Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I am a (male) mentor on FIRST team 3504, Girls of Steel, a FIRST team composed of girls from all over the Pittsburgh area. This thread is timely for me. I undertook mentoring 3504 with many of the same reservations about all-girl teams that have been expressed in this thread. But my experiences over the past six or so months have convinced me that all-girls teams are a good thing and can play a real role in increasing the number of girls who decide to pursue technical careers.

As a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, I have been involved in robotics research and education with students ranging from highschool to Ph.D. for the past ten years. I have seen first hand many of the negative dynamics that have been reported in this thread. There are small numbers of women in our classes. I have seen women who marginalize themselves to fit in better with their more aggressive male peers. Alternatively, I have seen women assert themselves and suffer socially for it. You can point to these symptoms as an indictment to society, or our educational system, or even my own poor skills as a teacher. But these are deep seated issues that have no immediate solution, or at least not one that I know of.

What I can say is this: the girls of 3504 are thriving in ways that I have never seen girls/women thrive in a co-educational setting. They are gaining confidence and taking on responsibilities that many of them would concede to the boys on a mixed-gender team. Sure, they will need to work with boys/men someday, but when they get there they will have the skills to go head to head with them and the confidence that goes along with it. I find it surprising that anyone can criticize my actions as "counterproductive". If you don't believe me, you are welcome to come help us mentor 3504 and see for yourself. Or better yet, start your own all-girls team.

I'll finish this post (my first ever on CD) with an attempt to provide some perspective that I have not yet seen in this thread: The world needs more engineers, this is one of the underlying tenets of FIRST. Girls represent a great, under-tapped pool of future engineering talent. We should be doing everything we can to encourage them and to give them safe places to learn how to stretch their engineering wings.

-George

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Give a smart female the ego of a male counterpart and I think you'll find the rock star in FRC. I only say this because the very poignant female leader of my team pointed this out as something for me personally to improve so I don't intimidate any potential upcoming female engineers who show interest in joining our team. The process of working on my ego in that context has led me to believe that until a specific behavior is directly called out, I seriously doubt that any male (especially an adolescent) can empathize with females that have those types of hurdles to overcome. Ergo, I believe we need to celebrate the all-female teams as much, if not more than, co-ed or all-male teams.

After having done some of our own all-female research with FLL and [FVC] teams, we came to some conclusions which I'll adapt to the current metaphor. They weren't "rock stars" simply because none of them wanted to be rock stars. They wanted to succeed and it seemed to be an intrinsic quality they were after more than the competitive edge. However, there is another team, Einstein's Daughters (all-girl FTC team), who I would say are famous (in FTC) due to their consistency with success in a competitive environment. Perhaps someone could contact them to get their input?

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Running an all-girls team is not sexism. Sexism is the institutionalized (i.e. widespread and prevalent throughout all aspects of our culture) favoring of one gender over another. When looking at the existence of girls-only teams in the wider context of a society which overhwelmingly favors men in STEM fields, they don't do any real harm to men (in a general sense at least*). If sexism ever truly ends someday, there will be no need to have any more all-girl teams... they will simply cease to exist. Your contention that they would linger solely to oppress men is ridiculous. I highly doubt that the people running the all-girls teams are secretly plotting to marginalize all men once women are no longer culturally disadvantaged... in fact, many of the people running those teams are men themselves. :rolleyes:

These are all fine suggestions, there is nothing wrong with them. But I still don't see any harm in girls-only teams. The many positive testimonies in this thread clearly show that they are a powerful tool for bringing more women into STEM fields.

I for one would feel pretty discouraged if the only news stories about women in STEM fields were about our failures and difficulties. I suppose they would garner some sympathy, but probably not in a good way... i.e. you would probably get a lot of Archie Bunker-esque responses like "oh, those poor, silly wimminz, what do they think they are doing trying to do manly things like math and science? Why do they worry their pretty little heads about trying to get ahead in careers which obviously weren't meant for them?"

On the other hand, seeing more and more positive stories about women making scientific and engineering breakthroughs would probably shock, maybe even change (and at the very least shut up) the Archie Bunkers of the world. It would also be testimony to the success of the programs and scholarships (such as all-girl FIRST teams!) dedicated to helping advance women in STEM. Even more importantly, it would serve as inspiration to the women out there like me who rarely get to hear about women's success in engineering. Trust me, it helps a lot to hear about the success stories of other women... just reading the responses of the other women in this thread has truly been a source of comfort and support for me. Not to say that we shouldn't talk about the problems we face at ALL (it's important to share those too), but I believe it's equally important to share our victories as well as our defeats.

You are still living in a dream world, my friend. Trust those who have actually had real-world experience trying to contend with discrimination.

--Jaine

*I'm not saying that they can NEVER hurt men... obviously it would be unfair if there was an all-girls team in a region where there were no other alternative tech-related activities for the boys to participate in... on the other hand, it's not like anyone would be actively stopping someone from starting their own co-ed team in such a region if they wanted one.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

The point of FIRST is to inspire students to learn. Different people work best in indifferent ways. That is the reason teams have different ways that they function. Our team is coed and some of our captains have been girls. Since all the students have to take the same training they all use the machine tools. Our school also has many girls on the local Girl Scouts team. I would like them on our team but if they want to be on the Girl Scouts team that is where they belong. At the regonals some of the teams the girls have minor rolls and do not work with the robot. When asked they respond that they do not work on the robot during build. Many of those girls would be better off on a all girls team just to get the chance to learn. Diffrent teams for diffrent folks.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

To Jaine:

"Sexism is the institutionalized (i.e. widespread and prevalent throughout all aspects of our culture) favoring of one gender over another."

dictionary.com makes no reference to the institutionalized part. I guess part of our disagreement is based on a difference of definitions.

"Your contention that they would linger solely to oppress men is ridiculous."

Please read my words before ridiculing them. I didn't suggest once they'd linger to oppress men. Whats more, I've not once suggested they oppress men in the least. Just that they, in themselves, are a form of sexism as long as they have a gender requirement to be a part of the team.

"I for one would feel pretty discouraged if the only news stories about women in STEM fields were about our failures and difficulties."

I completely agree. I'm not suggesting showing these failures and difficulties to little girls. I suggest showing them to their parents in hopes that it would motivate them to raise their kid in a more unisex manner so that one day such failures and difficulties won't have to be faced.

"You are still living in a dream world, my friend. Trust those who have actually had real-world experience trying to contend with discrimination."

Please don't make assumptions about other people's pasts. I've been through discrimination. I was the only guy clarinet player out of 30 for my freshmen year not to mention being severely outnumbered in that respect for the 3 years prior to high school. Often it was regular for the marching band coordinator to not notice me and refer to as a group as "ladies". As you can imagine I was placed in many awkward situations while being the only guy, and when with the other parts of the band I'd always be told how "lucky" I am. They'd make suggestions that were completely inappropriate. I know what its like to go through discrimination. I completely admit that I don't have to deal with this every day of my life as women in professional engineering do. I have however had "real-world experience trying to contend with discrimination".

As you continually reference to my living in a dream world...Yes I dream big. So has most of the people who have had real impact in this world. Martin Luther King Jr is most famous for his "dream" speech. I imagine many people back then thought he lived in a dream world. That was less then 50 years ago today. In the grand scheme, 50 years for a dream world to come to reality...that's pretty fast. Maybe if more people shared my "dream world" we could live in it in another 50 years.

Final message: Please don't put words in my mouth or make false assumptions about my past. I feel you have made great contributions to this thread, but I can't help but read your posts as being rather condescending. You've been through and seen things. We all have. Please post your thoughts without belittling mine in the future.

Thanks,
Jason

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Accidentally clicked "no", since the question posed by the poll is opposite that posed by the thread title.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Short answer to the thread title: no, as long as there are similar opportunities for males (having to start a new team does not count as a "similar opportunity").

I was going to pepper this post with statistics from various US & European studies on gender balance in STEM education, and Engineering in particular, but they all show the same trend, so I'll just summarize.
While the percentage of women earning Bachelor degrees in Engineering has increased over the past 3 decades (roughly doubling), there is still a minority (~20%) female enrollment in Engineering degrees. However this is within a broader trend of a declining number of Engineering degrees awarded.
So perhaps, to poorly paraphrase the great Dave Lavery and others, we shouldn't be spending out time focusing on how to split the small pie we have in front of us, but on how to make the pie much bigger.

Mandatory class war comment.
One set of data I couldn't easily locate was a reliable analysis of socioeconomic status on STEM education. But I would hazard that a female from a wealthy family attending a private girls' school has significantly more likelihood of attending college and completing a STEM degree than almost any "privileged" white male from the other end of the socio-economic spectrum.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Going through my mental Rolodex and nothing's clicking. There's bound to be some though.

Ya think?


Jane

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

If they aren't contributing to the oppression of men, especially in a broad societal sense, then they aren't sexist. What's the use in labeling something "____ist" when it doesn't contribute to the oppression of a group?

I'm not going to try to tell you that the things you have gone through weren't difficult or challenging, but as you admitted yourself -- what you've described hardly comes close to being representative of the kinds of institutionalized discrimination women face in engineering. You simply haven't had the experience of being discriminated against in a workplace where, for example, making a complaint about sexism/harassment by one of your superiors could cause you to get passed over for leadership positions and promotions, could ruin your reputation amongst colleagues, and could even cost you your job.*

I'm not trying to be condescending, although I am sure my irritation is coming through in my posts. It's hard not to let some frustration rise to the surface when someone compares being accidentally called a "lady" in a high school marching band to the experience of a woman contending with the kind of discrimination that can ruin her career. This is the stuff of my life -- not some abstract theorem that I can discuss without any emotional involvement.

(I know I know, us silly laydeez and our craaazy emotions!!1!11 :p) <-- just a joke, not trying to put words in your mouth

Big difference between the words of Dr. King and the things you said to me. Dr. King had visions of a dream world which did not yet (and still does not) exist. You tried to tell me that the dream has already arrived, when I know for a fact that it has not.

-- Jaine

*not saying that this is the case in EVERY engineering job... there are many great companies for women to work, and a lot of supportive men out there. But these are real experiences that come from actual colleagues of mine... different workplaces can vary widely in their supportiveness/hostility, and sometimes the workplace dynamic doesn't end up being as supportive as it seemed initially.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Karen (842) is up there in my book....

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Although I don't know many female mentors very well, I know a few current students who I have a great deal of respect for for the work they do on their teams:

Kara from 1189, Nikki from 2016, Stephanie from 1323 all come to mind.


And I have no idea how people can forget Kyle Hughes, mentor of 27, Team RUSH.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Final post to Jaine(if you'd like to discuss this further, I'll be happy to do so in PM because we are kind of starting to derail this thread into a person discussion):

"What's the use in labeling something "____ist" when it doesn't contribute to the oppression of a group?"

The point is using the appropriate word. I've yet to figure out what dictionary your using to define sexism. I've checked two online and neither have come with the implications that you make.

"I'm not going to try to tell you that the things you have gone through weren't difficult or challenging, but as you admitted yourself -- what you've described hardly comes close to being representative of the kinds of institutionalized discrimination women face in engineering."

