[Phcullen]

thank you for your thoughts i am glad most of you are taking this maturely and putting though into everything that you are saying.

again i would like to state that i do not include teams based out of already exclusive groups like schools and scouts.

though my years on my team i have worked with and developed close relationships with people that i probably would have never met without FIRST mentors and students we were always equal maybe things are different on other teams but i never saw women being discouraged from doing anything on our team and were always clearly just as capable as anyone (if not more as in many cases). it would certainly be nice to see more women mentors. but there really are not many out there and that is because historically that is not seen to be a womans profession and first is there to change that by exposing students to these fields because things certainly feel more tangible when you see peers doing them.
FIRST's goal, as it has been explained to me, is not to make everyone who joins become an engineer or whatever but to expose as many people who would not be exposed otherwise as possible to the field. and with that in mind it is certainly important to get girls involved but when groups will only fund/support a team that is "girls only" then you are placing that one demographic at a higher importance. and that is where i see these teams conflicting with FIRST's philosophy. why are all girl teams seen as more impressive when they exclude men from joining? wouldn't it me more impressive to have a strong female population on a co-ed team, showing that they have encouraged others that statistically are less likely to have tried it out? why is it when they announce all girl teams at competition they announce them as all girl teams just as they announce a team from a school for the deft like they had to over come a challenge just because they are girls? the formation of all girl teams seem to be more for political reasons then for the benefit of the members of the team