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I would really like to know how your team decided to do this. Was it by vote?
And what did everyone learn?
Jane

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Thats cool that you have enough girls on the team to do something like that. If we did that, we wouldn't have enough for drivers and human players.

Chris

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I don't mean to muck up the forum... But to me, this seems kind of sexist...

Telling boys that they can't compete is just as bad as telling girls that they can't compete. To me, this just simply seems wrong.

Unless of course your team was from an all-girls school, in which case, only students from your school have an opportunity to participate. This would make sense to me.

Not meaning to start a war,
Jacob

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The title is a joke. The boys stayed home by their own will and the girls went alone.

No need to get upset.

If you click on the picture above, it brings you to where the picture is on CD media. Under the picture there you can see what was typed above. That blurb should probably be posted with the picture in threads of forums in the future.

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Thanks. I would still like to know how they all decided that together as team.

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While it may seem sexist I think it i a very good thing for the team to do. It gives the girls a chance to try new things and do jobs that are not what they may be used to. She also said that the boys and girls will be there to compete at the other events so its not like they arn't getting a turn.

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I guess the word, generosity, comes to my mind. Or adventure.
'Let's try this' kind of thing. Everyone always wants to travel, to go to the regional or competition. So this, to me, is like thinking outside of the box and then going with it. If that makes sense..

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I read this before I posted, but I still, again, personally, disagree. If every boy on the team had said that they were OK not going except for 1, would they have let him go? (I don't know the answer to this question. Again, I am jumping in in the middle, but it seems odd that ALL of the boys on a team would give up their spot. But that's just me and my opinion. I am sure that others disagree.

This is assuming that it would not be *allowed* for girls to do certain jobs on the team. I know that I would be quite angry if I couldn't go to 1/3 events, simply to let someone else have a shot at MY job, just because they are of a different gender.

I hate to be a nuisance, but I really don't like discrimination, as I have been a victim of it in the past, on several accounts.

Jacob

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I would gladly give up my job for someone else if they were enthusiastic about doing it. Its not "MY" job its the teams job, everyone is entitled to try it if its what they desire. I don't think it is the spirit of first to limit someone from doing something they want just because you think it belongs to you.

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I suppose so, but, say, for instance, Myself and another student (a male) programmed the robot. Lets say that no girls on my team showed interest in programming before, but now at the competition, a girl takes my seat on the plane. If she isn't qualified to program (or even knows how), what happens if the program needs to be modified? I personally belive that a seat should be won on merrit, not entitlement.

Jacob

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i think that is a really cool idea, to have just the girls go somewhere. unfortunately, my team has four girls, but maybe sometime in the future we will have enough.

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The team probably chose to do this in advance.In the time period between the decision and the trip is when it is your job to show the person or people interesed in your job how and what to do. FIRST is about teaching, learning and passing on knowledge. I think this i a great way to do it.

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FIRST is like pizza--you and I might prefer different toppings, but there's no wrong way to do it.

If 842 feels that they can get their $4,000 worth by fielding an all-girls team for one of their regionals, I'm more than willing to let them. Perhaps there's some benefit to going this route that we're all missing.

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I know that some schools are going that route. My old high school now has an all girls team(1929) in addition to their Co-ed team (555) which also has girls on it. Both teams show support for each other. I believe this year the Sciborgs(1155) from NY also did the same thing and support their all girl team the FeMaidens(2265).

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Fielding an all female team for one event, because you can and not because you have to, seems to me like a pretty cool thing to do. Can someone from 842 provide an answer to Jane's question?

I can understand the concerns that Jacob has raised in this thread. The answer to Jane's question could help turn the thread back the intended topic and away from gender discrimination.

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Well, just thinking about this a little bit -
FIRST is about changing the culture. We've heard that for many years.
To change a culture, one must begin by introducing ideas and concepts into it first. And, to change a culture begins with changing mindsets, one person at a time. Trying different things, different ideas as a team is part of the excitement and adventure, seeing where it leads.

That's just a thought.

Edit: Sorry Richard, you posted and then I did..I can delete this post but I think it is ok, hopefully.

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I had a chance to talk with several of the Team 842 members during the Las Vegas Regional. They told me about some of their experiences and what they learned with their all-female team. I hope someone from 842 posts here, and I won't steal their thunder. But they learned some very interesting and positive lessons with this exercize. I applaud them for being willing to experiment with something different, and seeing if they could learn something new.

-dave

p.s. and on a related topic, the "Digitally Enhanced Scouting System" that they developed absolutely kicks major posterior. I don't usually subscribe to Car-Nack-style predictions, but I am anticipating that over 80% of FRC teams will be using a variant of their system within two years. It is THAT good!

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While I am not from 842 (they did help mentor us though), I understand enough of the dynamics of the team to say they are not really about the winning. They are such a powerhouse here in Arizona in terms of changing the culture. 842 has taken Dean's homework VERY seriously and their outreach is very far reaching. I think that this is one of their ways to get all of the students involved in aspects of robotics that girls typically do not do. I'm sure that a member of 842 will eventually show up to clarify, but I wanted to say they are a classy team and I thank them for helping my team get involved in FIRST!

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It's not discrimination. It's not like they were forced out of it by the mentors and all of the girls. They agreed to this.

And I'm sure it wasn't a majority vote. I'm sure it was an all or nothing vote. Every boy on the team had to be fine with this. If anyone had a problem with it, they wouldn't go through with it. I would be upset too if I wasn't allowed to go, but we've never met the boys on their team, we don't know what they are like.

Would it be a different story if the title was "We left the girls at home" and it was a picture of all of the boys who went because the girls agreed not to?

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No, it wouldn't be any different. But I think it would cause a lot more controversy among the forum if this was the title. Even though it would be the same exact thing.

Jacob

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We have 8 girls on 418 this year and it has taken this long for us to be able to say, 'we have 8 girls on 418'. It would be neat to develop to the point that the team could make this choice/decision if they wanted to.

On a side note: The last year of the Championship at Disneyworld, our team traveled there and could not afford the room and chaperone for the one girl on our team. We did not decide, it was decided for us - financially. It was difficult.

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If my team had the opportunity to do something like this, I would be all for it as long as I would be allowed to come and spectate. I spend enough time watching other regionals that my team ISNT going to, I would die if i couldnt see it in action.

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From my experiences on a co-ed high school team, a mostly-guys college team (at the time), and mentoring an rookie all girls team...

Well, for a girl... participating on an all-girls team is an awesome way to get started in design and technology. When I was younger I found myself a lot less confident in presenting my design ideas because the guys on teams were very pressing and convincing that their ideas would work. I thought my ideas were no good and didn't have the confidence to speak up over a guy who was very passionate about HIS idea. What I know now, and didn't then, was that my ideas were just as good... the guys didn't have more experience than I, they were just more confident sounding.

I had five years of FIRST where I played the 'girl' role, it wasn't a bad thing... but mentoring that all-girls team made me realize design was what I wanted to do. I've only REALLY wanted to do mechanical engineering for the past year or two.

Mentoring 1975 taught me that I enjoy design, I'm passionate about it, and I finally GET IT! It took owning the project and teaching other young ladies about robots, and not having to argue with a bunch of "very convincing" guys, to realize my potential as a design engineer. I had FIVE YEARS of FIRST, and it took me an all-girls team to realize that design and engineering is cool.