I wasn't referring to my experience being on par with a woman in the workplace but with girls joining a robotics team. And I assure you that my experiences went much farther then simply being mistakenly referred to as a lady. There were alot of things I went through that could be direct parallels to what is seen by the things girls have gone through.

"I'm not trying to be condescending, although I am sure my irritation is coming through in my posts. It's hard not to let some frustration rise to the surface when someone compares being accidentally called a "lady" in a high school marching band to the experience of a woman contending with the kind of discrimination that can ruin her career. This is the stuff of my life -- not some abstract theorem that I can discuss without any emotional involvement."

Some of the best advice I've been given on this forum comes from JaneYoung. She once said that she often takes a day or two before making a post to think the post over. She could tell you why better then I can, but I've tried to do that for anything that I feel so close to that I can't think objectively. Honestly if you can't discuss a topic without getting frustrated, you should wait for your anger to settle before posting. Honestly, you've had good points but your posts have been anything but professional.

"Big difference between the words of Dr. King and the things you said to me. Dr. King had visions of a dream world which did not yet (and still does not) exist. You tried to tell me that the dream has already arrived, when I know for a fact that it has not."

I'm not suggesting I am Dr. King. Far from it, I'd be happy to be a fraction of the man he was. I don't believe my words are all just a dream. Yes, it isn't everywhere yet. But there are places that have figured out how to have a co-ed environment without unchecked sexism. That is what exists today. I fully admit that I am strongly idealistic but that doesn't mean that what I see doesn't already partly exist.

Final note: I am not posting anymore responses directly to Jaine in this thread simply because this is meant to be a public forum rather then a conversation between two. I will gladly discuss things via PM if you wish Jaine.

Jason

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I was focused on the "give a smart female the ego of a male counterpart and I think you'll find the rock star in FRC" part.

There are some powerful egos in the FRC community. Those egos may drive innovation and continue to raise the bar. They may do that by challenging each other and themselves. I can't seem to identify those egos in any women in FRC that I know, have met, or have heard of. What makes the ego? Can it be developed? Can it be transplanted or inspired?

But - keep the list of outstanding women/young women coming. It's awesome.

Jane

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I don't think she was referring to the definition, but the current political connotation to the word. For example I received negative reputation for my comment, and the comment to poster left was "blatantly sexist".

I would like to apologize to anyone I offended with my comments, I just thought to even suggest being on an all woman's tea, would be because of or reflect a handicapped state was bothersome, and wanted to share my pro-female feelings.

By definition I am sexist, I would rather work with women than men, I don't think its a negative thing either.

And the all girls team that one chairman's at BAE a few year's back was an absolutely awesome story. One of my favorite chairman's announcements I've ever heard.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Why must a strong leader have an ego? This part I'm curious about. The leaders we are all inspired by in FIRST, male or female, do not necessarily have this "ego complex" that is being suggested. Yes, ok most leaders have egos, but every strong mentor I can think of does not. My question is, again, why must a strong leader have an ego? To me, having ego is a bad thing, and if we are trying to get more women involved in mentoring FIRST teams, let them be all male, all female, or a co-ed team, why would we want them to pursue having a negative attribute.

I don't know, this one line really tripped me up. Just my $0.02.

Cass

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Cass, an ego isn't always a bad thing.

I'm an avid believer that "you are what you think you are", so if you think you're a rock star mentor, then you act like rock star mentor and eventually you become a rockstar mentor. You don't necessarily need to have a bad ego, or one where you think that you're the best, you just need to believe in what you're able to do... Or something like that.

-Dustin.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Dustin, I definitely agree with you here. I guess to me, hearing the word ego, always seems to strike as a negative thing.

Cass

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

There's a fine line between cockiness and confidence. Confidence is one of the major keys to success and happiness in life. As long as one can carefully stay on the right side of the line, staying confident while remaining humble, an ego can be quite beneficial.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Ok so you caught me, I stretched the truth a little to make a point (that likely happens). The truth is that employers look at more than GPA. They may consider gender. But I'm pretty certain what set my 3.3 above my 3.5 male counterparts was not my gender but my extensive leadership experience. I was MVP & a leader of my FIRST team in high school for 3 years. As a freshman I founded a FIRST team & was a member of the varsity ski team throughout college. I have tons of outreach & volunteerism on my resume. I worked on a student committee for the governor of CT, was a HOBY leader, held a job since I was 14, had 3 internships, on and on...

Honestly, I never asked any of my interviewers or employers if my gender had anything to do with it, as I had the confidence that my skillset and knowledge would set me apart, even if it was possible that my gender is what got me in the door. Frankly I dont care if it was my gender or that they liked the purple font I printed my name in. It gave me a chance to discuss my real potential.

My frustration with these girls that "use their gender instead of their brain" is that when they get into industry and start doing that, men in engineering start (understandably so) stereotyping all women into that category, so when they see a woman added to the team, they automatically assume that means that the men are going to have to do more work to compensate for the female. Or that men can end up assuming women got a promotion simply because of their gender, not because they worked insanely hard (I saw this happen after a female who "didnt work for it" got promoted). THAT is what bothers me. The women who create that name for those of us who have worked hard to get where we are, and use our brains. I believe that there is probably a much higher percentage of women who use their brains, but it only takes working with a few who don't and a not-so-open mind to create the stereotype when there are so few of us to begin with.

So I wont pretend to deny that my gender may have gotten me advantages to get my foot in the door, though I dont know that for a fact. I wouldnt say I deliberately "took advantage" of that, I think its just a possible fact that I would not refute. In reality, its likely my resume that got me where I was and am, but I know that companies are actively hunting for women & minorities that meet their needs, so I simply acknowledge the possibility.

Phcullen - I'm just curious, on your team, how many girls are on your pit crew? on your drive team? how many have YOU actively brought & encouraged into a technical role?

EXACTLY! Its already been said several times, but the dynamic with boys around is just SO much different. I've witnessed the strongest & most empowered girls back off or walk away from technical roles on a co-ed team because the boys would dismiss them or shove them aside. And often no amount of mentoring or even punishment will bring this dynamic back in balance. All-girls teams can be a way to allow those girls to stretch their wings as you say!

Cass - I believe this was a response to my wondering of why there are no female Rock Stars in FRC. I think this was a polite way of saying what sets the Rock Stars apart from all of the rest of the mentors we look up to individually on our teams is that the "Rock Stars" have egos that make them bold and out there. Ego is generally a negative term, but in this case, I think it makes sense and isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Rock Stars are proud of what their teams (and they) have accomplished, and they will come right out and say it. For many, their egos aren't the same as normal rock star style egos though. FIRST Rock Stars - true to the vision - will stop and help anyone that asks. They aren't too egotistical that helping those less advantaged is below them, in fact many reach out to others & other teams. But to me the ego comment is true. The FIRST Rock Stars are powerful figures, they are proud figures, they have loud voices, and often aren't afraid to speak their minds. I don't think the comment was meant that all FRC leaders have to have egos to be looked up to... its just what makes the household name. To bring it to a current example, I would guess 80% of America knows who Charlie Sheen is (he definitely has an ego). How many people know his costars names? I would admittedly have to look them up myself...

And really, this rings true in industry as well. I have only known one female at a Director level in my career... and she certainly had an ego. But females willing to have/use an ego like their male counterparts is few & far between. I forget the actual saying, but its something like "A man with an ego is considered a leader, a woman with an ego is considered a..." well you fill in the blank. And perhaps we need to change that.

P.S. Karthik answered this one better than I, but I didnt catch it as I was typing :)

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I suspect Jane was indicating this as a distinction between some people's idea of a "Rock Star" and just a great mentor. Many feel that you have to be over the top and desire the spotlight to reach that status.

YES! Confidence without bravado. That is a goal all mentors should aspire to. Knowing what you know... and more importantly what you don't know. Being ready and open to share your knowledge and prepared to learn as well - because we all have things we can learn from working with others.

Mentoring at its best is a 2-way street.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

As a mentor of an all-girls team (433), I have come to see the benefit to the girls with this arrangement. While it is clear that some girls on some teams excel in FIRST, it is clear that others are held back. Some never get involved because they do not think that they will be welcome. Some never reach to do more once on the team because there is already someone (a male) in that role, and some are actively discouraged from reaching out.

An example of the latter is a girl who was on our team several years ago. Mid-way through high school she transfered to another high school in the area and joined their robotics team. Despite her experience with our team, she was told that she could not use the power tools without supervision of the boys, could not design or drive. She was welcome to program and administrate. In my mind, that is what can happen when adolescent boys and adolescent girls mix in an area that has been historically the realm of the males. It also happens later in life, but that is another matter.

The real question for all teams out there is "How are you doing in making sure that girls have the same opportunity as the boys?" The sub-questions are "Is there equal representation amongst the membership of the team?" and "Do girls participate at equal levels in building, driving and all of the really fun parts?" If the answer to these questions is "No", then the answer to the main question is that "All-girls teams are not counterproductive". Yes, there are all-boys teams out there. There are some because they are from all-boys schools and some that just discourage girls from joining. The latter don't promote it because it only makes them look bad. The all-girls teams promote their uniqueness for several reasons. One is that they can catch the attention of other girls and show them that FIRST can be for them to. Another is to show their pride in being able to compete on an even playing field with the boys. Another is to show the boys that they can succeed. Later in life, these kids (as adults) will be making hiring decisions, and a boy who has seen the girls compete will be more open to hiring the female candidate than the one who has not, or more likely to work for that same woman.

Overall, the statistics for female participation in FIRST is poor compared to other areas of science (over 50% of medical students are female!). The rate of females in key roles on these teams is even worse. Other than the all-girls teams, does anybody know of any team where there are 2 girls as the first and second drivers? Until the perceptions of female particpation changes, this will never improve. The all-girls teams are just one way in which perceptions can be altered. What they need to be careful about is that they use their status as a way to get more girls involved (and at higher levels) and not use it as a crutch.

Our team hosted girlPOWER (an off season event) last fall and had 10 teams participate. There were a few things worth mentioning that demonstrate how powerful that was for promoting girls' involvement. One girl from a coed team showed up without a team, and joined a group of girls from other teams on the "orphan team" (another school had brought a practice robot). As lead driver, she was able to take that team far in the competition - something she may not have been able to do without this opportunity. An all-boys school team lent their robot to an all-girls school who had no team and let them compete. They are now looking into combining as a coed team or having the girls school develop an official separate team. Again, an opportunity they would never have had. Finally, there were young girls from middle schools in the region who came to the competition and saw first hand how much fun the kids were having. A few of these might end up in FIRST, but all of them saw how girls can succeed if they try.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

My question is why the teams must be separated based on gender? Lets say a school has 2 teams, one historically all-boy and the other historically all-girl. Had I gone to this school, I would have probably fit in better with the all-girl team with respect to prior technical skills. I never learned machining or welding in high school because there were other guys that already could and were eager and waiting. Had I been on a team that had forced me to(as has been suggested the advantage of an all-girls team it) I would have learned these valuable skills. I completely agree with the notion that there could be room for 2 teams in the right area. One that has prior experience and is more assertive, and others that are more passive or lack the experience. I completely reject the notion that they should be separated on gender lines alone. That is where we are having a disagreement. Historical gender lines are becoming more and more fuzzy(which is good), as these lines blur we are going to really going to need a better way of sorting then gender.

