[Jon Stratis]

I wanted to share another anecdote... This past year, my team hosted a luncheon at the Minneapolis regionals for girls and women on teams, volunteers, judges, and the local university SWE chapter. It was a wildly successful event, with a much larger turnout than we expected. We had gotten e-mails to all the team leads about it, informing them of the event and asking them/their team to RSVP with the number of women that would be attending. At the event, one of our mentors went around to talk with some of the teams that did not RSVP, and here are some of the responses she got from male team leaders:

"Well, I'm not a girl so I didn't reply" - a female team member was standing right next to him at the time.

"Man, that's a lot of estrogen in there!"

And to top it off, after the luncheon there were some leftover pizza/cookies that the team took down to our pit and tweeted out that they were available for anyone that wanted them. One guy came by and asked "How many ovens do you have back there?"

So, whether we want to admit it or not, FIRST is not always as open and welcoming to women as we would like. Comments and attitudes like this are one very good reason why women might hang back instead of taking charge.