So ladies, go enjoy your team. Your minds, your insights, and your future will be much further along. YOU own that project, and once you've gained your confidence... you'll find it easy to collaborate your creative ideas with male engineers.

Just my $.02

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And you know this how? In the future, it may be a good idea to tread away from arguing a point based on assumption. You know what they say about when you assume. :p

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Love this discussion.

I’m one of the teachers on tam 842 and partially responsible for the “girls only” team.

So, why are there not many girls in robotics and engineering? It's a tough question but the answers are all around us. Pick up a girls magazine and open it up to the science or math or building or any article that is even slightly engineering oriented. The whole magazine is how to attract boys, be Feminine, and all the stereotypical garbage that too many girls believe. Movies, TV, billboards…our whole culture defines what they are to become, and engineering is not presented attractively. Coed schools, without even noticing it, rank girls activates below the male counterpart. At our school, the female basketball team is the Lady Falcons, the boys are the Falcons. hmmm. We are in a Hispanic neighborhood and the feminine expectations are even harsher.

For years we have encouraged, cajoled and bribed girls to build, wire, drive, but most are moved aside sooner or later. "Well, the boys just know what they are doing..." What it really is, is a lack of experience. Most of the girls (and some boys) had never used power tools before.

This year we were fortunate enough to be able to go to three regionals and we will go to the Nationals. That's a lot of time out of school so we decided that we did not have to take the same students every time. That's when we hit on the all girls team. (thus, many girls did not go to the Las Vegas regional). The boys chalked it up to Gracious Professionalism.

So all this season, the females were far more involved in the building, strategy and driving practice, since they knew they had to do it all in San Diego.

And they did.

They even found some problems in our drive train that they fixed. They also discovered a programming bug that prevented our defensive robot from delivering it's max torque. As a result, our robot was in far better shape when delivered to the Las Vegas regional.

Did the boys drive better than the girls? Yes. And the boys had far more experience. but we are a far stronger team now. More importantly, we have more women going into engineering than ever before, even though they know they will have to "buck the system". (pun intended)

There is more. We post it on a [url="http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/club/club.php?sectionid=3670"]blog

It was a fantastic experiment and the freshman girls took notice. I think we will have more assertive women on the team next year.

Changing the culture.

Allan

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Thanks for the clarification. I can understand that if you had multiple opportunities to compete, and if all of the boys agreed to let the girls go, then this would be fine. But I'm assuming that if a male felt that he really wanted to attend this regional that he would be allowed? I'm only looking at opportunity here. Don't get me wrong, I think that getting more girls involved in FIRST is great, and that sending an all-girls team is a great idea, if everyone agrees on it, and no one feels left out due to something that they can't control; their gender.

Jacob

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I am glad I kept my mouth shut until N7UJJ clarified. I do not agree with an all-girls team in the fact that is the same and an all-boys team (which I also do not agree with).
Thus begins [rant]. I was glad to hear that the boys had a chance to go to because at first it sounded like they were discriminating. I think that teams today have a major problem with not having enough of one gender on a team. If a team is open to both genders, but only has boys on it, then they are not accomplishing what FIRST is all about. They then need to go out and try harder to get more girls involved. If you ask me, the perfect team is with 50% guys and 50% girls, mentors and students a like. I also think that the drive team (with being an even number of people on it) needs to be two guys and two girls. Not 3 guys 1 girl, or vice versa, or even all four of one gender. I believe that to really accomplish the ways that FIRST is trying to promote, this is the best. Also, I do not believe in all-(single gender) teams. Again I like the hole 50:50 thing, and if you ask me, that is the worst that it gets. Sure, we need to try to get more girls involved in FIRST, but there are plenty of guys in the world that need to be inspired too. Anyways, [/rant].

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I am the other sponsor of team 842 Falcon Robotics. I am as competitive as the next guy, but I also know and believe that it really isn't about the robots. Its just the gimmick used to get all of us together to celebrate math, science and technology in a venue that has proven to be a successful model, sports. Of course winning is a goal, but winning is not always about the robot doing the winning. It is striving for that goal that makes us all better. Wining is not really winning if the cost is too high.
As a coach in sports as well as a robot team I know that a team is as strong as its weakest members. This exercise we did, while difficult to win in the short run, will enable us to win in the long run by making our weakest members stronger. It also allowed us to again reach more people that are under represented in engineering and hopefully spark their will to become an engineer by giving them a chance to be an "engineer". Who would have thought that all we had to do was look at our own team to change the culture. Imagine that.
Also as a coach you want your best people out there, but how do you know what you have unless you give all the members a try, in the "heat of battle". In track, you put your four best runners in the relay, no matter who they are.
We were giving the chance to the girls to see what they could do, in a world where they don't get nearly the chances that the guys do.

Some great benefits came out of letting the "rookies" have at the bot. By being novices and practically no driving experience, the girls came with few preconceptions about what was to happen. So when the girls told us that the robot didn't drive straight, we had to find out why and we did! There was a small drive train problem. This prevented us from driving straight in autonomous. Once this was fixed, we drove straight as an arrow! The boys would instinctively make the correction when driving and think nothing of it. Another problem discovered by the girls was that we were not getting full power to the motors when needed. We have our bot using 40% of max speed to give us more accuracy when navigating around the other bots and ringers. there is a trigger the driver needs to pull while using the joysticks that will enable the the motors to receive full power for pushing robots back or out of the way. Some how the guys with their experience did not notice that they could not get 100% of the power, again because their driving skills mask the robots weakness. When the girls pointed out that there was no difference we hooked up the laptop and looked at the readings, and they were right, pulling the trigger made no measurable difference. Once that was corrected in the code, the robot had no problem pushing any other bot out of the way.

One side note to all this, as a mentor I saw how teams and people treated us differently between being co-ed to all girls.....

We presented the boys on the team with the idea and while they were not excited about the idea at first, they agreed that the girls would learn a lot and also learn how to put up with the stress and humbling that would occur at the hands of all the more experienced teams there. They wanted to learn and the guys wanted them to see what it was like, so the team agreed to make the all girls team for one regional. Also knowing they would have another regional and nationals helped. We went to three regionals Az, co-ed San Diego girls, NV co-ed, . The girls also gained an understanding of what a difference driving experience makes. Next year we start playstation time in the fall after school and driving the older bots up and down our hallway with obstacles both going away and toward them. Get the left right and opposite thing going.

Ultimately the goal of FIRST is to inspire and motivate as many people as possible to appreciate and participate in engineering so that we might have a better world in the future,...... and that is what we did.

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OK... I don't want to make this a big deal, but some of this doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps you can clarify.

I don't believe in any respect that females are the 'weakest' members of any team. On our team, all of the drivers get equal practice time, including the girls. Our girls have all of the 'chances' that our guys have, right from the start. I don't believe that we need to send ONLY girls to a regional for them to have an equal opportunity; in fact, I believe that sending a co-ed team gives EVERYONE an equal opportunity, because everyone who is eligible to participate is at the event, and the driver with the best skills and the most probability to win drives that match. Our girls are in no way 'rookies', unless if they are truely rookies to the team.


Perhaps you can elaborate.


I'm still a little bit confused as to why your whole team couldnt travel, and perhaps you let some inexperienced drivers drive, and if they were girls, great. It appears that the male members of your team DID seem to mind, at least a first, that they couldn't compete simply because they were male.