In short, I completely agree that people without experience or that are perhaps more passive can benefit from being on a team without the more outright and experienced. I just disagree that this is always as simple as girl/boy. I've known girls that in my prior example would have fit in better with the all-boy team and I personally would have fit in better with the all-girl team. The line just isn't that clear anymore.

Jason

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I know some schools have Varsity and Junior Varsity robotics teams for exactly this purpose, and that's great. All girls teams do, however, still have a place in FIRST. As Dean Kamen put it, FIRST's goal is "To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders." Take a step back for a second, and look at how that applies not only to the members of a team, but also to all those we bring in off the streets to see our competitions. How is a Girl Scout troop inspired when they see 90% boys driving, and 90% boys working in the pits? Frankly, most of them look at that and, instead of coming away inspired towards science and technology, they come away thinking there's no place for them in this male-dominated culture. Only a very small minority will decide they want to fight that culture and try to change it.

That's where an all girls team plays a pivotal role in FIRST. As a team, it sets an example for all the fans, all the randoms off the street, all the Girl Scout troops. It shows all of those girls that there is a place for them - not only that, but it shows them that girls can do it just as well as boys can.

Now, these stats are a little old (it's the best I could find on Google)... only 20% of engineering undergrads in 2004 were Women. How do we fix that? How do we get more girls interested in Engineering? You can't solve that problem by influencing the female members of your team - for most teams the male/female ratio is just as bad as that statistic. You solve it by getting more girls to join a FIRST team. You solve it by inspiring even younger girls to want to be a part of the team. You do it by providing role models for those young girls. That is perhaps the most important thing an all girls team does. Inspiring that younger generation will increase female participation in all teams across the board. The day we see equal participation between males and females both in the pits and on the field is the day we'll no longer need all girls teams.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Isn't it the whole point (of exclusive-gender teams) to get girls interested in engineering? Isn't that the whole point of the POWER camp at IUPUI that comes to IRI every year?

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I feel that our posts have been on topic, and therefore don't constitute a derail. I think a lot of people are interested in reading the back-and-forth, so I'm going to reply here.

The dictionary of experience. :p

Again, if something doesn't contribute to the oppression of a group, how can you call it "____ism"?

There are functional reasons for excluding certain people from groups that have nothing to do with actively discriminating against them. People with entry-level resumes are excluded from jobs which require extensive leadership experience. People who can't swim are excluded from lifeguarding. Non-athletic people are excluded from professional sports teams. People with low SAT scores are excluded from the Ivy League. Yet in these instances, no-one would say that actual discrimination is taking place against people with no job experience, no swimming ability, no athletic talent, or poor test-taking skills.

Likewise, excluding boys from an all-girls team is done for a practical reason: to give girls a leg up in a field which overwhelmingly favors male participation. If there were no functional need for all-girls teams (i.e. sexism against women in STEM didn't exist), then yeah -- having a gender-specific team would be sexist. But until that day comes, girls-only teams can serve an important role in bringing more women into STEM (as you can see through all of the positive testimonies here in this thread).

You said:
"I completely admit that I don't have to deal with this every day of my life as women in professional engineering do. I have however had "real-world experience trying to contend with discrimination".

...in direct response to my post about how discrimination against women in engineering firms is not always dealt with as swiftly and effectively as a lot of people think it is. I suggested that perhaps you didn't have the relevant experience with workplace discrimination to fully understand why it's still a problem (granted, I was a bit abrasive about it), and you countered with your marching band example. We were clearly talking about your perception of workplace justice. (Not to say that the things girls can experience when joining a male-dominated robotics team can't closely mirror what happens in the real world... those experiences can be just as challenging and intense.)

I do sympathize with your experiences as a male in a female-dominated environment -- guys absolutely do face a lot of unfair pressure/stereotyping about what it means to be a man. On the other hand, you have to recognize that those challenges don't really affect men on the same scale that they affect women (possibly because a lot of the male stereotypes have to do with being aggressive and assertive... i.e. taking charge and getting what you want). To use your example, I don't think the lack of male participation in marching bands is a widespread societal problem (like the lack of female participation in STEM is). Almost all women in STEM have a story they can share about their discrimination... but I doubt the same holds true for men in marching bands.

I didn't say that there weren't ANY workplaces in which the environment/colleagues were supportive of women. See the footnote on my last post. What I did say is that prejudice in the workplace DOES still present a significant barrier for women in the field. You appeared to dismiss that problem as insignificant.

Jane can speak for herself on this matter if she so chooses. I will admit that she often has a cooler head than I... if only I possessed her restraint... :p

Seriously though, I don't see why someone's frustration over a topic should invalidate their contributions to a discussion about it. Some issues will never stop making people feel frustrated, because it will always be a part of their lives. If anything, being personally affected by an issue gives you more objectivity, because you fully understand it's personal ramifications.

I did use some strong wording, and if I could have gotten my point across in a less harsh way -- I'm sorry. But I'm not sure why anything I've said would be considered unprofessional -- I haven't called anybody names, and I've backed up my arguments with clear reasoning and personal experience.

--Jaine

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

“I know some schools have Varsity and Junior Varsity robotics teams for exactly this purpose, and that's great.” If this is a proposal for an all boys/ all girls team it will result with the girls in the JV team, which is a “lesser” team. Guess which team gets the greater resources and opportunities.

Girls in the U.S. are bombarded daily on what is feminine, attractive, desirable. Watch TV programming and commercials with a critical eye. Look through a “girls” magazine and check out the ads and articles. Girls today are pressured to be skinny, wear makeup, be fashionable, be popular, take care of everyone and attract guys. Don’t really see much on using tools, being mechanically clever, increasing math skills, etc. I think we all would object to overt sexism, but it is the constant, insistent, cultural push that is inflicted on girls that is the hardest to counteract. It will take a real “change the culture” movement to modify advertising and programming in the media.

Has anyone seen a coed team that had 4females on a drive team? Have you ever seen 4 male drivers on a coed team? We may strongly object to a proposal to have a “all girls” team because it seems sexist, but don’t we, in fact, had de facto sexism which greatly favors males?

Generally, girls in the U.S. are raised differently than boys and the FIRST robotics competition inadvertently favors those brought up in the boy culture. Boys wind up on the construction and driving teams while girls are more likely involved in fund raising publicity. It is not necessarily because boys push them away, but because girls are more socially aware and are more willing to do what is best for the team. If a girl believes that a boy’s skills with tools are superior to hers, she is more likely to back off from the pit crew for the good of the team. Our culture reinforces the stereotype of boys being mechanically superior and as a result, girls usually have less experience with tools.

An all girls team is one approach to rectifying the de facto segregation of women. The best electrician is a girl, the best designer is a woman, the best pilot is a female. Also the person who breaks the most things is a female. The team clown is a girl. The girls can choose any role(s) they desire without the subtle sexist pressure that exists in a coed team.

BTW, it does not mean a school has to field a female team. Team 842 was going to go to 3 regionals and the championship but was faced with the problem with having students miss too much class time. That was the year when we decided to have only the girls go to one of the regional competitions. (read here) It was far cheaper than forming a separate team and had very positive results for the girls and the boys and the mentors. That one competition had a very positive effect. Just about all the girls wound up in engineering and are graduating with their degrees.

Anyway, we need more females in FIRST and engineering. To do so, we have to counter our national culture that persistently, subtly dissuades girls from the "manly experiences" in robotics, engineering, physical sciences, etc. An all-girls team allows girls to experience FIRST with out a lot of the inadvertent sexist baggage that can inhibit their exploring engineering.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Actually, I was thinking that there are many powerful egos in FRC. There are great mentors with powerful egos. The trick is to control them (egos) and not let the egos control the mentors.

Post 101, JesseK's, is brilliant regarding this discussion about the ego. If a mentor with an incredible sense of self and ego can help to power a team to success and achievement while in control of the ego, it can be a magnificent journey. Why do high school and college students spend so much time and energy looking at the numbers in a variety of settings but always coming down to the elite teams leading the way in those numbers? What drove those teams to garner the wins and achievements? What was the power and the motivation? In some of those cases, we'll see the very strong, very healthy egos as part of the bigger picture. And, for many teams, the mentors have learned to harness the ego and turn it into a source of positive energy and inspiration. That is where a team that has access to this energy can have a lot going for it in ways that can be talked for years to come.

I'd also like to talk about the wisdom in post 100. This mentor, George Kantor, is helping the team explore their sense of self and to develop their ego and, in some ways, he is as surprised as anyone as to how amazing the discoveries are.

Fantastic posts by these two awesome mentors and what I'm actually talking about regarding the ego.

--
Jaine - I'm just now reading about my suggestion to think a while before posting that was made by Jason. I may send you guys a pm later after I've had some time to think about what I want to say. It's no biggie, it's just that I know both of you and I also know that historically, each of you loves an excellent and sometimes, heated discussion.

Jane

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

George, what you are doing, teaching, and encouraging your students to do is fantastic. I have been involved in FIRST for the last 16 years of my life. It has only been in the past few years (ok maybe 8 or 9) that our team has been able to develop into a culture in which both guys and girls are working along side one another to create this great sense of knowledge and environment that you are talking about.

Your encouragement to girls and women to doing nothing but to strive an excel in what can still be considered a man's world is fantastic. You are an outstanding mentor and if you are in St. Louis, I would love to stop by and just say hello. Thank you for taking the time to teach these girls to follow their passions and thank you for showing them not to be afraid to "get in there" and take charge.

For my team personally, we are an even split, just about, of guys and girls. I believe the ratio is something like 14 girls to 16 guys. We also have a group of 5 officers that are the President, VP of Marketing, VP of Manufacturing, Secretary, and Treasurer. Three of these positions held are female and two are male. I am so proud of my students for the work they produce and the students that they are and will become.

Cass

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

X-ism does not mean oppressing based on X. It merely means making a distinction based on X. It isn't automatically a negative thing.

What you've described here is exactly discrimination. You seem to be treating the word as if it is describing something unfair, and that's not what it means. It just means taking that attribute into account when deciding how to treat someone. Discrimination based on things other than ability or performance is often (not always) unfair, but discrimination based on how well one can do the job is perfectly appropriate.

