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About 40% of our active members are girls, including 2 of our 3 co captains, our electrical/pneumatics lead, and our mechanical lead(me!). This percentage is pretty constant throughout our subteams, including our business team, drive team, and pit crew. Also, our only mentor who is a mechanical engineer is female.

When I joined the team, my freshman year, I was the only active female member by the end of build season. The next year we didn't recruit any students who stayed active(we had a clique of seniors who did everything). I ran the interest meetings my junior and senior years, and we saw a huge increase in female retention. In one year, we went from 10% female to 40% percent female(we're a small team) among our active members. This year, we saw another increase in general student retention, but a less dramatic increase in female students.

What we've learned from this is that recruiting female students is easier if you have female leadership. Girls are more likely to stay active beyond the first meeting if they see other girls having active roles in technical areas. We are hoping to increase female representation further by doing presentations to girl scout troops(our lead mechanical mentor is the leader of her daughter's troop) and the GEMS(girls excelling in math and science) club at our school.