I really don't want to make a big deal here, and I hate posts about people complaining about other's ideals and beliefs. But this is a topic that I personally find very disturbing and disheartening. If a team wants their girls to have the same experience as the boys, I believe that they should have the SAME opportunity, and not be given special treatment, simply because they are girls.

Please don't get me wrong. I completely support girls in FIRST in EVERY aspect, I would love to see a pure 50-50 mix, both in numbers, and in 'job' opportunity. But creating an environment in which to fix the situation, you simply eliminate the boys, I don't think is in the spirit of FIRST.

Perhaps this post is very radical, and I may get bashed because of it. But I am simply standing for what I believe is right, and perhaps some others agree with me.

This is just an opinion. I am not forcing it on anyone.

Jacob

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I really agree with him in the fact that the true FIRST team was to get EVERYONE involved in science and engineering. If you ask me, a team with both guys and girls is better because then the girls can get used to having to compete with the guys that are there trying for the same thing. If in FIRST you take away the guys so that the girls can get an experience, then, if you ask me, you have taken away the true experience as a major corporation won't get rid of the guys just to give a girl the job. They would rather find the person who has the best skill. If it is a guy, then so be it, but if it is a girl, then so be it. Just because there is a difference in gender doesn't mean that there is a difference in skill.

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As a mentor, and female engineer, I really have to jump in here. While I think that it is important to give girls experience and confidence in engineering, I think some of the comments posted here are insensitive to girls' ability. They may thrive better in an all girls' environment as far as learning experience is concerned ( I actually went to an all girls' high school.... where there was less intimidation from the boys, and you didn't have to worry about how 'cute' you were in class.) This made us stronger and more assertive, and certainly prepared me to go into school for engineering (where only 7% of my graduating engineering class were girls - back in the Dark Ages.)

But.... I have a problem with this post. To say that the girls are weaker - blanket statement - is not helping their cause. Girls will not be treated equally until they are seen as equals - starting on their own teams. As FIRST teams, we have a lot of differences to deal with. Our team is extremely diverse - we have a mix of inner-city (minority) youth, suburban (non-minority) youth, deaf youth, hearing youth, males and females. Everyone has their issues. I think many of you would take offense if any of these other populations (besides boys) were singled out. "We left our white kids home." "We left our hispanic kids home." "We left our deaf kids home." Although it was just a tag line on a photo, it is an inflamatory remark for the average male member on a FIRST team. It would not be tolerated in any of these other instances.

That said, I can see the advantages of what team 842 is doing. If you keep a group in their comfort zone, they may actually gain the skills and confidence necessary to compete in a heterogeneous work world. As a team, we all have decisions to make on how best to handle our populations equally, without discriminating against any one group. Perhaps forming an all girl team is a way to go, as long as there is an all boy team available.

We, again, have some of the same issues - who has more confidence, and thus becomes more dominant on a team - the wealthier white kids, the hearing kids, the boys, the urban macho kids???.... It is a cute balancing act. As a team, we try to treat everyone as equals - no matter what their ability or background is. But everyone team member is also expected to meet certain expectation levels. So I would not agree to letting a member attend a regional, if they put, say 20 hours into build, half-heartedly, because they were of a certain gender, race, etc., over another student who put 300 hours in, full bore - because they are of another gender, race, etc. What is the incentive to work hard, and put your full effort in, if you will not be rewarded for it, and, in fact be penalized, because you are a certain gender, race, etc. What does it teach the kid who put in less effort - "aw, that's OK, we'll let you go anyway because you're (fill in the blank...gender, race, etc.)" You don't need to meet the expectation? [This is not what I am saying that 842 did with their girls - I am just making a philosophical point.]

I don't know what the answer is - same gender teams, same race teams, same socio-economic class teams, same teams with disabilities.... Any way you slice it, someone is going to get hurt, unless equal opportunity is provided to everyone. An all-girls team sounds good, as long as there is an all-boys team. The one thing that we have found from including everyone together on our team this year, is that we all have learned an awful lot this year. Our hearing kids and mentors have learned so much from our deaf kids and mentors, and vise versa. Our girls have learned to be more aggressive. Our inner-city students coming from lower quality schools have had higher expectations to live up to - and have done a stellar job. Everyone has become a lot stronger through this experience.

2 schools of thought - both have their pros/cons.

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Jacob, I can elaborate. I was on an all-girls' team in high school (team 677). We were at an all-girls' school. You're treated very differently. We had scouts coming trying to ask our (male) mentors questions instead of us; even when our mentors pushed the scouts to us, they kept going back to the men. My teammate and I were both drivers in 2001, and thus responsible for fixing the robot in between matches; while sitting in the pit replacing the entire drivetrain, we had some scouts come up and ask us if they could ask questions. When we said yes, they looked uncomfortable, then said "well, can we talk to someone who knows what they're doing?" In 2002 at our regional, we had scouts ask us, and I am not making this up, "How'd you guys build a robot without any guys on the team?"

The team I mentored in college, though the most involved, most committed members on the team were actually three girls, still had a problem with scouts coming up and asking the couple of guys in the pit questions. They never went to the girls first. Never. Why?

Several other things happened, too, which I won't go in to here right now, but I can explain further over PM.

At any rate, the sexism is there, and I congratulate you (and others in this thread) on your enlightenment when it comes to "affirmative action" and reverse discrimination in FIRST and the rest of the world. I tend to agree. It shouldn't be that way. But it often is necessary, because the world can suck, and I struggle with this daily as a female engineer in the working world. We haven't, as a society, found the balance yet between the way it is (white males tend to have the advantage) and the way it should be (a balance of all genders, races, backgrounds, etc).

So what I'm worried about is that we are faulting the women in that picture for the fact that society hasn't figured itself out yet. Girls, good for you! I'm glad you got a chance to go experience a FIRST regional as an all-girls' team. It's a very valuable and very eye-opening experience, and I hope you'll share these experiences with your other teammates and mentors... I have the feeling the ones who didn't attend the regional will be getting just as much out of it as you did.

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So how is excluding the boys helping this situation? If you are trying to simulate the real world and teach your deals to cope with situations which may involve discrimination, then excluding the boys does nothing to aid this. If someone comes over to your team asking for info about your bot, why doesn't one of your girls step in and say, "I can help you with that!"

How? This is my point exactly. For me, as a white male, I know that I wouldn't get 'as much out of the event' by not attending... I guess my point is that the girls could do any job on the team, with or without boys there. Sending an all-girl team to have the experience what 'its like' to be an all-girl team at an event is un-realistic, and in my opinion, not only does nothing for them, but can hurt them by providing this unreal experience that they will never experience in the real world. There are no (none that I know of) all-girl engineering firms, simply because there is a company policy saying that only females can work there. In fact, I belive that this is against the law. There may, however, be all-girl engineering firms based on merit and qualification. This, in my opinion, is great.

Jacob

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Alright, up until this point I was just reading and waiting to hear the details from a team member or mentor, now that we have I would like to start out by pointing out that 842 is not suggesting that every one leave the male members of their The goal of FIRST is to introduce people to Science and Engineering with the hope of guiding them to a related career. If you read either of the 842 mentor’s posts you will see that that was why they did this and that they believe it worked. Because of long held prejudices the ratio of Males to Females in Science and Engineering is no where near 1:1, in order to counteract 100's of years of prejudice in the field it is pretty obvious you can't just say well if you want to do this then you can. It is necessary to introduce people directly to engineering. Do a search for summer engineering programs and you will find many for girls. Almost every major engineering school holds an open house or other events for just girls (as well as for minorities and other under represented groups). These types of intervention are necessary in many cases.