I'm afraid that the mismatch between your personal definitions and the customary and "correct" definition is going to mess up most discussions you want to have on the topic, and that's a shame. People probably would agree with you wholeheartedly if you could find common vocabulary.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

of my 3 years on a team i remember that on my first year there were 8 that i can remember that worked directly with the robot (7 on build 1 programmer). 4 of them (1 programmer and 2 end effector and 1 mobility captain) where on pit that year.

the following year we lost 3, 2 due to graduation 1 (who was team captain until that point) for personal reasons, but gained 2 more (1 worked hardware the other chose to work chairmans but still would help with build when she was free) leaving us with 7. that year 5 (1 mobility, 1 hardware, 3 end effector) of them were on pit.

my senor year on the team our only senior on build graduated the year before leaving us down 1 girl, but there was also 1 freshman girl that joined hardware that year bringing us again back to 6 (out of the 11 seniors on the team that year 5 of them were women). that year one of our build captain was a girl and there were 3-4 on pit (, 1 hardware, 2-3 end effector)

none were on flight for my three years on the team but of the 11 women I saw 5 of them take leadership rolls in out team
of the 10 that have already graduated
3-Virgina Tech (2 I know are studying engineering)
1-GMU( believe she is studying engineering)
1-JMU (not engineering)
1-CNU (politics)
1-WVU (music education)
1-RPI (mechanical engineering)
1-VCU*full ride* (chemical engineering)
1- unknown (programmer from my first year)

this year I know that both of our drivers and our human player are girls 2 of them are rookies

that is just our FRC build team our animation team this year was run by a girl who has been a predominant animator all three years she has been on the team and at the beginning of this year was the only nomination for team captain but refused so she could stay focussed on the teams animation. she was granted with the Dean's list award this year at the DC regional and next year will be studying chemistry at Cornell University

you would have to ask them how there experiences with FIRST and our team affected them

I'll leave you to determine if our team is a positive environment for women to try there hand in the STEM fields if you don't feel so then please speak up, I'm sure any suggestions you have would have the potential to benefit everybody. but try to be progressive

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Please re-read my post and the post I was replying to - that wasn't what I was suggesting at all. The post I was replying to was suggesting that, rather than having an all girls team and an all boys team, there should be a team for those with experience and dedication, and a team for those just getting started. That's the role Varsity and JV teams fill for those schools fortunate enough to have the interest and funding for two teams. The JV team acts as a learning area, a chance for new students to gain skills. The Varsity team assumes students already are knowledgeable and have the skills needed to succeed. That part of my statement wasn't about boys versus girls - It's about how schools and teams can create an atmosphere of learning and appropriately bring all students up to speed.

I thought I had clearly separated that portion from the concept of what all girls teams bring to the table. It wasn't about putting the all girls team on the backburner as a JV team - it's about bringing them into the spotlight. Ask anyone in Minnesota about the Robettes, and there's two things you'll hear: They're an all girls team, and they have consistently built great robots that have earned them finalist medals every year at 10,000 Lakes. We aren't a secondary team. We aren't a JV where you can shove girls who don't know how to use power tools. We're one of the premier teams in Minnesota and proof that, in this arena, girls can do just as well as boys.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

When this thread was first posted it made me think about how I had thought about and described the Robettes to others, something I had never really paid attention to. I was glad to find out that I was thinking of and describing them as a great FRC team that happened to be all girls and not an all girls team that managed to be successful at FRC.

I would go as far as to suggest that 2177 has been the best team in Minnesota, robot wise, over the last 5 years (as a whole, not each year individually).

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I feel that most people attach some kind of negativity to the words "discrimination" and "sexism"... but I suppose not everyone will. When the claim was made that all-girls teams were "sexist" to men, I assumed the "sexism" was being considered unfair... otherwise why bring it up? You seem to want to remove the negative connotation from those words -- and that's fine if you want to define it that way for yourself. Just keep in mind that when I used those words, I meant for them to retain that connotation. My main point was simply to say that not ALL exclusion enforces cultural hegemony (is that a good enough word?).

So, to clarify: when I talk about sexism and discrimination, I'm referring to acts which contribute to a society-wide culture of oppression. Using my definition, is it sexist to exclude men from using the women's bathroom? Most people would probably say no because it serves a practical need for privacy. Is it sexist to exclude men from women's sports teams? Most people would probably say no, because the purpose is to make sure that the players have similar physiques/ability levels. Is it sexist to run an all-girls FIRST team? No it's not, because all-girls teams also serve a practical purpose -- to combat the problem of female underrepresentation in STEM fields. These restrictions aren't sexist to men, because men already have their own bathrooms and sports teams and (over)representation in STEM. The above examples exist not as manifestations of women wielding cultural advantage over men, but as practical solutions to problems.

--Jaine

ETA: I have gotten some feedback that this reply was too harsh-sounding. I really didn't intend for it to come across that way, I only meant to clarify what I meant to you and others. If I have sounded abrasive in some of my posts, I apologize; it's hard not to get defensive when it seems as if my experiences are being minimized and dismissed.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

We've fielded a 4-girl drive team on occasion (and have done 3-1 or 2-2 for 3+ years). I remember an once MC pointed out that our entire alliance had only girls behind the glass. Every other match I saw that day: all guys.

I can definitely see the benefit of all-girls teams. I'm not convinced there aren't any significant losses, but I know I was one of those rookies who didn't really get taught anything her first season. I just sort of stumbled around with ratchets and sockets in my pocket too intimidated to ask the difference and/or unable to find someone who appeared patient enough.
This wasn't a girl thing on the team's side: we've always--though not intentionally--had at least one female captain (including me) and usually have a near-even split in mechanical. (Then again, that captain was basically the only one who was really patient with me at the beginning.) But on my side, yeah, I was intimidated.

I got over it eventually, but I still see girls suffer through it every day in college. Incidentally, the alumnae from our team tend to hold their own very well in college engineering. I don't know if this is solely because it changes us fundamentally or because coed teams (especially without structured rookie training) just self-select girls who will. It's probably a little of both, but I do know that I wouldn't be the person I am today without that experience.

This is an interesting concept. I'm not sure what I think of it. Would it have been a whole lot easier as a rookie to have someone actually teach me what the heck a nylock nut was, or give me feedback on how I was doing? Oh yeah, and I've worked on that as a mentor. But would I have wanted to work with just new students? Probably not. I feel like it would have taken a lot of the inspiration out of it. Maybe this is just based on my FIRST experience (characterized by not being directly "taught" much of anything, from welding and design to tax forms and project management), but I liked learning by watching/working with veteran members and mentors.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I loved reading these comments.

My research colleague, mentor and friend retired from Lockheed-Martin (LM) a couple of years ago after almost forty years as a practicing engineer. After graduating with a doctorate in chemistry from Carnegie Mellon in the 1960s she was unable to find a job. After a long and fruitless search she went on to do her post-doctorate work at Harvard really out of frustration. She finally was able to find a job at IBM where it turned out that her work in theoretical chemistry could be applied to very early ballistic missile defense systems and she eventually migrated to the field of anti-submarine warfare localization and tracking. Over the years I have been blessed to learn amazing things from her. Her first-hand stories of prejudice and gender bias in the workplace were quite eye opening for me as a young engineer and ones that should never have to be relived.

Being a father of a twelve year old girl, I'd like to think that things are significantly different now (and in many ways they are); however, when I look at my department (which specializes in the development of acoustics, sonar signal processing, detection, estimation and tracking algorithms) today we only have 2 female engineers out of 16 (12.5%). Looking across my entire second line systems engineering organization, I see 23 female engineers out of 106 (22.7%) which is a little bit better but nothing to write home about. And when I look at recent and current LM fellows (which are the top 1% of LM engineers), I see that about 1.5% of them are female. While we may be making inroads, they are certainly slow coming in the most complex fields and particularly at the pinnacle of technical engineering.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

A mentor sent this thread my way and said I might want to weigh in, so here I am (I know, I know, I haven't been on this forum in quite some time).

While I would certainly never agree with telling a team how to run itself, I think a very important point to bring up is that when you purposefully separate by gender, you MAKE gender into an issue. Hear me out.

I'm not saying there aren't gender gaps in the world anymore. As a senior studying engineering at MIT, I can fully attest that girls have to work harder to earn the respect of their peers, even the other female ones. In many cases, especially the other females. I love working in the machine shop in my lab, and it took me at least a year to earn the respect of the shop guys. But now they give me free range and all is well. It takes extra work, but the end result is worth it. Besides, complaining about it isn't going to make anything better, anyway.

See, if you constantly run around talking big about how you're a "female in engineering" or an "all girls robotics team," you're making your gender a major part of your identity. My gender is a part of who I am as a person (see my love of miniskirts and Victoria's Secret), but it is not a relevant part of my professional life. If I were to make it part of that, I would be opening myself up to being judged based on my gender.

An all-girls robotics team that uses that label to define themselves invites themselves to be the point of judgment for all robotics teams. This means whenever they do poorly, that all-girls stamp will do poorly as well. When they do well, that stamp just adds to a thought of "look, they did well, and they even overcame that obstacle." It's a way of thinking that we aren't going to outgrow as a people anytime soon.

But if we do want to outgrow it, we need to stop labeling ourselves so strongly. Stop throwing those stamps in people's faces. When I was a member of 433 (a team from an all-girls high school in the Philadelphia area), my theory on the matter was always something along the lines of "Oh, we're all girls? What an odd thing for you to notice."

Refusing to make it a big deal is really the only way we'll ever outgrow this.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

This corresponds with my own experience. I joined the team to build. I was encouraged to join the team by a middle school (male) tech teacher who helped me design and build my own hoverboard as an independent project.

However, between the fact that there were a large number of freshmen, young and inexperienced leadership, and a sudden gap in parent support as many of the most dedicated left with their graduating students within about 2 years, there was a gap. The gap namely being the entire side the team's existence that wasn't the robot.

No one else was volunteering, so I did. And that's what I did my entire time on the team. I have never contributed to any part that ever made it on to our robot - which was my entire reason for joining the team. I remember a crushing moment in freshman year after competition season, when the robot was sitting in my tech class and I realized I had not touched a single part on the robot, and I had learned absolutely nothing about building, designing, or anything else that goes into making a robot.

I have had bitter outbursts about my lack of a technical experience on the team to my friends, but I believed (and still do) in the mission of FIRST and in spreading it, so I organized the demos, and wrote the Chairman's, and ran recruitment, and did outreach to elementary schools willingly because no one else was going to do it and it needed to get done. I don't regret doing any of this, but now being at college with so many other FIRST alumni and they'll talk gear ratios and transmissions and other things and they go right over my head. I feel like I'm playing catch-up in my engineering classes. They'll shy away too when I mention what I did on my team. They'll be like "Oh, that's.... nice..." and then leave as fast it's polite to, as if I am not a "real" FIRST student.

I remember one incident my freshman year, I was helping to make a prototype with a mentor (just cutting and drilling some wood someone else had pre-marked). An older boy came and started helping us, and started slowly taking over my jobs, and relegating me to holding boards as he drilled and such. Eventually I was left watching. And then I was ordered to go somewhere else and find something else to do. The mentor was right there the whole time.

I agree, all-girl FIRST teams could prove extraordinarily beneficial to their members. In FIRST there is no way to dumb down the rules and the challenges, like what has happened as our district's all-girl technology classes. But I agree too that making a huge issue of girl vs. boy may only serve to perpetuate the inequalities. There's not really a right answer.

Really, all I want to say, is for all the mentors: do not ever let another student push someone away who is trying to learn. I'm sure 99.99% of you don't. But it happens. And the only way to fix it is to make people aware.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I think that each team serves to a certain area or group. i.e. My school serves to Mira Costa and Redondo Union High Schools. However, we do have a couple of home-schooled kids as well as another boy from a neighboring school. The all boy or all girl teams usually serve to the scout scout troop, or the single sex school. I know that Loyola(all male) and Marlborough(all female) got together to make one team. So really, they aren't doing anything wrong. They built a team in a certain environment and that is who the team is serving.

