[Ari423]

The biggest problem with recruiting girls on my team is that girls don't want to join because there aren't many girls on the team. We have one (maybe two) girls on my team. We would love to have more, but when we ask girls to join their first question is always "How many girls are on the team?". When we tell them one or two, they immediately don't want to join. Telling them that we have a female mentor doesn't help either.

The problem is it's a self-fulfilling prophecy: girls don't want to join because there aren't any girls on the team, but there aren't any girls on the team because they don't want to join (because there aren't any girls on the team). We have even tried recruiting a whole group of engineering-focused girls at once (to quote our mentor "girls travel in packs"), but we had the same problem, despite our trying to explain that there will be plenty of girls on the team if they all join.

This season we might have a few more girls join, as we are publicizing that the team is more than just engineering, but it's likely we will still have the same problem. It's okay for now (the team isn't 100.0% boys), but if this pattern continues, soon there won't be any girls left on the team, and that is a problem. Besides just not being a diverse environment which isn't as fun, we get less funding and more funny looks when people see that the team is entirely boys.