If your team has no need to do this then don't but please don't tell these guys that exposing parts of the team to engineering because those members hadn't had enough opportunity is against the spirit of FIRST because quite frankly it is not.

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I'm not suggesting exposing parts of their team to engineering is against the spirit of FIRST. I'm simply suggesting that excluding part of their team based on their gender is not in the spirit of FIRST. I think that it's great that these girls on this team had an opportunity to experience things that they hadn't before, but this could have been accomplished (im my opinion) without excluding the boys.

Imagine if this post was the other way around, and the title read "We left the girls at home." I think that this would raise greater controversy, even though in reality, you are creating the same situation.

Jacob

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To travel to 3 regionals and the Championship is no small feat. Students, teachers, mentors, parents - all have school, jobs to contend with and juggle. This team has been known as a co-ed team. To take a travel team to one of the regionals that is made up of girls, encouraged more active participation, involvement, ownership of the experience on the part of all the members. It also encouraged the team to step away from their own perceptions of who they are and experiment/experience the depth of their team strengths and land on their feet. Those feet are taking the steps toward a changed culture.
Good luck in Atlanta, Team 842.
Jane

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Major kudos to team 842. They have chosen to participate in a unique way that attempts to make females more involved in science and technology than they have in the past.

Andy B.

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All of the female members. What about males on the team that struggle to take the initiative to participate more activly. If this was the goal of the segregation of the members to participate on the trip, then I would have sent all of the team members who had little-to-no experience, both boys and girls. Even then, I still think that I would have a fundamental problem with sending only people who don't take an active role on the team; The people who are very active on the team worked very hard to get to this point (going to regionals), and are not being excluded for something they couldn't control.

I spent over 200 hours this build season progging our bot. If I was told that I couldnt go to one of two regionals and/or champs simply because I was male, I would probably leave my team. I would be frustrated greatly, seeing that I raised all of the required money to go on trips, and stayed overnight several nights working on the bot. I got used to being the only person in the school both before and after everyone got there. I agree that people who didn't have the opportunity to participate this much should have a chance to play more active roles at the competition, but I don't think that this detracts from what I put into the team. To correlate, I'm sure that the girls put quite a bit of effort into building their bot at home in Jan and Feb, but I'm sure that the boys put in equal effort. In my opinion, not allowing them to travel simply because they are male is both discouraging and unjust.

This is a sticky situation, because I can definatly see the argument of most (seems like everyone) of everyone else posting here. Sending an all-girls team definitely benefits the girls in some aspects (in my opinion, can hurt them in some ways, but thats another issue). But on the flip side, my point is that the boys who worked hard to get to the same point couldn't travel due to their gender.

My team is about 25% deaf. Does this mean that we should send only deaf team members to one of the regionals we go to, simply to have them see whats its like to not have to work with hearing members on our team, and to have to deal with hearing members on other teams.

This is not a realistic situation, because in almost no conditions in the real world would deaf engineers be working only with other deaf engineers. And in almost no situation would deaf engineers be required to communicate with hearing clients without the assistance of hearing colleges.

Absolutely. Best of luck to team 842, as well as all of the teams participating in ATL.

Jacob

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Good luck in atlanta, 842!
I wish my team could do something like that, but
a) We only went to one regional
b) There would only be two of us there!

What a great way to get the girls REALLY into the team. I know being on a team with a lot of guys can be kind of intimidating.

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Whats the point of having two teams from one school?
Why is one all girls? Why not all boys? just wondering
I dont think there should be an all girls/boys team.

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I am from team 842 and I think it was a great idea for us to let the girls to go to a competition to see what it feels like to compete without any guys.

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i love teams who are made out all gurls......it finally shows that gurls can do anything!

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Jacob,

It was one of 3 regionals. And did you miss the part where they said they knew everyone wouldn't go to every regional? That they said team members couldn't miss that much school to attend all the regionals? Did you miss the part where they said many of the girls then didn't go to the following regional?

Choosing to send only the girls to one regional was just a method of deciding which regional(s) the team members - any and all of them, regardless of gender - would attend. That it gave them a unique experience - an all girls team for one regional - was a bonus.

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No, I did not miss this part. This does not explain why they segregated the people who went to this regional. If missing school was an issue, then each student should have attended the same number of regionals.

I agree that sending an all girls team could be an added value. And since many of the girls could not attend the following regional, why not make that an all-boys regional, so that the boys could have the same experience? This would make perfect sense to me (having one girls, one boys, and one co-ed regional)... And if this did happen, would there have been a post that said "We left the girls at home" ? I am simply after providing an equal opportunity to each student.

Our team is an comprised of an intercity school. We have a considerably high percentage of minority students compared to most other teams (that i've seen, perhaps I can be pleasantly surprised and be corrected on this)(somewhere near 35-40%). This is another, sadly, underprivileged group, just as girls are. However, we do not send the minority students away to a competition just for them to experience what it's like to be an all minority team. We would never consider this. These students are just as much a part of the team as anyone else, and people who travel are based on merit and fundraising requirements and time put in etc.

At first, when I made my first comment to this thread, I thought that perhaps I could be completely off-base about this issue. However, I have recieved SEVERAL PMs from various people who feel the same as I do. I think that these people are perhaps afraid to post because what I'm saying is probably not politically correct. I really don't care about politically correctness, I only care about whats right. And if my Rep goes to hell because of that, fine. They're just dots. But what I'm talking about is something much deeper than that.

The whole point of all of these posts is that everyone on the team should have an equal opportunity in every aspect. If it is decided to send an all-girls team, why not send an all-boys team the next time? I believe that both of these event could be a positive experience. But not creating an equal opportunity is just wrong.

On my team, there are 4 students going to ATL on Wed. night. Some of them asked if they could go to the 'prom'. The answer was immediatly 'no', because the rest of the team wasn't there, and it would not be fair to them. Just because these students were fortunate enough to qualify to come early (the rest of the team is coming late thurs night to save $ on hotel) doesn't mean that you can go out and do things without the rest of the team. If the team doesn't go, you don't go. Period.

Now the majority of you reading this thread are probably like "Shut up Jake! Stop posting and make this thread get off the portal page!" I guess I do sound like one person complaining. And perhaps I'll shut up now. This is just a subject that really, really bothers me (Equal Opportunity). I just wanted to express my opinion on this matter, and make my stance clear.

Remember, They're Just Dots!

Jacob

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You know, Jake made a GREAT point. I believe that the team should have an equal opportunity, no matter who is who in it. I am not so much saying anymore about 842 as what happened, happened. That was their decision and they did just that. I am not saying that I agree with it though. I still say that no matter what, a team should always be co-ed because that would give equal opportunity to everyone. As far as just sending girls to competition goes, it is no different than just sending guys which would attract more attention. I think that either way is no better than the other. As far as this subject goes, MORE POWER TO JAKE! I was one of the people that was afraid to post on here thinking that my head would get bitten off. That stage is gone now. Jake, you have my full support!

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I've had my questions answered by the members of Team 842, would one of the mods please close this thread.