(sorry if it didn't make any sense. I'm not the most eloquent writer)

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I'm currently on an all girls rookie team called the Girls of Steel. We come from eleven different schools, and we're not from any organization like Girl Scouts or anything like that. We're simply a bunch of girls from a 400 square mile area around Pittsburgh that wanted to get involved in science and technology, and none of our schools had FIRST FRC teams. Most of us really didn’t know each other before we started the team in October, but now we are cohesive team, all friends. :) We also now know how to work all of the machine shop tools, design and build new parts, and how to use CAD to pre-prototype the parts we want.

So far this year, we've made it into the Pittsburgh Regional elimination rounds, won Rookie All Star in Pittsburgh, and then went on to win Rookie All-Star in D.C. as well. We're going to St. Louis in April (can't wait to see all the awesome teams there!)

We've also received some flack because we don't allow guys on our team. People have told us that by being an all girls team, we're discriminating against guys. But within a 10 minute radius of where our team meets, there are about 3 others teams that accept guys -- and one that only accepts guys (all-guy catholic high school). So it's not like because we don't have guys on our team, there aren't any options for guys to become involved in FIRST.

We've also been told that we're not getting "real world" experiences. And I wholeheartedly agree—we're not getting “real world” experiences. And that’s the way we want it to be!

We don't want to follow the "real" world model, where women make 77 cents to every dollar a guy earns. We don't want to mimic a world where the science and technology fields are populated by a large majority of male workers and women have to fight to be heard. We want to create a new "real world" and we want to change how the world views females in science in technology.

We also want to support and encourage more girls to get interested in these fields through opportunities like FRC, FTC, FLL, and other programs. By giving anyone (guy or girl!) the chance to feel valued in these groups, all FIRST participants will be more likely to be more interested in science and technology. Because there are so many all guy or mostly guy teams already, we want to create an environment where the girls can explore science and technology without competing with the guys to be heard so that when we get to college and our careers we will have the confidence to succeed and level the playing field.

Most of our mentors are guys, and we work with a lot of other co-ed and guy teams as well. We are proud to provide a different opportunity for high school girls in the Pittsburgh area and look forward to the opportunity to share our team’s story and the principles of FIRST to inspire many others—both girls and boys of all ages. :D

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Wow - what a thread! This is an excellent discussion. It is impressive to see the passion and conviction of opinions, along with the thoughtfulness of making clear points while also being open to others' opinions.

This topic resonates well with me, as I have seriously considered starting an all-girls FRC team in the Kokomo area during the past year. We have discussed this with many people, receiving many opinions from many friends, including influential women in FIRST. To my amazement, we received opinions from women which were both supportive AND non-supportive to an all-girls team.

Before I describe who was most influential to me during this process, I will give you some background:

My wife and I have three daughters, and the oldest will be a freshman next year at a high school which does not have an FRC team. Graciously, the TechnoKats (45) have invited her to be a member of the team. At the same time, we have also met with the Superintendent and Principal of her school (Northwestern High School in Indiana), and they have agreed to start a new FRC team. As a family, we have decided that the best thing for us to do is start this new team at NHS. I will still have close ties to team 45, but next year my focus will be as a mentor on this Rookie FRC team. This team will be a girls and boys team, with much emphasis on making sure that the team's culture allows for girls to have equal chances that guys have within the team.

So, back to the idea of starting an all-girls team: as I mentioned, we talked to many women in FIRST about this. However, there was one person who influenced me the most in making sure that girls should be welcomed and supported equally on a mixed gender team instead of purposely segregated from the boys. This person is one of the "rock stars" in FIRST: Kate Pilotte. Kate grew up with a house full of boys, and was successful as an engineering graduate of WPI. She even got to yell at guys at WPI as a coxswain (I think that's the term) on the rowing team. Now, she is in charge of the FRC Kit of Parts as a FIRST engineer. She serves as an FTA for many events, and has seen many all-girl teams in FIRST. If you can get her to talk about this, she definitely has some opinions. Her point is that girls should be supported and integrated with boys so that they can learn to work together, productively, at an early age.

Kate's opinion further opened my eyes to this issue, and I am pledging to continue to support a culture within FIRST that supports female involvement.

Thank you, Kate.

Sincerely,
Andy Baker

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

One of my personal rock stars.
Abbie Roth. She is featured in the very first segment of the Chesapeake shout out video: http://www.youtube.com/user/Maryland.../2/paCYkuoPDHE

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I'm a firm believer in FRC teams that are multi-gender. One of the main reasons being that all guy (or girl) teams are missing huge parts of what makes a FRC team different then any other high school team.

All guy teams miss out on the calming, soothing effects that girls bring to a team. And lets face it guys, Most of us wouldn't want to be in the business group or spending 4 hours a day making buttons (which mainly girls do on our team). Our team wouldn't be able to survive without one of our female members, who runs the meeting 75% of the time, and gives 105% to our team.

But then there is the other side to it. All female teams miss out on the egocentric guys who really push that robot to the max. See, this is what happens during our design stage. 2 guys end up having different ideas (say a telescopic arm or a 3 stage arm like the one 68 has right now), and both of them want the team to use their idea. So what ends up happening is the 2 males go home and spend all night doing math and making a prototype. The next day they come in and we spend the day figuring out which is right. You see, if it wasn't for their egos we would never have prototypes done so fast.

So no matter which way you turn it around, The true thing that seperates FIRST from other high school teams is the chance to do something you love, while at the same time spending time with the opposite gender. Besides, I swear our girls do a good job at humanizing our more "serious" teammates.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I really hate to say it, Joseph, because I agree with th co-ed teams (something I realize puts me in a minority), but I have to disagree with your reasoning. It sounds a bit like you're continuing to put people into boxes and follow stereotypes, even if the ones you're portraying are positive. I'm sure it's not what you meant, but the end of your first paragraph, and second in particular seem to imply that women "are more useful" on the business side of things, while guys are inherently more useful building and prototyping. That, in particular, is what a lot of the all-female teams are created to combat.

In my personal opinion, all-girl teams are somewhat counter-productive towards the goals of FIRST, but like others, I can see how they are fairly necessary. In a perfect world, everyone would work together perfectly, and there would be no sexism, de-facto or otherwise. That's not the case, though. A lot of people, mostly unconsciously, lump people into one group or another, and gender is one of the easiest and most obvious ways of characterizing a person. Give it time, and wait until STEM has a 50/50 -- or even 60/40 split (who knows, maybe women and men are mentally "wired" differently...), and then I think that's the time that they should fade out.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Hey now, some of our greatest button makers have been the boys! It's not just a job for the girls.

Why do we classify jobs like this to different genders? Would you then say that the PR/Marketing department is just for girls and that the boys are the only ones that are allowed to build the robot and be in the shop? One of our greatest PR/Marketing leaders was a guy, who has been very VERY successful in this field, he will be graduating at the top of his class in college, and has taken what he learned as our teams leader and applied that to the concept of being the student body president in college. He was a phenomenal leader to our team. As well, we have had outstanding females that worked down in the manufacturing department that could "show the boys up" in that field as well. No department or job on any team should be boy or girl designated.

Cass

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

April fools!?

You wouldn't last two seconds on my team.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Joseph, come find me sometime tomorrow morning. I have some people you should meet. (I'm serious)

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Haha... you've never been in a design debate with me... I don't back down until you prove me wrong, and I have some very very strong (and well founded) design opinions.

Trust me, there are girls with "egos" as well. There are girls with very strong opinions. And jeez... try putting a whole ton of girls in a room together... you DEFINITELY get some opinions then! I don't think having an all girls team will stop this dynamic. In fact I would argue its one of the few places you will see girls push the limits, when they don't have to "worry" about what guys think of their ideas, or of a "guy" coming up with a better idea.

I will admit that through this discussion, I have realized that it is very true that in general (not always), women/girls will decide to do what is "needed" on the team... not necessarily what they really "want" to do. If there is a job that needs doing, even if its not as exciting, the women/girls will make sure it gets done. The men in general (again not always) tend to gravitate towards what they WANT to do... the tech-e type stuff... the design/build. These are of course very general statements, not true for every person in each gender, but I think it does explain why we often hear people assume that girls are "better at buttons, PR, etc..." and the boys "are better at design & build".

But I'm back to the point of "to each their own". I don't advocate that every girl in FIRST should be on an all girls team. Nor do I advocate that we deny these "exclusive" teams access to the competition. There is a place for all of them, and good reasons for all of them. As long as we are working on getting girls more involved in the technical side of things, I think we are on the right path.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Quite true!

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Go 1868!

Girl Scouts tearing it up at SVR :)!

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Exactly. I've seen the Firebirds in action for a number of years. Top notch engineering, amazing sponsors, roboteers that work their fingers off, drivers that drive the wheels off the robot. They have been a "point to them" team for me for my VEX girls teams.

While they are an all girl team, they are the Firebirds, feared and loved on the East Coast.

Cool, Andy at the helm of a new mixed team, again for the right reasons for them. (Maybe they can get FIRST to assign them team number 4500, I think it's up soon.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

One of the things I love about FRC is that teams have the freedom to be run they way the team wants to be run. Teams frequently choose some direction that will both help and hinder them in some aspect. The all boy/girl teams are one of these choices. Having a single sex team has benefits, but it is also unrealistic for the working world (other than some very specific instances). I think you can make a comparison to a team deciding to CNC EVERY part versus a team that decides to HAND CRAFT every part. You will learn very different skill sets from both of those choices. Both skill sets are valuable, and both will allow you to be better and gain additional depth in the particular area. This depth though comes at a cost of breadth.

All girls teams (by choice) are a tool that can be used to promote involvement, just like FRC is a tool to promote STEM involvement. FRC takes the most fun and exciting elements of a technical career and lumps it into a fun competition.
Why remove the option of a tool? That would be as ridiculous as not allowing a perfectly good (an readily available) switch to be used in a minibot.
All "anything" (girl/boy/CNC/Hand Crafted/Plastic/Wood/...) teams should have an open discussion that their decision to go that direction will likely have some detractors, and they should be aware of the PROs/CONs of their choice.

********Women Rockstars************************
I am a bit surprised no one has mentioned Kyle Hughes in this thread. She is the team lead for 27 and a WFA winner. She has also been included in Kickoff videos and panels.
Kyle is definitely one of the "Rockstars" of FRC. http://www.teamrush27.net/whoweare/mentors.html

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I think the first part of this, the part about girls ending up being part of publicity is exactly right. While this weekend was my first ever competition I saw almost immediately that almost all of the scouts and mascots were female. I'm not saying there were no male mascots or scouts, I'm just saying that many of the scouts and mascots I saw were female.

As to the comment about girls believing that a boy's skills are superior that is exactly why my team is an all-girls team. The goal isn't to discriminate but to teach girls what they are capable of. The goal of FIRST is to convince kids that the STEM technologies are within reach and to inspire kids to find careers in those fields but unfortunately girls are still left wondering if there is really a place for them.

