Quote:
Originally Posted by Sperkowsky
A concern no one seems to have brought up yet is the fact that some small teams like ours don't have enough active females to field a drive team. For 10-25 person teams this could very well be the case.
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What you said is a fact I am aware of and that was exactly why my daughter and I wanted to start an all-girls event a few years ago. I have heard from many teams who expressed that concern. It encourages the girls on the teams with low female percentages to ask their female friends to join and grow the team. We made exceptions for these teams the first time to let them "borrow" girls from other teams. When the girls saw there are many other girls on other teams who are so excited about FRC, it further encourages them. I have seen this worked.
In our first year, we had no girls on the team. The second there was one brave girl. Now it is about 1/3 of the team. Keep in mind this is with a no cut team policy and anybody can join. It is easy to make it 50/50 by cutting half of the boys on the team but that would be wrong and we will never do that. We encourage boys to go into STEM just as much as girls.