Thank you.
Jane

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I agree. I think that everything that could be discussed has been discussed. This has been interesting.

Jacob

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Re opened as requested. PLEASE keep discussion on topic.

Jacob, I agree that all has been said.... on your ideas. Please let others follow the thread topic.

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I agree with most of your points, but I don't really understand this one. To me, thats like saying if one team member cant raise the money to go to the event, no one can.

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The gender bias in boys and girls starts when they are born. Cartoons, TV, magazines, movies, parents, EVERYTHING starts separating the two genders as to what they can and cannot do. Society sets up girls to not be interested in science and technology... plain an simple. Its an extra BIG hurdle nearly every woman in sci/tech has to get over at some point in their lives whether they're young or old.

Its a worth-while hurdle to get over, sci/tech has its rewards as a career path.

Guys get a head start and the small things mattered (toys, comic books, cartoons, dads, sports, etc...). I understand that guys need motivation and inspiration too... but men have a long history of being involved in sci/tech already. Women do not - its a relatively short history.

Many, if not most, girls are behind in their confidence when it comes to sci/tech than guys by the time they reach high school. Its all psycological, the guys and girls may have the same experience level, but girls also want to feel USEFUL to their teams... so they step more towards the 'girly' roles.

I don't mean to offend any of the girls who got involved with the tech stuff right away... you rock!

So I'm just trying to explain this to the high school guys posting in this thread; girls need some time to work within their comofort zone as a CONFIDENCE builder. All-girls teams work well for this purpose and its a good way to get started in sci/tech. Once they've gained their confidence (seeing the robot work knowing THEY fixed it), then they'll have no problem working with guys and, eventually, in the real world.

I think the culture is changing... step by step. We all just need to understand that girls need to have personal ownership of a design detail or project that they can build their confidence around, and let them know that their ideas benefit the team.

erin

Oh, and one other thing... what did you want to be when you grow up? A vetrinarian, doctor, fire-man, teacher, astronaut? Do most kids DON'T even know where their iPod comes from, and most parents are in no position to tell them. I've met a number of older women who were never exposed to sci/tech until they were middle aged; they went back to college and switched careers. A few of them really wished they had something like FIRST when they were younger. The girls in FIRST today are SO CLOSE, they are almost there, but its up to the mentors to help them build their confidence by letting these girls have ownership of design details and let them know their technical ideas are valuable.

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This isn't for you to decide, this is a team decision and every team operates differently. They had the funds to go to three regionals, but not the means to do it with everyone on their team because of the amount of school that would be missed. Instead of choosing fewer competitions, they chose to send certain people to certain regionals.

Your stance has been established, but I think it's time to move on. 842's team members agreed upon this, it's something they decided to do and honestly, something that should be done more often. There are far more males not only in FIRST but in many technological fields as well. In my past experiences, many female students would not take a hands on role if a male student was present - at least not at first. It's that first initial interaction to a leadership role, to taking charge that will boost confidence regardless of gender. These students were in charge, they stepped up and made it happen, and they're all better for it. If anything, the team interaction for the following build season will probably improve dramatically. So the boys didn't get to go to one regional - so what? They've had the opportunity to go to two others and the championship event. It would be different if the team was only going to one or two competitions for the season, but they're competing a total of four separate times which is the big difference here.

No one is trying to eliminate the gender issue here because it will always be a factor, but what 842 did with their female students will only help the dynamics of the team in future build seasons.

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Jacob said:
To which Tom asked:

As a mentor of Jacob's team, I will answer that question. First, Jacob did not quite represent the situation clearly (!) The students going to Atlanta early will be arriving Wed. night, while the team is arriving Thurs. night. The team has dinner and a meeting planned for Thursday night, and the mentors did not think it would be feasible for the team to go to the 'prom'. Because the students arriving on Wed. are part of the team, they are required to do the activities that the team is doing on Thursday. It would not be right for them to go to the prom while the team is arriving, and miss the team events.

As several people have mentioned in this thread, every team has their own decisions to make, and it is interesting to see how we all arrive at those decisions. Of course, we all have our own background situations within our own teams which influence our decisions. It is not one team or person's place to judge decisions made by another team. That really should be the point of this thread. I can see how the point that Jacob was trying to make was borne from the original post, but it really is a different discussion.

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Ah, equality. It's an interesting topic. I believe that women and men have EQUAL worth, but are different. We think differently, we're wired differently, we communicate differently (and it's been proven over and over again through scientific studies). And I'm thankful that it's so, it is what makes the world an interesting place.

Jacob, I'm hoping that you will take a leadership role on your team as it matures and bring equal opportunities to all your members. In order to do that, it might mean having to single some of them out for special treatment/training/tutoring, so that their skillset and confidence becomes equal with others on the team. I didn't have these opportunities as a high school student (not allowed to take industrial arts courses and was blatently discriminated against in my drafting course) and ended up in a traditional women's career field for 25 years. If only one mentor had said, "let's try an experiment and give the young women on our team an opportunity to shine"... my life might have changed. I understand your position - why single out one entity on the team - but I also understand the reason that they did it.

My initial reaction to seeing the photo though, was, why are they all posing that way? We still have a long way to go.

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Here is my completely unbiased opinion on the subject.

As a member in high school of team 151 we had spread of about 75%/25% of males to females on our team. As the year progressed, the natural course of society reared it's ugly head and the team became divided between technical and non-technical students. While most of the guys on our team found themselves accepted mechanically, the girls usually just filtered into the non-technical sub teams and no-one ever complained. Most girls found themselves doing spirit, media, and business for the good of 151.

Is this wrong? No, and only because there was no opposition of the females; instead of saying they wanted more "hands-on" duties that dealt with the robot, they just merely followed society. Do I agree with it? No, but I think the deeper question would be, is society causing our young women to be molded into this "stereotype"? Segregation of sex is just a gruesome display of what this country (and more-so the world) is unfortunately shaped after.

One hundred years ago women couldn't vote or hold the same duties of men. What did women do about this? Women ratified American politics so women had equal rights to vote, and to work. Women ratified this by uniting together to promote equality, and today it just seems that girls in FIRST just want to step back and instead of working towards what they want, they follow the roads of the Paris Hilton's and Lindsey Lohans' attitude of the "whatever" mentality that these "role models" so eloquently portray to our nations female youth.

/gets off soapbox

What would I do to make all sides happy in this situation?
Take everybody. Maybe your team is like my former team and the girls usually just cheer and make banners...reverse the roles. Invite the girls to man the pit crew, drive team, and scouting. To promote equality make the guys on the team cheer and lead the spirit for the regionals. This is a good way not to "discriminate" against one sex or the other when it comes to traveling, you bring both, just duties are switched at the regional. Compromise compromise compromise!

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I'd love to read more about 842's experience at the event and, particularly, how it contrasts with other events.

I sometimes wonder if FIRST's focus on involving more underrepresented groups in its programs tricks us into thinking that we're all doing a fantastic job at creating a safe, welcoming environment for those people. We're not -- or, at least, we can certainly do better -- and only through the narratives of those who're affected can we learn to change for the better.

Ideologically, I believe strongly that singling out woman, for example, as a target for increased attention only further marginalizes their position in a society. Necessarily, those who can take such initiative are in a position of privilege and power over others, making them least suited to understanding that which keeps the underrepresented away. "Equal Opportunity," is a placebo that distracts us from perceiving more damaging, innate prejudices. It's a magic trick.