While I understand that these stereotypes are being shattered daily they still exist in many places. In my own experience my all boys robotics class (in school and separate from my team) has generally acted as if I am inferior despite my higher grade and experience level. My ideas are tested last, wrenches are taken from my grasp, and I have been informed-- in an way that may be interpreted as joking or serious depending on the student-- that I am a woman and therefore cannot drive. Having an all-girl's team makes those kind of actions obsolete. Instead girls are encouraged in all of their ideas and all of their actions.

Finally an all-girl's team caters to the girl. My team feels like more than a family. We have had some serious issues that have been worked out without the help of a mentor. Some of us have gone to each other when support couldn't be found in their own households. I don't have the experience to say if this isn't true in a coed team but I know that having such a tight bond has made me a happier person and raised doubts over whether I would want to switch to a coed team.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I think you would find that on a co-ed team that has developed with integrity, kindness, and a focus on building a strong team. Not all teams have that intent or focus, whether they are co-ed or not, and it is their loss if they don't.

Perhaps the discussion really is centered about the maturity of a team and its ability to recognize the importance and value of teamwork and the opportunity to introduce all of the students and mentors to the importance of all of the aspects of the competition - none of which are gender specific.

I spoke with one of our mentors on the team about this thread. Her reaction was that this lack of women in engineering, sciences, and technological fields is all generational. Ms. Earnhart thinks that the experiences that she has had are vastly different than the experiences of my (and her mother's) generation. Doors have opened that were once closed and the windows of opportunity are clearly there. She also said something very interesting regarding the role models/egos part of this discussion. Earnhart looked around her as a child and realized that her role models were male - so she fashioned herself after those role models, using their attributes and strengths to help turn her dreams into reality, not letting the lack of female role models deter her in reaching for and obtaining her goals. Bill Nye the Science Guy was recognized for his knowledge and what he could teach her. I thought her insight and perspective was very interesting and I'm looking forward to having more discussions with her.

Jane

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Exclusive teams should not be allowed in anything, let alone FIRST, it is counter productive to society. Everyday people must work with others that are different genders, races and so on. Creating exclusive groups makes it harder for the people included in the groups to work in a diverse group. on top of that you are promoting the belief that different groups of humans should be separated from each other.

lastly you have the issue of double standards. If a team that was exclusively for boys was created, it would be called gender discrimination. Where as an exclusively girls team is called inspirational for doing the same thing.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

What you say is definitely true, but I don't think it is something FIRST should try to govern. Once FIRST begins to govern teams it is a very slippery path. "The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

I would prefer FIRST to remain separate from the politics of individual teams. Once a few bylaws are created, more are certain to come. The beautiful thing about FIRST is that it can be whatever you want it to be. Introduce bylaws for teams, and this will change very quickly.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I have to say I'm really impressed by the discussion going on in this thread. It's hard for me to find something to say that hasn't already been said - but I'll do my best.

I'm a proud alumna of two teams - one all-girl, and one coed. (Made possible by doing FTC and FRC concurrently for three years - FTC #25 is a Girl Scout team with mostly female mentors and FRC #2429 was run by my high school.)

The biggest difference between the two teams was probably how they treated new students. The girl scout team made sure everyone had an equal opportunity to learn, ask questions, and participate. In contrast, on my high school team you had to be pretty assertive to ever do anything. We also never had more than four girls on the team (out of ~20 or so members), most of whom had very little previous experience with anything technical. It was really hard to speak up, and even harder to be taken seriously.

Being on an all-girls team did wonderful things for my confidence and inspired me to become an engineer. I honestly can't say things would be the same if I'd only joined the coed team. Without all-girl teams, how many people like me would miss out?

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

By the way, what is your answer to OP's question:
Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

My answer is: absolutely not.

There is a word that I value and place great emphasis on when mentoring teams and individuals: freedom. We have the freedom to develop as teams and as individuals. We have the freedom to grow. We have the freedom to mature into creative forces of genius, innovative, problem-solving, and dynamic influence that changes our world in small and large ways - for the better. If we remove the freedom and create cookie cutter molds that set very rigid boundaries and create monotonous patterns/designs - then we are being counterproductive - in my opinion. Let's allow the freedom to grow and develop to be encouraged. Let's see what the next 20 years brings.

My hope is that the alumni take what they've learned, nurtured by the philosophy, and inject it into the status quo - in their careers, their educational experiences, their management styles, their small and large businesses/corporations, their professional lifestyles. This would include opportunity for everyone to achieve and be successful, conducting business through the wisdom and merit of Gracious Professionalism and integrity.

Jane

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I cannot disagree with you, FIRST teams have a lot of liberty and that is a wonderful thing, however an exclusive team is counterproductive, and should be discouraged.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

...based on what evidence?

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I, for one, think that all-girls exclusive teams are out to prove that just because there are no guys on the team, doesn't mean that they aren't capable of making a good robot or do anything special. Look at one of our partners for winning the west GTR, the "Where's Waldo" team 1547. They are all-girls. As for any other exclusive teams, they might be doing the same.

This is only an opinion.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

And also, the team that was all girls from 1547 are from Whitby, Ontario, which their school has another team that is both male and female egibile. This further reinforces that they are trying to tell people that girls can do the same as guys.

I'm not a feminist, just a guy that is trying to tell people what some people believe what they think is right.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Also remember that when FIRST discourages or encourages something it is almost always viewed as FIRST law. I think this is why FIRST has been very particular on what is suggests is proper for FIRST teams. Anti-GP is the only thing I can think of that has been discouraged. By discouraging exclusive teams, you would essentially put anti-gp and exclusive teams on the same level. In FIRST you don't need a mandate for something to be viewed as law. Where there is a clear and blatant divide in the polls, meaning neither side is right, I think that the best thing FIRST can do is do nothing. I hope FIRST continues to stay away from an inter-organization political agenda.

I don't think the bigger issue is the rightness or wrongness of exclusive teams, but rather or not we want FIRST to begin ruling on what is and isn't ethical. We don't need parties in FIRST, they already make enough of a mess in the US.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

The goal of FIRST is to inspire innovation, and teach students how to work in todays rapidly growing society. Exclusive teams only let people work with others of the same demographic, meaning they will not have to try as hard to learn to work with others that they may disagree with. which is not only counterproductive to the FIRST philosophy but to society in general.

Also Lineskier, you have a very good point. Many people do follow the FIRST guidelines as if they were law. I suppose I would like to see FIRST support social integration, but I can also see such a stance from FIRST causing many exclusive teams to disband which would be in itself counterproductive to the FIRST philosophy. I suppose that it is one of those lose-lose options.

Over all, as much as I support social integration, I support learning and intelligence more. I could not bare to see teams break up if FIRST started discouraging exclusive teams.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

You know, I really don't think it's FIRST's responsibility to make FRC teams look just like "the real world." Think about your co-ed team. It is made up of people in a specific school district, right? Chances are most of you are the same ethnicity, or the same socio-economic demographic, or all immigrants from the same country, or the same in any other number of characteristics. That's not always the case, true, but because schools are built around neighborhoods and neighborhoods tend to attract similar types of people, there's a really good chance your team doesn't look at all like "the real world."

FIRST as a program is designed to encourage and inspire students in a controlled environment. The problem they set out for you to tackle is achievable -- challenging, but achievable. Everyone is working with your best interest in mind. Everyone is trying hard to help you succeed and learn as much as you can. I can assure you that does not in any way resemble the real world of engineering. FIRST is structured to make it comfortable and easy for you to learn what you need to learn so that you are inspired to go tackle it in the unstructured, un-cushioned, much more intimidating "real world."

So while I appreciate the concern in this thread from all the men who are worried that women on all-girls teams will enter the engineering world as wilting flowers unable to suddenly deal with a co-ed environment, I don't think they have any more problem than you do going into college coursework with people richer than you who have had way more opportunities (and possibly more education), people poorer than you who haven't had the privileges and opportunities you have, people from different ethnic backgrounds and even different countries -- the list goes on. All an all-girls team does is offer female students who might otherwise be intimidated enough to be discouraged from STEM fields a chance to try something out in what feels like a safer, more supportive environment, to have a chance to build their confidence and emerge from the program willing and able to handle anything the "real world" can throw at them.

There are plenty of women in this thread who've said their co-ed team experiences made them the successful engineers they are today. There are plenty who have said the same thing about their all-girls team experience. There is no single answer. But I think it is clear that all-girls teams do play an important role in helping FIRST achieve their goals.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

You've said A & B, but haven't linked them. This still doesn't provide evidence even implying that FIRST wants teams to learn to work with a diverse group of people. It's not in FIRST's mission at all.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Agreed, I don't see it in here:

Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership. (http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/content.aspx?id=34)

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

My mistake, I suppose I should judge the mission off of the mission statement, and not what I remember Dean saying at the kickoffs I have attended.

However a part of the mission statement is "foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership." Firstly the word 'including' implies that those three skill are not all FIRST wants to encourage, but rather any skill that will give a FIRST student a heads up in the real world. Secondly, students who come from a diverse team(however rare) will tend to have better communication skills,because good communication skills are needed to work in any group, and better communication tend to be needed to work in a group of people who simply don't think alike.

That being said I still do feel that Exclusive teams are counterproductive to the FIRST mission. However as I said before discouraging the existence of such teams would take away the chance for students to learn all of other valuable skills they would learn on their team. So I feel it would be more counterproductive to FIRST to discourage the existence of exclusive teams.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

If you can find the transcript of where Dean has said that exclusive or all-girls teams are wrong, I'd be interested to re-read it. I've listened intently to every one of Dean's speeches for 16 years, and I never heard anything discouraging exclusive or all girls teams. I remember him saying at champs (maybe 2 years ago) teams without mentors are missing out... but I never remember anything about exclusive teams.

To a point made earlier... there ARE all male teams. And just like all female teams, often the reason is because of school. An all boys catholic school simply isnt going to permit girls on the team. Just like an all girls school won't have boys on the team.

I met such an all girls team this weekend at the CT regional. I spoke with their three seniors at the alumni networking luncheon. They were from an all girls school in NYC. One of the girls was going to attend Harvey Mudd in the fall. My jaw dropped when I heard that. It was my dream school... they accept 1400 out of 14,000 applicants and in 4 years you get something like 4 engineering degrees. Anyways, this quiet girl from an all girls FIRST team was going there. Her two friends were both more artsy and very likely never would have touched anything science or techy if it weren't for the FIRST team. They were exposed to something they never would have tried, and very likely they wouldnt have touched the robot had it been a co-ed team. But because it was all girls, and they had only 3 seniors, they were all very involved. I was impressed, and convinced that any style of FIRST team can do wonders for its students.

And Im not sure where you get this, the Trafalgar Castle School is an all girls school. If you are talking about 1075 (Sinclair Secondary School - a different school), I don't believe the two are affiliated, just both happen to be listed from Whitby ON (though I could be wrong). I doubt these teams were created to offset eachother, I believe they are just a result of the makeup of the schools they are centered in.

For those of you "against" all girls teams... I would highly suggest you go talk with some of these girls that are on these teams. Contrast that with some of the girls on your own team or other teams, and you might see the value that both types of teams provide.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Firstly, I personally disagree with all exclusive teams, not just all girls teams, as they are no worse that a team that is all boys.

