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Originally Posted by tsaksa
From what I have seen of FIRST teams in my short time as a mentor, I cannot really believe that this is because of some active attempt to keep women out, or force them into stereotyped roles. However, a robotics team of all or mostly guys could be fairly intimidating to new women members and might easily become a self sustaining situation without an active attempt to turn things around. And I doubt many teams in this situation are likely to have much of a clue what they really need to do to change things.
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In my opinion, this is exactly the case. Few / no teams actively actually ban women from joining, but it's a subtle, cultural thing one should be constantly aware of.
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So, I did not get a huge number of data points, and I do not know if that technique was what made the difference, but who knows. In any case, have other teams found good ways to help break the ice so to speak in getting women involved in FIRST, or making sure they have a positive experience?
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842 did something pretty extreme back in 2008 and 2009 - for one of the three regionals they attended each year, they only brought female students. I've always thought it was a novel idea, though not necessarily the kind of thing one would want to directly copy.
Here's a CD thread about it.
Try not to become a team that has "the girls" stick to the non-technical tasks. It's really easy to go "I don't know this stuff so I'll just do Chairman's", for a boy or a girl. But as a mentor, as tempting as it may be, I think it's a good idea to mix things up a bit with students and to get them to abolish their preconceived notions. After all, when I started FIRST I was convinced I wouldn't touch the robot and I'd just type code. Yet now I'm more passionate about mechanical stuff.