We need to hear the voices of the people that the program has reached -- not those who're doing the reaching -- and find out from them what works and what does not work. When people feel at ease enough with this environment that can speak and write candidly about what doesn't work, we'll have really started making things change. Right now, we're posturing a lot and achieving remarkably little -- but there's momentum and that's certainly not a bad thing.

(...and remarkably, I think of myself as an optimist. :) )

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Thanks for clearing that up. I was under the assumption this "prom" was on Wednesday night. The situation makes perfect sense now, and I completely agree with the mentor's decisions.

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What else would you do with them?

hehe

[*chants* JERRY JERRY JERRY JERRY!!]

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*grabs the microphone*
hey my team is similar... we have joined forces with the future hispanic leaders club at our school that has a bunch of girls and one guy that have joined our team. The guy started doing mechanical work, and the girls all did spirit team, decorations, etc. This leaves me being the only "technical" girl on my team. I always hate being at robotics and one of our mentors is looking for somebody to make a poster and they go straight to me! Seriously.. girls: you need to go to robotics and be an equal. You can still make posters and decorations, do fundraising, etc, but you also need to do the robotics part, and dont do all the non-technical stuff for the guys. They need to pitch in too. And don't give me some jack about how you don't have enough time or you aren't smart enough, You have just as much free time as the guys do and you are certainly just as (if not MORE) able as they are.

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Well, this thread was opened back up to get back onto topic, but we went astray almost as soon as that happened. Let's try to get back onto topic (whatever that was:D ).

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I do believe the topic at hand was bringing a group of girls to a regional, and there was some questions and some criticism as to why it was done. After getting the answers from the team, it spawned a new set of questions. Are girls accepted as equally as we'd like to think or is it just a "unwritten law" that girls shouldn't be technical when it comes to FIRST?

I don't believe we've strayed off topic, if we had done so it would've spawned much more meaningless things. This thread is actually very interesting to read and to understand people's backgrounds.

Thank you all for some great reading material!

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I must say that I'm personally surprised to look back through this thread and see how huge of a deal some people made out of a little thing.

For what it's worth here's my perspective.
Aviation (my field) in general is a predominantly male field. The number of females in the field is rising slowly and steadily but it is still largely male dominated. For the record, my flight instructor is female, and she's also one of my closest friends (relax, she's my age). I'm on the flight team at my college (for more information go to www.nifa.us). We have 4 girls on the team and about 15 guys. The people who get to compete in regionals and nationals are the people who show that they are in the top 5 in their events on the team (we hold cuts throughout the season). So basically whoever goes to competition is based on merit and coaches decision.

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Thank you. The discussion has again wandered off into the "why" of Team 842's decision to send an all-girls team to the San Diego Regional. You either agree with their decision to do so, or you don't. That topic has pretty much been discussed into submission at this point, and we are now into "me too!" mode. But the thread was re-opened to allow discussion about one very important aspect of that expereience that has been glossed over so far:

Having made the choice to send this particular sub-set of their team to an event, what did Team 842 learn as a result?

I think that if you talk to them about the experience, you will find that they learned both some expected and unexpected lessons. A few have been briefly mentioned already. They deserve further discussion, because they are important, and very revealing. And there are a few more that have yet to be mentioned, including some surprises.

-dave

p.s. and I will repeat a thought from my earlier post: if you don't find someone from Team 842, wrestle them to the floor, sit on them, and threaten to not get up until they tell you about their "Digitally Enhanced Scouting System" you are going to regret it! :)

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Team 842 -
I started this thread by asking how your team did this and what you learned.
Dave is encouraging you and making hints again. :) This time about surprises.

It would be wonderful to hear 842 students' perspectives and experiences.
Thank you to the mentors and students who have posted already.

Jane

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Thanks for vectoring the thread again, Dave. Now I am on the edge of my chair, because I love surprises.

My team (like most in FIRST, I suspect) needs to get more girls involved. At recent FRC events our traveling crew has been about 25% female and that tracks closely with overall participation. Having worked with, and reported to, several scary-smart female engineers during my quarter-century in the profession, I refuse to believe that my team's level of female participation can be attributed to individual capabilities. I know there is talent that we are not utilizing -- and by finding ways to bring it out we can make the team more competitive.

Eagerly awaiting lessons from 842's experience. :)

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Well... I know you want to hear from the girls and maybe more boys from the team, but they are a little shaken by the responses on the thread. They are talking amongst each other and are formulating what they learned from the experience. They hope to post their response soon. We were just doing what we thought was right as a team. We didn't realize what we stumbled on. The responses have been very interesting and powerful. There have been many kind words on our behalf, and I felt that you all should not be left hanging, so I post this to let you all know they are not ignoring you. Thanks

P.S. Nobody has asked us about our Digitally Enhanced Scoring System, any more hints from Dave and he might as well take out an ad in the FIRST program. We are getting ready to add another dimension to it for Nationals. We are in Galileo, stop by and check it out, we will have a set in the stands and one in the pit. See Ya!!

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Please ask the team to take all the time they need.
Changing the culture is hard work. :)
Thank you -
Jane

P.S. here's another thread to keep you busy....
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=56632

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842 rocks!

anyways, I chuckled at the comment about the 842 guys programming....what's that all about, Karen? :)

We got to see the .xls results of the scouting system at the AZ regional (and it must work well, since 842 picked 1726 to be on their alliance). The data loggers are indeed named after the 7 characters in the old Disney movie.

And as for the whole equality thing....life isn't fair, and it's good to see some folks realize this and push the other way to try to even things up a bit.

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I too concur with squirrel. 842 totally rocks! In looking at this experience, I was talking with squirrel and asked if this was something that we could do as well. We have a number of females on the team, and I would be willing to do the same with our female members if it would help change the culture.

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Ok, I think I see some definite contradictions here in this one statement. Why is this "elite" crew of 4 able to go early, and in that sense "going while the rest of the team doesn't go" and then denied the same seperate status as the rest of the team when it came to a non-FIRST sanctioned activity?

This is just telling the team members that they are there to work on FIRST related activities (uncrating the robot for instance) and nothing else?
FIRST is supposed to be "the hardest fun ever". Apparently (unless I am missing something here) your team has designated the "hardest" to the work category, and not the fun one. That's not right in my opinion.

But isn't this seperation from the rest of the team is also telling them that they are "special" and have that priviledge to go to the event early?

I don't understand this at all.

They made it, they qualified to go early, why not have an extra day of activities rolled into that? If they don't deserve the fun, why do they deserve the work?

An equal balance must be found between play and work.

Dean once made a good quote intergrating the popular Nike quote. His quote was as follows:
"Play Hard? I say Work Hard".

I personally say there has to be a balance to each for you to have fun and be sucessful in all you do.

I'm sure the students and mentors on 842 realized this, and thus a fair agreement was reached between the team that they obviously went with.

To all the people who say it's "sexist, or biased, or discrimination" towards the male members of 842, I would like an actual male student member of 842, or a whole bunch for that matter, to reply to that and give a true feeling about that.

No inhibitions.. Just tell us why you agreed with this descision (or if you didn't, feel free to tell us, but also explain why.. and how you felt when the team decided to do it anyways IF that was the case, and how your team came up with it from an insider's point of view.