Secondly, I never said that Dean said All Girls teams are bad, but rather that I seem to remember that he has said FIRST is to inspire innovation in youth, and teach people how to work in todays growing diverse society. Excluding people of a different demographic creates less chance for major disagreements, and less opportunity to learn how to deal with such situations.

I also understand that many all boys, or all girls teams are started at a school where it is all boys or all girls. However I also disagree with all boys or all girls schools regardless of their involvement in FIRST.

I have said multiple times now, that I understand why FIRST should not discourage exclusive teams. If FIRST begins to discourage such teams then people involved on those teams will lose the chance to learn all of the other important skills they could have gained.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Clearly you've never worked with an all girls team :) Our team has had some major disagreements over the past 5 years, and the students have learned a lot from them. The biggest was probably after kickoff in 2008 - the team was completely split 50/50 on what direction to go, and it was a huge, emotional discussion. We helped them learn, however, that there was a middle ground. That they could work towards a compromise that would make everyone happy and we ended up with a great robot that year.

You don't avoid any disagreements by being in an all girls or all boys team. Working with my team, I've come to see that it really doesn't matter what the make up of the team is - same gender, mixed gender, same ethnicity, mixed ethnicity, whatever. In the end, it's all about the engineering process. Sex and ethnicity of your coworkers simply doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what they are capable of doing, and you judge that on an individual basis. If you are finding major disagreements arising from working with a mixed group, then your group really isn't getting it. They aren't focused on the important aspects of FIRST.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

You are correct... I find that tends to be true for all male students. :p However, I will admit that I have never worked with an all boys team either.

I understand what you are saying, It is true that anytime you get 2 or more people working together their is potential for a conflict. I suppose that while you may have more conflict and learning experience in a more diverse team, there is still plenty to disagree about and plenty of chances to learn how to deal with such situations.

however, I still do not completely support exclusive teams. As, the people being excluded are missing out on the learning experience simply because of their demographic. So I would like to ask, is it common for exclusive teams to help mentor, ore even start co-ed teams?

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Lledargo - our team has mentored a few co-ed teams, most notably the Firebears from Roseville HS. In addition to providing any help their rookie year, we've coordinated with them on scouting and had them in to our build space when some of our equipment was useful for them. This year, we even shared a bus with them when heading up to the Lake Superior Regional.

In addition, it's important to keep in mind that most teams are, to some degree, excluding people. Every school team naturally excludes people who don't go to their school, denying any home-schooled children in their district a chance to participate. Likewise, the Robettes, coming from Convent of the Visitation HS (an all-girls catholic school), only accept students from their school. Their "brother school", St. Thomas, has a separate EV car team, but has thus far decided not to be involved in FIRST, preferring to focus on what is already offered.

The fact that the Robettes are an all girls team really doesn't affect how they interact with other teams (although we've seen cases where it affects how other teams interact with them, and not in a positive way). We work with other teams just like anyone else. We have great relations with many teams in the area. This past year, we presented at the annual Minnesota Splash event.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

There is, thus far, no evidence that any all-male or all-female teams have been formed instead of a "co-ed" team nearby. Consequently, nobody is being excluded or denied an opportunity to participate because of their gender in a manner that is more meaningful than someone that lives in New Jersey being "excluded" from being a member of a new team in Washington.

These teams create new opportunities for students to participate in FIRST programs that did not previously exist because the number of teams continues to grow year over year.

Ignoring all of that -- FIRST does not exist in a bubble. The people you're defending in your argument against exclusion -- males -- are given far greater access to opportunities and encouragement that are similar to what FIRST provides than women are.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I apologize for the tangent, but I had to correct this. The TechnoKats team doesn't require that its members attend Kokomo High School. We have an explicit policy that anyone is welcome, both home-schooled and from other area schools that lack an FRC team. All we ask is that a parent be an active participant as well.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I haven't been involved with 1766 in a while so I can't say what the rules are currently. But we have always been of the mindset that anyone that wanted to join, could. We actively wanted students from nearby schools to join.(They were reluctant due to the driving distance, but we did succeed with a couple of students.) I imagine if someone from California wanted to be on the team, we would have let them. Admittedly, they would have had limited access to the robot unless they was willing to travel.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I'm going to have to jump in and disagree you here. Exclusive teams work with other demographics at competition. Working with people from other demographics that you may disagree with is pretty much the definition of the alliance system for matches, complete with occasionally incompatible goals.

I haven't worked with any of the other all-girls teams (or if I have, I didn't notice they were all girls), but I've been to several competitions with the Robettes. They spend as much time working with other teams as anyone else (and are generally wonderful to work with). The all-girl teams get plenty of exposure to other demographics.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

This isn't necessarily true. There are a lot of teams in the PA area that have teams that are comprised of students that attend different high schools. My team has had students from other schools. There are a few large teams that I can think of off the top of my head that aren't affiliated with a school and are comprised of a copious number of surrounding high schools. Two teams that I can think of are MOE (from Delaware and the surrounding areas), and Exploding Bacon (from Winter Park, Florida).

If you took a poll of how many teams are one high school, you would be surprised as to how many are actually multiple schools coming together.

Cass

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

False: 1178, D.u.R.T. is primarily from an all boys Catholic high school (De Smet Jesuit High School) but we allow girls in from the other high schools that do not have teams but want to participate. Are there less girls than guys? Yes (3 girls this year on a ~30 member team).

From personal experience, I believe that gender separate teams can actually convince more people to join. (One girl who went to a meeting in the pre-season to see what our team was like hid herself for 15 minutes waiting for the rest of the girls to arrive because she was scared of all the guys. After that meeting she never returned (We were told this one reason, but there were also other reasons that we were told were there, just not what they were.) If she found an all girls team and therefore learned all about FIRST, that is beneficial to the philosophy of FIRST, not detrimental.)

Just my thoughts on a complex issue.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

There are extant all-boys Catholic school teams; 254 is the most obvious example. And I don't think anyone can claim that the mission of FIRST has been compromised by the existence of a Hall-of-Fame team that has had a robot featured on ESPN and in Sports Illustrated.

Am I annoyed when people come up to my all-female team at competitions and ask "So.... did the guys build your robot?" Yes. Does that mean that I think an incredibly successful and inspiring team should be rejected from competition because of the organization it is based in? No. And that statement applies to all three teams I've worked with- female, male and co-ed.

Thanks so much for the support and recognition! That was by far the most amazing competition we've ever had. Expect us to be better by far at Championships (we still have some trump cards to pull).

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Thats pretty cool! Im glad to hear that. I know in general (mostly for liability), most teams only allow students from their own schools as has been pointed out. However, there are always exceptions, and I guess I should have added the words "In general" to my statement :) Glad to see an all boys school allowing girls to participate!

There are always exceptions... 1511 has had students from other schools, one of the first of which was a girl who came to our team because we had some extra seats to attend a few competitions our rookie year and offered them to local teams. When we met this girl, she told us that her mentor had told her that she should stick to their spirit and chairmans teams because she was a girl & a cheerleader. When she really wanted to do the engineering work. She was frustrated, and ended up joining our team. We also "adopted" the students from team 73 one year when they lost their sponsorship. Its a bit of a headache to work out the liability & insurance stuff, but it can be worth it, and I'm glad to see other teams do it.

But sithmonkey's story is very true... I've even seen it on teams where the girls are from that school... the girls (in general :)) aren't as comfortable as the boys at jumping right in, and if they don't have a friend or two that they are close with, they often leave the team, regardless of their interest. Heck, when I joined, it was only because 3 of my good friends were joining (one of which was another female a year older than me).

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Well I figured it was time to share my piece...

I was a junior in high school when my school started our FIRST robotics team, The Robettes. Up until then, I was planning on going to college for psychology. After I joined FIRST, like everyone else who is on a team, it became my life and I knew engineering was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. You know the saying "Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life," well that is how I feel.


I did not decided go to a "regular" college, I went to an engineering and science college. So if I changed my mind about my major I would have to leave because they offer math, science, and engineering degrees. I am now a junior working toward my electrical engineering degree.

Let me just say if I wasn't a member of the Robettes AND I didn't attend an all-girls high school, I probably wouldn't have made it two semesters. None of my college classmates would let me do any work in our labs and they always dismissed what I would say. Unfortunately for them, they didn't realize that because of the Robettes I knew I was good at engineering and I knew what I was talking about and I wasn't going to let them walk all over me. It's horrible, but the girls that didn't make it just couldn't stand the way they were being treated and decided to switch to a different field completely (hey if they were getting treated like this is college, they really weren't looking forward to working in the real world).

As a freshman in college I got an internship with EchoStar. The man who hired me said he knew I haven't taken any core EE classes yet, but he was familiar with FIRST and knew I could handle it. As a sophomore in college I got a internship with John Deere. They hired me because of my previous engineering experience and my GPA. And as I type this I am currently in Atlanta doing a co-op with Johnson & Johnson. If it wasn't for FIRST getting the ball rolling none of this would be happening for me.

I am one of only 6 girls in my college's whole Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. I was the only freshmen in my class to get an internship and I was the only sophomore in my class to get over 8 internship offers and work for a huge engineering company. Junior year I got over 15 internship and co-op offers. Please don't take this as me bragging, take this as if I couldn't be involved in FIRST because single gender teams weren't allowed look at all the opportunities I would miss out from.

Sexism never goes away. And maybe I missed over it, but I didn't see any females in this thread agree that single gender teams shouldn't be allowed. Because until you are a female in a male dominated interest, you honestly don't know how hard it is for us and all we have to go through.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Rachel, I think that what you are doing is absolutely awesome. I, like you, am in a male dominant field at my college, however, I could easily change that. I love math and I always will. Thank you for sharing your story and your words of encouragement.

The statement that I quoted from Rachel is entirely true. Rachel, thank you again for your thoughts. They go along way. In today's society, wait almost always, it has been difficult for females to dominate in this male dominent world.

Cass

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Just to be clear, this isn't sexism. I think this has happened in most group oriented situations I've seen. I've kind of learned not to trust a person until I've worked with them a while. I take my hat off to anyone that can go with college without becoming a bit this way. I'm not saying the rest of your points aren't valid, but I just don't want you to think that the sole reason you was treated this way was because you was a girl. At my college, you'd probably be treated this way until you've proven that you know what your doing. After that, they are more likely to let you do more(if not most) of the work without issue.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

You can't POSSIBLY know that it is or isn't sexism. That you've experienced or seen something similar happen in other circumstances has absolutely NO bearing on her experience and it should not be used to invalidate what she's written.

This thread. Argh.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

You can't be serious.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I just wanted to bring to light that not everything bad that happens to a woman is sexism, nor everything that happens to a minority is racism. I found she had many good points, but being ignored and not trusted is kind of a part of being new to lab groups. I suppose I should have said "This isn't necessarily sexism." Its true that in her circumstance that particular school might be completely trusting of anyone but women. Its true I couldn't know whether or not that is true and if that is the case I completely retract my statement with full apologies. However, my intended point stands true. This could have just as easily been the fact that they didn't know her. I've been burned many times for trusting a stranger with my grade and am unlikely to let that happen again.

Sorry for the tone I've had a really bad week. I could have definitely worded my thoughts better. However, I do believe that it is often easy to jump to the conclusion that the reason a person is treating "me" a particular way is because of X. Honestly, we can't know why people treat us the way they do unless they tell us. That was the point I was trying to convey. Nothing more or less.

