!

I'm the first girl to join my team. Actually, my team members said there was a girl last year, but she didn't do anything. This may be my first year on the team but I consider myself a valuable member. I helped as much as I could with Spicy and I'm one of the arm controllers (we made two teams out of 6 people :p). And I don't do anymore cheering than the guys...I would feel guilty if I just hung around and did nothing for Spicy...

Remember Steve... all of us girls are completely competent ;P

We have 27 students, 7 of whom are girls.

Unlike many other teams, we have guys with uncannily neat writing and freshmen with small hands, so they are not irreplacebly important.

We have 5 girls on our team of about 20. They are all very active. 3 of them literally grab tools out of guys' hands because they want and love to work on the robot. It's really funny to see a guy who thinks he can do a job well fail miserably and watch one of the girls take over and execute the task flawlessly. The other two girls have no interest in building the robot, but they help by doing all of the little, non-building tasks. In addition, they help monitor the robot's weight by weighing every single part before we put it on the robot and entering the numbers in an Excel spreadsheet. Lastly, the girls keep the guys in check. They keep us from being too stupid or from doing anything too stupid. Sort of like our conscience.

We've got like 5 girls on our team, out of 20 or so active members. We're actually really gender-neutral when it comes to assigning jobs, mostly basing the meniality of the job on your grade ::cough::freshmen::cough:: than your gender.

3 of the girls are on the mechanical team, one willingly does spirit (we'd rather she not do it because she tends to come up with whacky ideas and makes us use them,) and one is sort of out in space.

and then theres the time when they complained cause we had everyone bending rods, cept they said they were too weak :p


so yeah. gender stuff on our team is pretty balanced (cept for the ratio. hm. we hafta fix that.)

LAST year it was a different story. (we were doing botball)

there were like 5 kids total, 4 guys and a girl, and since you can only effectively fit 3 people around a 1 ft^3 robot, and have one person programming, there were 3 guys around the robot (either got there first, or shoved their way in,) one at the computer, and we'd the girl would just sort of wander around not doing anything, eventually settling on the task of throwing legos at our heads :]

so. yeah. :D

Welcome to Male Privilege 101.

The glass ceiling still exists most everywhere, and old-school ideas of gender roles are still very well entrenched. Things in the world aren't as equal opportunity and peachy keen as people would like to think they are.

Males, largely, are oblivious to this. They don't understand the privilege they experience just because they're male, and they very wrongly assume that everyone else is afforded the same opportunity for advancement, error, or experimentation.

Males don't feel as intimidated in a college of education because education (especially pre-university level) is still considered to be women's work. Women's work is inferior work, requiring less strength, intelligence, and time. Yes, it sounds archaic, and you may not find many men who are still willing to admit feeling that way, but the sentiment does exist.

I agree that it's tempting to blame trying to break into a male-dominated field for one's failure, but I don't think it's fair to immediately assume that's the case. Until you've been on the other side of the fence, I don't think you'll ever be able to truly comprehend the immense strength and hard work and perseverance it takes to make it. To assume that you have any idea is really nothing more than that same male privilege rearing its ugly head.

Sure, if you don't understand something right away, you can try and try and try until you get it, and you can do so without facing an endless wall of discrimination and scour. Women aren't afforded that same luxury. The standards they're held to are much more limiting, much more strict, and far less forgiving.

Be careful next time you try to speak about things you don't really know all that much about. Until you've experienced it, it's a bit arrogant to think you understand it.

I'll admit when I was on the team 3 years ago...i knew absolutely nothing about how to build the robot....

I was always involved in fundraising, chairmans, shirt design, buttons...you name it...i did it...lol

But I was also the president of the team...even though I didnt know how to build the robot, I still helped out a great deal...


I think the team now has a few girls that have been helping out with the building of the robot and such...but then theres a few girls who are like me and just like the fundraising and other things....but as long as they help out the team...i say it doesn't matter what the girls do....

At Hightstown I am the only girl...of approximately 13. at first, i will admit it was pretty intimidating. I didn't fit in as all the guys talked about what video games they had played last night, including our advisor. but, as time passed, i blended in with them. i worked just as hard actually doing the building & driving as anyone else. I also manage our website (which i might add was comepletely built by me as well) and do some PR. That's pretty much shared amongst all of us, though. I wrote the Chairman's Essay & designed the logo for out t-shirts. So, as far as girls are concerned, i worked just as hard, if not harder than the other guys on our team.