And, as for my comments to 842.. I'm not going to say "you go girls!" for ditching the guys and competing themselves, and I'm not going to say "way to go guys" for letting the girls go on their own..
No siree, I'm not going to be accused of being biased one way or the other here like so many have already I will just say one thing to 842.

Great Job Team!!! :)

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Well, I don't know about his team, but I know that there is an advance team on the TechnoKats that goes early so that they can uncrate the robot and such. Also, the school usually wants to leave at the last minute and plan to be at the even right on time (never happens) and the advance team goes to help set the pit up right as the doors open. This team is more to make sure that we don't waste any precious time at the competition.

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Elgin, this has already been answered in this thread. See this post. One of the team leaders gives a pretty clear explanation.

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Thanks Eric.. I went back and read that.. and It answered some misconceptions I had but also raised more questions. But whatever. I think the excellent and well thought out point made here by Dapub sums up the political world of FIRST in a nutshell. (which I have realized, goes further and further every day i talk to people.)
Yay for social networking. :)

Anyways.. Great Quote:

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I had stayed away from this thread for a week and now I am intrigued to learn about this DES system. I will take you up on your offer to see you in Atlanta. Our team is traveling without our robot as we did not advance nor did we move off the waitlist as we had hoped. Our team will be participating in the FIRST workshops, volunteering at the event, and sending two - three students to your pit for at least a day.

I'll pm you with a specific request.

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We will see you there!!

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will your Vex team have one running on DaVinci? :)

(I'm going to Championships with FVC 3495)

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Hi my name is Mabel Munoz and i am one of the lucky girls that got to participate in the San Diego Regional. Before the competition i didn't find anything strange with the "all girls team". We just wanted to do the same jobs as the guys. Not that we don't have the same opportunities but we tend to let the guys do "the man jobs". Once we got there we started to notice that people looked at us like outsiders. It was uncomfortable but we didn't care because we were enjoying working with the robot and doing the jobs we thought were hard. After the regional our team learned a lot. We learned that people aren't used to seeing girls doing what guys normally do, they just needed to be exposed to the "change". We are more united in the way that now we, the girls, step up to help the guys do the job. After all it wasn't as hard as we thought we just needed that little push to help us see that. :)

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Answering Squirrel
I don't know what field, how can you find out?

By the way,thanks for your support of our team!

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Here is an online article where an all-girls team made the news.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/apr07/5029

Life is not fair, but these girls are proving that someday it might be.

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Very cool article. It talks about teams that were always all-girls. What our team did was an interesting variation. We now have comparisons between co-ed and all girls. We were at the regional talked about in the article. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

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I believe in equality overall. I don't think boys are girls are better overall than each other; Sure each can be better at individual tasks, but few of those are intellectual. When it comes to intellectual tasks such as robotics, any difference between boys and girls in ability has nothing to do with gender. Well, I guess in some cases the gender could lead to discrimination and/or segregation resulting in lowered abilities...

If team 842 wants to do this, let them do it. They went to 3 regionals and I don't see any of 842's guys complaining. Knowing them, I bet they would've let a guy go if he was really adamant about it.

Letting the girls have a regional to themselves isn't that big of a deal, just stop riding them for it.

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woops!! We were in San Diego, not LA, I saw the picture of the beach bots and assumed...................

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And we were in San Diego as well...(L.A. is our home regional; San Diego was our "away" regional this year.)

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Hello we are the San Diego drive team for Team 842: Angelica Hernandez (driver), Yvette Torres (second driver), and Cynthia Botello (human player). At the San Diego Regional we were pretty confident that our robot was going to do good after seeing what it was capable of doing in Arizona . Although we would be an all-girls team, we still believed that the trip was going to be quite a success. And then it hit us.

Angelica: We arrived at the San Diego Regional and started building our pit as usual. Everything went well until the practice rounds started. As the driver, I was filled with an intense nervousness and anxiety stepping onto the field for the very first time. The bell rang and I managed to go forward with shaky legs. What was a practice round, seemed more of a final round. As I tried to score, the opposing robots aggressively attacked me. This seemed very awkward to me since I had not seen robots act this defensive in practice rounds. At the end of the practice round, I stood in awe at what we were going up against. I have to admit I was a bit intimidated and scared by what was happening.

Taking the robot through inspection was quite a learning experience as well. It seemed like the tech inspectors were trying to make us feel stupid or simply embarrass us by asking us questions that we couldn’t thoroughly answer. As Cynthia said, “ the inspection made me feel stupid, stupid, stupid, more than I already felt!” We knew for a fact that this hadn’t happened in Arizona. It got to a point where Angelica couldn’t take it anymore and had to step out.


Yvette: Having gone to three regional competitions I was able to observe how it was so much different at the San Diego Regional. I had done most of the electrical on the robot so I was at all three inspections to answer any questions. I was nervous about the inspection, scared that I wasn’t going to be able to answer the inspector’s questions but the inspection at Arizona went smoothly and pretty quick. The same went for Las Vegas it had been through inspection two times already so there was not much to change or alter. At the San Diego Regional I expected much of the same but that was not the case. I felt as though the inspectors were quizzing all the girls about the robot, what everything was, where it was connected, etc.. Quite a few girls were involved with the construction of the robot as I had done the electrical but we were not as knowledgeable as the guys in that area of the robot. After all it was our first year, we were practically a rookie team.

Angelica: Also, during the qualifying matches, as the driver I felt like the other drivers in our alliance wouldn’t really communicate with me, or if they did, it was very minimal. I found myself asking many questions to which I received a short response. This was also true during the actual matches as well.


While a lot of the males on other teams were very polite to us, there were also some that just liked to pick on us. For example, there was one guy that started hanging out in our pit to just talk about how his team was going to beat us “so bad” and warning us to watch out. We knew he was saying these things to try to intimidate us but his comments were very irritating. This same male said a comment that simply shocked Angelica. While she was looking at the team rankings on the monitor, he was standing right behind her and right when our team number appeared he blurted out “ ouch, 43, that’s harsh!” with a big smile on his face. This made her so angry but she simply turned around and said, “You shouldn’t be making those comments because they’re not graciously professional!” and walked away.

It may have just been us, but we felt kind of ignored by the judges. Having experienced the attention we received in Arizona made us wonder why we didn’t have more judges asking us questions about what we did outside of FIRST. As we remember, all the questions they asked were about our robot and not about anything else we did. It didn’t seem like the judges took enough time to talk to us. Again, these are only observations.

Angelica: One thing I did learn was how stressing it is to be the driver. If the match goes wrong everyone immediately turns to the driver for answers. I never thought how difficult it would be to drive knowing that all of the pressure is on you. I learned to appreciate how well drivers operate because now I know that it isn’t as easy as it appears.

Cynthia: This regional wasn't just a FIRST Robotics Competion. For me it was a life changing experience. I have built more confidence and discovered a potential that I didn't think I had. I have learned that we can all try new things becuase if you don't try you won't know what you're capable of. I am also glad that there were people encouraging and telling us how great it was that we were doing such thing.