Jason

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I'm surprised that anyone could think that an all-girls team isn't a positive force in their community - an all-girls team, like any other FIRST team, provides students with hands-on experience, role models, development opportunities, and is generally inspirational. Each FIRST team that exists is something positive, period.

Also, while representation of, opportunities for, and treatment of women in the STEM fields has come a long way, there is a still a long way to go. Anything that promotes women's advancement in these fields and provides young women with positive role models is a good thing, in my opinion.

I'm not really seeing why this thread exists.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

The thing your missing here Jason is that, in her situation, everyone was new. Taking the general ed/freshman classes, everyone is new to the school and the environment. Given that, why should she be excluded any more than others in her class?

I can tell you from my experiences in college... even in my first semester physics lab, my lab partners never excluded me or ignored me. But, we were all guys (seriously, have you tried to find a girl in an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department?). We were all new to the school, no one knew anyone else... it was a perfect environment to be open to others ideas without the baggage of past experiences and expectations.

I can tell you, without a doubt, Rachael is one of the Robettes all stars. She was the first person on the team who really "got it", and by far the most dedicated. She has personally inspired and drawn in quite a bit of the team, and she's one we still talk about when we're trying to inspire the girls. Anyone in her labs would really have to be foolish not to listen to her.

Finally, a closing thought from working with an all-girls team for 5 years. Our drive team is most often ignored by other drive teams. Not because we don't have something valuable to say, or because our students are timid or shy, or because we've done poorly in the past (highest seeded rookie team, finalist the next 3 years, and winning at North Star this year). Can you explain why that is if it's not gender based?

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

Honestly, my college must be different because everyone started out rather skeptical of one another. Perhaps the culture difference. Also, I know several girls in mechanical engineering and one in electrical that I share classes with this semester. I can't speak as to the computer sciences as I've not taken any of those classes myself. Note: I'm not saying they aren't vastly outnumbered.(I'd estimate them being outnumbered 20 to 1 but thats really more a guess then anything else as it varies alot between classes and semesters)

As far as the reason your team is ignored: I thought back to when I was a student on 1766 and alot of teams are so focused on their own team that they tend to ignore whats going on around them. I'd estimate that this makes up some fraction of the reason people aren't paying attention to your team. I would not estimate it to be the only reason. Just part of it. Thats the thing, there are too many variables to something like this. Can you really tell me that the only reason people are ignoring you is due to your team gender? I have no doubt that it isn't the reason for some teams. I just suggest we don't paint with such a big brush. Some of those teams ignore you for other reasons and don't deserve to be assumed to be sexist. Inconsiderate, yes but please don't assume intentions unless the person tells you or there has been a strong trend with that individual person.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I go to an all-girls school and hate that aspect of it. Personally, it doesn't work for me. It is not anything like the real-world and there is an obvious lack of balance in the classroom.

I am on an all-girls rookie team because it is the only team I am eligible to join. It came as a shock how much I appreciate the inspiration it has given me. The extreme lack of women in STEM careers is astounding and from visiting FIRST teams with one or two girls and seeing how ostracized they are, I've really grown an appreciation. I'm fairly assertive and would not let anyone, boy or girl, have a demeaning effect on me. But, it's still been a really awesome experience to have!

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I get that you dislike the "oh, I'm a girl, people don't listen". I do too. I want to rise above it, not complain about it. But you're coming off as if to say that it is us (girls) overreacting... but lets be honest. It DOES happen. In actually strategy meetings, team's aren't THAT absorbed in themselves. In the lab, she didn't just happen to be ignored. Sure, we shouldn't assume... but we are just as capable as you are to drawing logical conclusions.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I don't believe you(or anyone) are overreacting when you are being unfairly discriminated against. It shouldn't happen at all, but it does. My main point is that nobody can really tell right away what a persons motives are. It takes a little bit of time to really know the person before you can tell exactly what their motives are. Afterall, what happened to innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? I'm not saying there aren't signs that it might have been discrimination. But I definitely believe there's plenty of room for reasonable doubt. I'm sure I've done many things with respect to a minority that would seem racist if you didn't wait to see that I do it with people of my same race. Perfect example, when I get into a group that requires presenting I look each member of my team in the eye and ask how they are at public speaking. I've had some minorities react as if I'm asking because they are a minority, but I assure you I ask the same thing to anyone that I haven't seen do a presentation. I know my example isn't as bad as ignoring a lab partner but it was honestly the most illustrative example I could come up with at the moment.

Jason

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

As you're mentioning this, I thought I might add that discrimination is not necessarily a conscious process. Implicit bias occurs on a subconscious level, without the need for an articulable logical justification. (Explicit bias is where motives enter the picture.) This makes the problem of identifying and confronting discrimination harder: if someone is not cognizant of a another person's implicit bias that leads to discriminatory behaviour, it could be overreaching to ascribe that behaviour to a conscious motive.

Incidentally, the "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" stuff is a common law standard of proof for criminal charges. Technically, it's not applicable to the civil realm, where discrimination tends to be litigated. If you apply that as your personal standard of proof when judging discrimination, that's fine—but there's no legal requirement to apply that standard on a personal basis.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

The mission of FIRST is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders... As long as any team does that, how can it be counterproductive?

I think that if there are young women out there who are inspired by being on "all-girls" team, and they would not have joined a co-ed team, then YAY!!

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I suppose that I will add my bit about females and FIRST as well.

I began my experience with FLL in middle school, working on a co-ed team with both female and male mentors. We were all encouraged to work on all parts of the team, and for a time I worked in "programming" (well, it felt like programming to a seventh grader). Personally, I took to the research portion of the team. Working on Mission: Mars provided a unique opportunity to hone scientific research skills as well as presentation/communication abilities.

I moved onto the HOT team, and was there for my entire high school career. I moved on to become the Scouting Captain, and worked heavily in the Chairman's subgroup. As a female, I have caught some flack from other female students to "defaulting" to these positions, and falling into female "stereotypes". I find it unfortunate that these aspects of the team are regarded as easier, or below the harder engineering roles. FIRST has taught me that there are many aspects to a successful team of people. You can have a fantastic robot, but without proper scouting and communication skills, it's very difficult succeed (especially in Michigan).

I'm currently and Environmental Science major at Michigan Technological University. If any of you know of MTU, you'll know that to begin with, the ratio of males to females is currently about 3:1. This gap widens once you move into the harder STEM fields of the university. Being in FIRST gave me the ability to look at people's abilities, rather than their gender. I have also found that being confident in your abilities can go a long way in terms of respect. If you approach a group situation comfortable with what you can do, then you'll have a much different experience than if you go in doubting yourself. FIRST teaches girls that they ARE smart and that they CAN do these things.

I'm taking over the Robotic Systems Enterprise next academic year, as one of the few girls in the group. We run three FRC teams in the area (857, 2586, 3771), a few FLL teams, support a SailBOT collegiate level team, and hope to be involved in the FIRST collegiate pilot program next year. FIRST gave me the leadership experience needed to take over a position like this, and I am SO grateful to the program for that.

As a result of my experience in FIRST and the Robotic Systems Enterprise, I've been offered an internship from General Motors this summer. I'll be working on reducing the environmental impact of my assigned plant. STEM careers emerge in all sorts of places...

In closing, I guess it doesn't matter if there are exclusive teams or not. As long as students are all given an opportunity in an area to participate, then an all girls or all boys team can sometimes be the best solution for an individual.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

All girl teams are great, unless they are made by a co-ed high school with no alternative for the boys.

If an all girls(boys) team was created by my school, and I(or a girl) was given no where to go to, then that would be sexist. However, all girl teams that are created with all brother teams, or created by an all girls school, are fine. In fact, they are better for the girls because they are given more chances to work on the robot. Many of the girls I know are shy and would give up their spot for a boy or someone else so having a single sex team is good.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

I have read through all of these posts and was unsure on my stance on this topic until after I read many of your ideas.

I have been involved with FIRST for around the past 5 years. I was on FLL for all of my time in middle school where the environment was very encouraging. I would say our team was even 50-50 in terms of gender. I went on to learn the "programming" on that team and truly enjoyed it because of all the support and how much I learned. I can truly say being involved in FIRST during middle school is what makes me so interested in the STEM field today.

I am now a sophomore in high school and have been part of Team 334 since the first week of my freshman year. After learning about programming from FLL, I went on to learn Java from a fellow teammate and become one of the team's 2 programmers. My team consists of around 50 students, and I'd say we have around 4-6 female members, with only 2 actually working with the robot. I've had many of the boys on my team talk to me and try to convince me that because I am a girl I can not do as well as they are. That actually made me want to do more and I am now the only one on my team who does electrical. Not only that but I also run the team's website and also edited the chairman's video. This year I went on to be one of the first female drivers our team has ever had, and yes there were a lot of sexist comments about me driving the robot.

The two different FIRST teams I've been on have had two completely different environments. I can say that in the end we should not be worrying about the gender make-up of a team, we should be more focused on making sure that students are encouraged to continue being involved in STEM. I've talked with other girls in my school and some have straight out told me that they do not want to join robotics because they feel like they would be pushed aside because of our 40+ male members.

I do agree though that female engineers are not as common as male engineers, but I'm not sure if FIRST is the right place to be debating wether or not it's 'right' or 'wrong' for these teams to exist. There are organizations such as SWE(Society of Women Engineers) and AWIS (Association for Women in Science) that solely support the advancements of more women entering into the STEM field. I personally started a SWE club in my school to hopefully get more girls to realize that STEM fields are not just for guys.

In short summary: Girls are often discouraged on co-ed teams, and I've been the victim of that first hand; too many times to count. Never being a part of an all-girls team, I can not comment on what it's like for them. But no matter what your team make-up is, FIRST should be more focused on an environment that is encouraging you to learn more in the STEM field. Some may say that an all-girl team is a better environment, some may disagree. In the end, it's your own personal opinion on the pros and cons on these types of teams.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

The mission of FIRST is so inspire in students a desire to pursue science and technology. Are girls on co-ed teams inspired? yes, if they can stick around. It is really hard to get both the mentors and the other students to over look the steriotypes our society instills in people. For some reason people are hardwired to protect girls and women, and handing one a jig saw does not come naturally to male mentors especially if they have daughters. So do all girl teams inspire female students better? Probably, but it also does not prepare them for the starck reality that is sexism in science and technology. All girl teams are not counterproductive to the mission of FIRST but it does not allow girls to develop the thicker skin they will need if they want to pursue a career in science and technology.

Re: Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?
 

"it does not allow girls to develop the thicker skin they will need if they want to pursue a career in science and technology."

My daughters went to an all girls school and were on all girl teams. My daughters handle themselves very well in coed society. It would be interesting if there is a study that has examined all girl teams and if there is any difference with girls who are on coed teams. Anecdotal stories are interesting, but not necessarily descriptive of a group.

"girls to develop the thicker skin" I know what you mean, but isn't it sad that the girls must adapt to feel accepted instead of the culture welcoming talented, productive women into the science and technology fields? Perhaps we need to change the culture so that thick skins are not required.