Doesn't mean i don't love them though ;)

As team captain of Cyber Blue, I like to think that we as a team look at members solely for their own individual talents. We choose the best person for the job regardless of their gender. Our male to female ratio is 13:9 and everyone plays an important role.

out of 30 team members (not including coaches ) team 314
has 6 girls on communications, chairman's and spirit and we have 2 girls on the build crew which at one compatition also drove the robot. ( i am one of them) :D

it is fun being on a build crew that has mostly guys. :D

The girls on our team are either working on intel, software, electrical, spirit, fundraising, awards, animation, robot/field fabrication, photography, web design... you know, girl stuff.

The X-Cats have 20 girls and they all contribute to all aspects of the team.

With all of this gender imbalance, have any teams considered or implemented affirmative action-type things?

ok, forgive me if this is a little scathing...

what exactly is "girl stuff!??" as far as i know, i can work just as hard hammering together & screwing together a frame as any other guy on our team. at the beginning i was like "um...build a robot...heh" but seriously, once you learn about it, the "girl" thing is indifferent. so, it's not girl stuff, it's really about what you're interested in. i know that my advisor (who is a guy) said that his idea of an enjoyable weekend was not taking apart and reassembling a car, but that sounded like a lot of fun for me. so, what's with this discriminatory stuff? just because girls tend to be a bit more creative doesn't mean that they can't get dirty.

hey, i've got more grease and spray paint on my clothes than most of the guys...

Let's be sure not to swing the pendulum too far to one side, okay?

::Adds her two cents...well one, I am poor::


Well, in all actuality, on my team, there is no, the guys are better, he girls are better. Basically our team consists of me and my friend Matt. Lords knows I have done more work than him (he has called it my Robot before) but I don't say that. True I crack on the guys a lot, ask Oak Ridge or our Mentors, but we bot have the sae capabilities, itis just a matter of whether or not we use them. I am better at Matt at a lot of the manual labor stuff, but I woulda bee lost the first week without his knowledge, evey team ha equal cotribuaions from guys and girls in my opinion, no matter what they do, it is equally important. Cheerleading, building, or whatever the case may be...


And it i prooven girls are more creative, I won't deny that, but still, lookat who came upwith ost of the designs for the robot..the guys usually, and yes, I am a girl, so that is saying a lot giving guys props there, haha

Cybersonics Technology Team 103
 

You can meet all of the 2002-03 student members of Cybersonics and learn their team roles here:
http://www.cybersonics.org/cybersoni...03/members.asp

We have 33 student members (counting our two Middle School students), 15 are female and are represented in every department and aspect of our team operations.

ok, i will give you that the guys work hard too, i'm not disputing that. c'mon, without the guys we probably wouldn't be mercury...or have the purple monkey joke...

we also wouldn't have the idea of grips to rotate boxes (i actually wasn't there for that). the statement wasn't about who was better, just that there shouldn't be discrimination about it. guys or girls, we all work together, don't we?

I can't go to SVR tomorrow because I'm the only girl on the team and we couldn't find a female chaperone for tomorrow...It really sucks because I'm arm controller half the time...*shrugs* I'm just saying that there could be some disadvantages...

Why do you need a female chaperone? Are you guys staying overnight at SVR, or driving down. If youre staying overnight, I could see the need for a female chaperone.

Cory

We're staying over, the drive is too long.
Why couldn't I have just stayed in a room alone or something?! :(

Reply to M Krass
 

Reply to M Krass

I took it upon myself to actually ask my women engineering friends if they ever felt any intimidation (and even any discrimination) by being in engineering because they were women. I, according to you, am obviously oblivious to this discrimination against women because I am male, so why not ask those who would experience this discrimination first hand. Not a one said that they felt intimidated or discriminated against because they were women in a mostly male field. They thought it was funny that I even asked! In fact, they actually agreed with me that their female peer probably did need some excuse for getting out of a field where the drop out ratio exceeds 2/3! Maybe, according to you, they (my female engineering student friends) are arrogant too because they havn't "experienced" any discrimination.

