Quote:
Originally Posted by JosephC
I'm a firm believer in FRC teams that are multi-gender. [...] 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). [..]
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. [...]
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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.