Perhaps the most important thing that we learned was to overcome our fear. Coming from a Hispanic family where women are always put down contributed to us always having to step out whenever something had to be fixed on the robot. Now, we have more confidence about our selves and have realized that we can do anything we set our minds to. We will never forget the San Diego Regional becuase it has certainly changed our culture.:)

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As the president of team 842, I just want to say that I think it was a wonderful experience for the girls who went. It allowed them to experience what its like to have all the responsibility of keeping to pit and competing with the robot. It has also made our team, as a whole, stronger. On top of that, there were a couple new team members who got to "get it" and are now true FIRSTers.

my $0.02

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Observations of Faridodin “Fredi” Lajvardi, co-mentor of team 842

On the topic of “what we learned,” and without intent to cause offense, here are my observations. I am by no means an expert on these matters, and I don’t claim to know all the solutions.

First, some background information is appropriate. Twelve female students from co-ed team 842 attended the San Diego Regional event. They were accompanied by four adult males and two adult females including mentor and physicist Karen Suhm, Ph.D. Normally, Dr. Karen Suhm is the lead mentor of programming for the co-ed version of team 842. In San Diego, Karen was in charge of most aspects of the girls’ team as the adult mentor of the drive team, and lead strategist along with the lead student driver. The men on the trip played support roles for Karen and helped manage the scoring in the stands with our new Digitally Enhanced Scoring System.

Observations:

1. Males from other teams that seemed to have little or no role on their own team tended to “hang out” in our pit area. Interference and interruptions by these males adversely affected Karen’s ability to work with her team. I (male mentor) was asked to “make the guy go away.” Versions of this scenario recurred throughout the three days of the regional event.
2. (I hope I don’t burn in FIRST hell for this one) Tech inspection lasted longer than in any other regional event in my six years of being in FIRST. It lasted about an hour. The robot had already been through a technical inspection at the Arizona Regional and placed 2nd in the finals. The girls received an inordinate amount of attention. They were quizzed on various parts of the robot followed by a mini lecture on the operations of the components in question. While this was great for the girls in that it gave them the opportunity to demonstrate how much they know and become more aware of what still needs to be mastered, it wasn’t typical of any inspection that I have observed. Along the same lines, the inspectors allowed the lead female mentor, Karen, to help with the student’s responses. The male mentors have never been allowed to participate in the past. I have never seen this level of attention paid to the co-ed tech inspection team (typically 3 males, 1 female) when they take the robot through inspection. It could just be a fluke, but it is what I observed. The following week at the Vegas Regional with our co-ed tech team, tech inspection only took about ten minutes.
3. We have been the Arizona Regional Chairman’s Award winner for the past three years now: 2005, 06, 07. Before that, we won the Engineering Inspiration, 2004, and in Los Angeles we won the Chief Delphi Driving Tomorrow’s Technology Award, 2003. More recently, we won the Engineering Inspiration Award at the Las Vegas Regional, 2007. At the national level, we have won the Engineering Inspiration and Honorable Mention for Chairman’s in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Yet in San Diego the girls were essentially ignored. The team had the same pit set up, the same scrapbook, the same video DVD playing, the same robot. The only difference at this particular regional event among the students who speak to the judges when they come by is the absence of one male student. Sour grapes on my part? Maybe. Is this mere coincidence? Perhaps. Nonetheless, these are my observations.
4. After Karen, along with her students, completed the strategy agreements with their alliance teams with whom they were about to enter a match, the male members of the alliance teams flagged down Dr. Cameron’s and my attention as we were walking to the stands to watch the next match. They wanted to change the strategy that Karen and her team had already negotiated. Karen became aware of this and had to intervene and reestablished the agreement on strategy.
5. While our driver was looking at the team rankings on the monitor, a male participant of another team made a derogatory remark to her about how poorly her team was performing. Our driver pointed out his lack of gracious professionalism. Additional derogatory remarks by other male participants were reported to us by our team members.
6. The girls were able to do all the pit activities and have the robot make every match on time. They made all the repairs and maintenance tasks including changing out the batteries as well as the guys.
7. The girls’ driving skills were not as advanced as the male drivers; however, their inexperience helped to identify two flaws in the robot that were not evident with the more experienced male drivers. This same robot with these same flaws made it to the final rounds at the AZ Regional event and the team finished second. Apparently, the males had been compensating for the minor drive train problem that existed. This also resulted in an inaccurate autonomous mode. Furthermore, the robot was intended to have the code in its programming that kept the robot at 40% maximum power to allow the driver to have more finesse with the robot and then, when a trigger is pulled, the robot was supposed to have full power to push other robots around for a defensive mode. Again, the boys’ higher driving skills masked this inability to achieve 100% driving power. The female driver was able to experience and identify these problems. Upon investigation, the team found that the drive train had one bolt missing from a mount that made the transmissions loose. The team fixed that. Karen also found that the code in the program did not allow for the robot to ever get 100% to the robot motors when the right trigger was pulled. Karen fixed the code and the robot had access to full power when the driver demanded it. The robot now had an upgraded autonomous mode, and it was now able to push any other robot in the tournament, which the robot was designed to do. Beginners tend to bring fewer preconceptions. We benefited from the perspectives of our less experienced drivers.
8. At the team social, two gentlemen wearing official FIRST shirts came over to the area where we were eating. One of the men was Jim Beck, Western Regional Director. Both men expressed curiosity about team 842 based on the reputation we have been building over the past four years. The two gentlemen then noticed that we had only girls on the team and proceeded to inquire as to why that was so, since they never heard that we were an all girls team. We then explained that we were indeed a co-ed team and that we wanted to give the girls on the team the full experience of what it was like to compete in a regional without the boys on the team. They were very excited about the concept and were pleased that we were willing to experiment with new ideas. They told us that this is what they had heard about our team; that we are always testing out new territory. It was at this point that we realized that this endeavor was more consequential than we ever imagined.



Purely subjective personal opinions:

1. While the original intent was to try something different in an effort to empower the female team members, every member of the team – mentors, teachers, male and female students – learned something.
2. In some circumstances, to provide a genuine equal opportunity may require more than just opening a door.
3. Many males on the team learned that what is often perceived as female passivity is not completely independent of male behaviors – behaviors that can be intentional or unintentional.
4. The females on our team clearly benefited from direct, unobstructed, undiluted participation. Such experience fosters the development of skills and self-confidence.


A final note:

Team 842, by consensus of all members, is a stronger team as the result of this experience.

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I am one of the girls that went to San Diego. I am grateful to guys that let us go to this regional. It wasn't an easy decision because the team had just won chairman's award and second place at the AZ regionals and sending only girl could've made the team look bad out of home. They allowed us to experience something that really changed our thoughts and our roles on the team. I know that next year I'm going to learn as much as possible and like Marco said try to spend as much time working on the robot as the guys.

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Taking chances, experiencing risk - can be very well thought out - weighing actions, outcomes with the safety of the known and making a decision to go for it. To experience the risk together as team and to be in support of each other as team, creates the safety net.

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Fredi,

Kudos to your team for doing this. I truly feel that you are "blazing a trail" with some of the things your team has accomplished.

As for your example in the inspection process at San Diego...

I really think that this was most likely a case of a new inspector at a new regional just trying to do a good job. In doing so, they took too long. I truly hope that it was not because of the gender of the team they were inspecting. Sometimes one-hour inspections take place. They are not the norm, but I've seen it happen to various types of teams.

Andy B.

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Thanks Andy

I suppose that is probably the case. I think it was probably a new judge. It was probably just mere coincidence, however, I did observe the inspection. I was trapped in the pit behind the robot and actually had to watch the whole ordeal. Again, I am not making any conclusions, just observations.

Thanks again and hope to see you at the Championships! Take care!