Contrary to what you seem to believe, men arn't telling them that they should go to what you call "inferior" work. As much as you believe that the male population is creating this glass ceiling over women, NOT ALL OF US ARE! Especially not at UCF. (and if it exist, it's rare) The fact that there are few women in engineering doesn't automatically justify your theory that men are creating this "glass ceiling", limiting their opportunities in the work force. Fact of the matter is, many women prefer other fields of study. I've met women who were exceptionally good at math and science, some better than me, but just didn't have as much interest in things like engineering as they do in other fields. They didn't deter from it because there are more men in the field or because society told them to do something else.

And as far as this discrimination that I and my fellow female engineering colleagues are not seeing, where is it? You very pompously said you had to face endless discrimination. It's funny how it's endless yet we barley notice it. The college of engineering is just like any other college. You go to class, you learn, you take a test. How do you expect us to discriminate against a women here? Are the male teachers giving them unfairly lower grades because they see a women's name on the paper? Really!!

looking at his original post, it sounds like he was joking. he listed like every task you COULD have done on a team ;)

I am a member of Team 60, and I am one of the people that does a lot of work. I have done PR, Machining, I memorized the rule book, helped with the website, and done TONS more.

What about the guys?

I mean, yeah, sometimes girls don't do much, but I am sure that there are boys on teams that don't do anything either. I know that there are some on OUR team.

I don't think it's a matter of gender.

I think it's a matter of dedication.

And if the girls on your teams think that robots are too masculine, then that's their choice. As a girl, I wouldn't rather be doing anything else. I am all about robotics, and I am sure that there are others that are like me


Amanda

I agree totally. My life revolves around robotics. I would much rather get into this than cheerleading or choir or anything else school can offer.

I've been there... Cheerleading AND Choir.

This has them both beat into the ground.

nothing wrong with that...i've maintained my "girly" side...hell, i'm a flute player, that's gotta say something.

but as it goes, robotics is a close second to marching band...although comfort wise there's no contest.

I actually quit Marching band for Robotics.

But I think that robotics teams need girls. If they don't have them, then how do you get that feminine touch on spirit stuff and pit decorations and design? I think that we are very useful!

I play violin. :D
And I wouldn't quit orchestra for anything...I'd die without my music. But that's super kool you're in marching band. I love my school's band.

There are not a lot of girls on our team but they play a huge role... We want more girls to get involved...

We only have one girl on our team, but our team is very small (about 15 people). She actually does a lot of work on the bot, including design, assembly, and even aluminum welding, as well as PR. Go Catherine!

On the way home from SVR, we were talking about giving individual awards to individual team members. And Cooney was like "What should we give Alaina?" Then Benjie said "The Girl Award!" Then everyone laughed and thought it was a good idea...So I added, "No, how about Putting Up With Being The Only Girl Because It Can Really Be Crap Award?" Which is much more fitting...
It was very difficult coming on the second day, and totally being left out on dinner and hangning out with other teams in the hotel, and rooming 2 buildings away from everyone in the same hotel, and being the last to arrive in the pits the next morning because nobody told me when to be ready and they left without me...
Hopefully next year I can get another girl to join.

our team has no girls whatsoever. it's an all guy school. however we have a close partnership with a fellow all-girl school who introduced FIRST to us. so in a sense when combined, our teams have about 50-50 for guys and girls. what's funny is that the two regionals we were at, we were always in the pit area right next to each other.

I'm the only girl on my team this year, although we've had more girls in the past. I don't really think of myself as female any more than I think of my friends as male, as far as robotics is concerned. It's like being ridiculously tall or having curly hair or not liking pizza or being addicted to vitamin C: we're all unique. We identify ourselves with what we love - robotics - and not with physical differences. Our team size is 12. My role on the team is head of programming and electronics.

So aside from the classic electronics banter ("Hey you! Bring me a male!"), gender isn't a big issue on our team. I don't know if our female scarcity should be an issue. It'd be nice if there were more girls on our team. Then again, it'd be nice if there were more guys too, and more tall people, and more curly-haired people, and more C addicts, and everything else . . .

I have never experienced the "glass ceiling" from men. However, I have met prejudice from a surprising source: women. I was made rather angry at nationals last year when I, elbow deep in the electronics, was asked by a female judge if I had designed the team logo. Later that day another lady asked me if I had made the team hats. There is nothing wrong with making logos and hats, but none of the guys on my team were asked such questions. It was interesting because the people asking me these questions were all female. I have never had a male assume that I do non-technical stuff just because I'm a girl.

