Quote:
Originally Posted by rmiko
I suppose what I'm asking is, does your team have strong female members?
Any female leaders/captains? mentors?
What is your witnessing the roles of females on your or other teams?
If you are a female on a team, what's your role, how do you feel about it, what do you want to be doing?
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I'm just going to give our data point here:
2007: 1 of 2 captains, 2 of 2 drivers
2008: 1/2 captains, 1/1 pit captain, 1/2 drivers
2009: 2/2 captains, 1/1 pit captain, 2/2 drivers
2010: 1/2 captains, 1/2 drivers, 1/1 pit captain; coach
2011: 1/2 captains, 2/2 drivers, 1/1 pit captain; coach, programming head mentor
2012: 1/2 captains, 1/2 drivers, 1/1 pit captain; coach programming head mentor
2013: 1/3 captains, 1/3 drivers, 1/1 pit captain; coach, programming head mentor
2014: 1/2 captains, 2/3 drivers, 1/1 pit captain; coach, programming head mentor
Basically, we've had at least one female captain and driver for the last 8 years, and our pit captain has been a girl for 7 years straight. We've had women in lead robot-centric mentorship roles (in addition to other female mentors) for 5 years. This isn't intentional. We vary maybe 30-50%ish girls, and in selecting [mostly by men] just on merit, they are very over-represented in leadership. In fact, they're well
over-represented in technical leadership roles.
The "how" is tricky because we didn't do anything special. We didn't do anything at all--never tried to instigate it, never differentiated, don't actively maintain it, don't recruit for it. And yet, we could ruin it if we tried (not that I would, clearly). For us, our mentors let it happen, and it did.
For myself, since you asked, I'm the '07-'09 driver, '08-'09 captain and pit captain, and '10+ coach listed above. I feel I've achieved the roles I wanted to earn on the team. Anecdotally, I think the over-representation comes from an overall average higher level of organization and attention to, essentially, what needs to get done. As both a student and a mentor, I feel it does help to see girls and women already on the team succeeding. Model your role to your friends/students, and they tend to follow naturally.