I'm the only girl on our team of 10. Let's see... what do I do? I design and maintain our website, strategy (the only one), scouting, and I did the chairman's award. When I'm not doing that, I try to help with the robot.

I do a lot for my team; however, I encountered a HUGE problem at regionals this past week. I debated about whether or not I should tell the story, because I didn't want to make my team look bad... but I sort of want everyone's opinion on what I can do about it, because I was extremely offended.

One of our two mentors (and we have no engineer) is an ex-marine who has a completely old-fashioned view of gender roles. He believes that women can not and should not do any sort of labor or manual work, basically. I didn't really know that he felt this way until regionals when we were in close proximity. Every time I attempted to do something in the pit (we had a very cranky, breaking robot), he'd take it away from me or yell at a guy to do it. Now I KNOW that's not in the spirit of FIRST, at all. I confronted him about it, and he still doesn't understand how incredibly insulting and belittling it is when he acts like this. He will continue to treat me like a frail little girl who can't even carry a 5 pound tool box. Short of throwing a temper tantrum in the pits so that every other team will see what a chauvinistic man he is (which I almost did, but then thought better of it), what can I do?

Wow! That's not very nice... I don't know what to do. What I would do is talk to him about it rationally. Wait for a while and calm down about it, and tell him HONESTLY and EARNESTLY how you feel. If he doesn't get the picture, then he's a lost cause. >.<

You could also get it on tape and then show him..
It'll be like, "Hey! You're on candid camera!"

I'll keep thinking about it...

-Amanda

Reminds me of something that happened years ago.

I was standing in line at the cash register, my purchases on the conveyor belt. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a guy put stuff down to buy, and I reached over and got a divider to put behind my stuff. He LOL and said, "What? You don't want to buy my stuff?" I looked and saw the case of beer.

*chuckle* I'm not always so quick on my feet, but I good naturedly responded quickly, "You want to buy mine?!?"

The older obviously big macho military type quickly checked out my purchases (tampons and pads), turned beet red and couldn't speak.

on our team the girls worked on the drivetrain and did pr stuff

On our team of about 14, we have 3 girls, and I'm 98% certain that those 3 girls are intimidated by their male counterparts. This is our second year, and we have 3 people returning from last year. We 3 guys are from the general 'smart kid' caste, so everyone on the team (I think) is intimidated to some degree. The problem is:
a. We have limited skill in social situations (I'll admit it)
b. We have previous experience in this application of engineering
c. Most of the other team members don't
So, we can't really empathize with the situation of the other team members, and we have difficulty including them (we're a pretty cohesive group). As someone mentioned earlier, the girls seem to lack initiative (in our case most of the team has that symptom) but I think it spawns from the intimidating nature of our team.
Anyway, just one guy's take on the issue during a period of late night rambling.

EDIT: We forced our girls to work on the robot. Our speedy box flipper was the work of two girls. Two are seniors, and they tend to do PR type stuff, and our sophomore worked on the robot more (she's the younger daughter of aforementioned 'smart kid' so she's probably less intimidated).
EDIT2: I'm less coherent than I had thought.

jeeze a lot of teams dont have like any girls on the team...

We have only 4 girls on our team...then again...our team only has 10 people...:p

Our team had a problem with initative.... then we fixed it.

We started out the year with 43 people and now have 18.

But, strangely, the people who quit were mostly boys. Of course, there were more boys that joined in the first place, but most of the girls stuck with it.

We girls do a lot, we didn't only stick with it, but we also worked our bums off.

all girl team
 

We're the only all-girls team in Canada right now. We have about 25 students on our team, and I think we surprised quite a few teams with our robot!

*nods* Next year there will be *gasp* two girls on my team! w00t!

woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow two girls... lol

Yes indeed...But it's really not that bad considering how small the team is anyway...I mean, next year the team will be smaller than this year. And we have 10 currently...

smaller? dont you recuit many people???

*shrugs* We're small and un-recognized. The team is grateful I've already got one recruit set up for next year. I was talking to one teacher today at school (she noticed my medal and asked me about it) and she insisted we contact the local newspaper...I agree totally. I mean, they had something about our spirit leaders getting 3rd in Nationals but there's nothing about us getting 3 trophies from 2 regionals...
The teacher also made the excellent suggestion of making a robotics booth at both (or at least one) of the major high schools in town at next year's club sign-up day. It could work!

It might work... Just let everyone know what your team does...

We build awesome wooden robots that eeeeveryone loves. :D


off-topic edit: I'm a "Frequent Contributor." lol. That's funny.

I hate to say it but the 5 or so girls on our team really do most of the work... I guess us guys are to lazy :rolleyes: :D

Re: all girl team
 

SWAT!!! You guys are cool. Congrats on getting choosen during the alliance pairings in Canada. :)

Actually, there seems to be quite a few girls in FIRST.. or at least I've noticed that to be the case in Annapolis and Canada.

Thanks a bunch! You guys rocked the competition too! way to go 639!

Out of 25 members of our team (716) 13 are girls (2 juniors, the rest either freshman or sophomores). They make up most of our travel team. Someone said before that many of us girls don't have the initiative to do big things... but that's anything but true on our team. Last year i was head scout and also wrote the chairman's award by myself. Another team member, also a girl, and i co-wrote a woody flowers award paper for our engineer. This year i am one of the 2 drivers for our team and my drive team is all girls. My operator has been on the team since we started and she has overcome more than almost anyone on the team, due to the fact that when she began she was the only girl. At our last two off season competitions, our entire pit crew was made up of girls, and when we meet after school, most of the shop is made up of girls... doing most of the building. :yikes: So at your next competition, look for us... we're not as rare as you think!

Re: Girls on Teams
 

The situation I see is not a matter of what girls are "given" but more of what girls are willing to do. On our team positions are earned based on individual initiative and reliability. We don't set "girl" jobs and "boy" jobs but instead allow whomever to sign up for the positions they are interested in. Each student is required to hold one robot related and one administrative type position.
Right now we have about 7 girls on a team of 45. The newer ones are largely there due to the efforts of our past female members. We simply don't attract lots of girls. Nor do we go out of our way to attract more or give special treatment to those that do join.
I've found that the ladies tend to sign up for more of the PR and administrative kinds of things. We have a bunch of our theatre students who essentially develop and run our Volcano Crew (cheer section). Its fun. It also has a lot of boys on it.

This season we have boy girl teams running the pit area. One girl who will be fabricating with the guys and a bunch of new ones that will be first year scouts.

So girls- don't settle for what the guys "let you have". If they get in your way, kick some 'bot and stand up for yourselves!!




WC
:cool:

PS- sign up for Final Bin Bash 10/25 closes 10/12. Haven't seen those Midwest teams yet. Hmmmmmmm....

I don't know the final count of our team at the moment... but it is really depressing when you have twelve girls at the September Kick-off meeting... and by the January kick-off there are only three. Since I am now a College Mentor on the team I have been trying my darnedest to keep as many girls as i can in the program.

[I apologize now that this will be a long post.]

I noticed quite a few people have mentioned that the guys on a team can be intimidating... and i wont deny it... It is especially true with MOE because as we have taken to saying this year -> "Welcome to the Cult!" <- because we are so tightly knit, we all wear the same colors, and we do the MOE chant at random times.

I personally am slow to warm-up to new situations, and FIRST was definitely a new "situation." I spent my first year on the team doing PR, Videography, and Mascot with Gwen. Lucky me got to wear the original uppet for three days straight in the Florida Sun. There were like 6 girls on the team my first year, I honestly don't remember what they did... but all i did or knew about the robot that year was I helped spray-paint some parts... and get high on the fumes..., what the grippers and wings did, what a robot should not do during a match, and that we won nationals.

My second year i was SO ready to work on the robot and wanted to be on Pit or Competition team. I took the initiative and started almost religiously following "Lou the Pit Lord" around the first meeting... and REALLY paid attention to the Machine Shop Training and Tutorials. I volunteered to help build our swanky pit just after Christmas, and got used to working on the machines, with our Machinist, and got to know the other guys who i was working with a LOT better. I worked on the Mechanical sub-team under Lou; working on the goal pushers (which we took off during the first competition. nothing like making two difficult pieces... and never getting to use them. I got to keep one though.) I don't think any one was as excited as me when i was voted onto the pit crew. (the first girl to do so if i remember right.) I also was voted co-captain that year. And won one of the ASME scholarships at nationals. A very swanky year for me... even though MOE-Hawk came off the field in pieces after EVERY match!

Last year i did not do as much... since it was hard to commute sometimes... and college work/classes in general. I did make the mascot again though. I hope to do more work with the robot again this year along with taking photos.

It just goes to show that Girls CAN do anything they set their minds to. They don't HAVE to settle for the lower jobs if they don't want them. I try to tell all the girls on the team now that "If there are a bunch of guys working on something... don't be afraid to elbow your way in and find what they are doing, and help."

I do have to give kudos to the guys on MOE though. They are pretty comfortable having a girl in there working with them... i hope other teams are as accepting of girls doing more than PR.

I only remember one or two girls attending my electrical presentation I had to give to all the new students are required to attend. That would make the team count 3 or 4. I could be mistaken since there are many new students and most of them are quiet. Also some people might have missed that meeting.

It is a shame if we have so few girls again since I remember many more at the kickoff. We do actively try to recruit more girls since we give presentations at many of all-girl schools in the area even if we do not have any current team members attending that school.

At Cal Games a couple of weeks ago my team brought 5 girls, 4 of them new. We really, really, really hope to recruit more members for 2004.

24 students
6 male
18 female
there are females on every sub team.. however what they do has yet to be seen.
the way our program is set up well was set up we had a rookie team of students every year. but this year we started accepting grades 9-12.

well last year there were a total of 12 kids on our team....
The number of girls were 8.
The girls on our team had loads of experience from FIRST due to previous years and other robotic compositions
2 of our girls were the main team welders (im one of them. my friend and myself were the main welders on our previous FIRST team as well, that contained about 50 kids)
Another 2 were our main programmers
... we were just all around.... we did a good amount of work

Re: Girls on Teams
 

I don’t know about other girls involved in FIRST but when I first entered the club(this is my fourth year) I faced a lot of discrimination, no one would listen to my ideas until I told the one guy on my team that would listen to me and then when he presented it everyone thought it was great. But after a while of being loud and noticeable others started taking me seriously. Some of the problem was that the other girls only did PR. But now I am the field captain, head strategist, one of the head drive train people and do more that anyone else on the wiring. It took awhile but they came around.

Re: Girls on Teams
 

Our team of 13 only has one girl, unless you count our primary mentor, our AP Physics C teacher. Then again since it was a class project, and only 2 girls are in the class (year started off with 3 but one moved to texas) and this was not a required thing, only 1 chose to do robotics. Honestly tho, she has been a great help to the team, not really getting down to the nitty gritty of robot building (not many guys did either), but a help everywhere else, especially at fundraising. She is also one our co-drivers, which handles our ball collection and control systems. All in all she has outworked (time devotion) probably all but 2 students on our team, myself and our chief builder (man he spent a few nights there just by himself in the early days, I felt so bad afterwards). Did she felt left out? Probably on the building part, but I must admit she was an integral part of our small team. My props go out to Kelly (known as itskelz here).

Re: Girls on Teams
 

the past couple of years we have had girls as captains of the team... I don't know... We go with who's best for the job... Lately more girls have shown interest in the team... hehhehehehe I don't mind that!!!!

Re: Girls on Teams
 

I'm mentoring an all girls school here in Toronto, in the Canadian regionals there will be 3 all girls schools competing

Re: Girls on Teams
 

The girls on our team aren't strictly PR and fundraising. They do some of the machining (using the mills, lathes), they also did some of the soldering of the electronics, and they also helped build our test playing field in the woodshop. We don't discriminate, basically if they want to do it we let them. We don't want them to feel left out and not part of the group. I worked with one of them, who hadn't had much experience with tools, in the woodshop building the playing field this season and now she's interested in taking woodshop next year.

Re: Girls on Teams
 

What teams are they? I am always interested to learn what other all girl teams are out there, as I am from one myself, team 433. It would be nice though if there was some way to sort through all the FIRST teams to see what teams are all girls.

Re: Girls on Teams
 

Our team (#1350... rookies this year) had 2 females out of about 17 students.

I am one of those females, and I must say that I do alot of speaking/ orginizing/ strategizing/ accounting on the team. This isn't because I'm a girl, just more because I have no building experience what so ever.

People on the team help each other, and I think I do my part to help out, though I'm not always sure if everyone else agrees.

They usually say I do the B**** work, because if no one else wants to do something, I will. I don't mind doing crappy little jobs, once again, because I don't really know how to do alot of building.

I learned alot of programming and electrical this year, and next year, by default of being an orginized Junior, I'm captain.

Re: Girls on Teams
 

Glad to see this topic still kicking ^_^ I'm from the same team as the topic starter...I was approached by a scout from some team who was very surprised that our team put a girl in as high a position as a *gasp* driver! I kind of chuckled and told her that we didn't really have much say in the matter =P

On that note, though, I didn't notice very many female drivers (not counting human players or strategists) at VCU...head count?

Re: Girls on Teams
 

If I remember correctly, we have 7 female students on the team. Two of them are in Manufacturing, three in Marketing, one on the CAD team, and one in Controls.

Two of the MFG gals ended up on our PIT team at the regionals.

-Quentin

Re: Girls on Teams
 

our team has 3 girls out of about 20 students... 1 is co-spirit leader w/ one of the guys... 1 is co-captian and manipulator, and the other one is the backup manipulator... so they do take a pretty big role on our team...

Re: Girls on Teams
 

We have two primary drivers, me and Jana.

Erin and Bess are skilled machinists. Erin's also our only human player.

Linda's project manager for the robot.

Our team has 4 girls on a team of around 12 to 15 people total. Anybody can do whatever they take the initiative to do, no matter what it is.

Re: Girls on Teams
 

I'm not exactly sure how many girls are on our team i think its around 10. but for the most part the girls on our team do what they want to do. Some do the scouting for the drive team, some cheer for us and the other teams competing, we have two that are on construction and for that they are on our drive team, one is one of the best human players I saw in NJ and the other is the co-driver and is great at what she does too. But for the most part the girls on our team are very involved in what's going on. Its some of the guys that we have to worry about. :rolleyes:

Re: Girls on Teams
 

Actually, the final tally of girls (students, not including mentors) on MOE is 4... then again, when there's about 30 some people on the team, I guess that's not saying much. However, all things considered, I think we do some pretty important work. 2 of us (myself and mi amiga Mel) hooked up the entire pneumatics system on GizMOE(Hence, we are the Pneumatics/Pneumo Chicks). Another girl is on the autonomous team (which also happens to be mentored by a woman) and the other girl is on video team (much as I hate the boom mike, I'll admit they do important work).

OOPS!
 

OOOPS! Jason....6 out of 13 are girls!!! they did wiring, construction, and carpentry. :rolleyes:

Re: Girls on Teams
 

in my opinion girls are necessary on a team because their point of view on things can be different than wat guys would normally think. so my answere is yes i think they should be on almost if not all teams :)

Re: Girls on Teams
 

Team 237 is lucky; of around our 30 members, a little less than half are women. One major part was the "little sister" factor, but these girls who have been raised on FIRST have proved as if not more capable than their male counterparts. Though the majoirty of girls are sophomores and juniors, they are found on every aspect of the team. Our pneumatics team is almost exsclusively female, and most of our electrical team as well. In fact, only two members, both female, were fundraising and PR. Autodesk was completely female, as is Scouting, and the single member of Strategy.

I don't see women and men anymore, just the aweseme people who helped make our 10 foot tall baby. Sure, it can be intimidating, but that is why the older girls make an effort to help the younger ones feel more comfrotable. The grunt and burp masculine air of the team has only made us more tolerant and able to expell gas with the best of them.

Re: Girls on Teams
 

Canadian all girls teams that i know of

771 - St. Mildred's-Lightbourn School
1275 - Havergal College
1291 - St. Clement's School

Re: Girls on Teams
 

Team 237 has always had strong female leadership. It was an important element from the start. On this team, anyone can do anything.

Re: Girls on Teams
 

This year in the pits, two of the girls with initiative controlled Battery Crew. Both held jobs absolutely essential to the team's performace on the field. Both did absolutely wonderful jobs. I couldn't pick anyone on the team to do the job better.

Re: Girls on Teams
 

We have 3 girls on our team out of 17. Two of our girls work mainly on PR, and the third (my sister) works with PR but stepped up greatly to work with machining, she has even earned the name 'Drillmaster'.