Quote:
Originally posted by Erin Rapacki
I am a female and heavily involved in FIRST, but I bearly touch the robot during build season. Just because of my personality and nature, I enjoy the organizing, spirit, awards, fundraising, and other "people aspects" of a FIRST team... and sometimes I consider myself exemplifying the "FIRST female stereotype."
(Nowadays I do everything but the actual designing and building on the robot... but it isn't uncommon to see me in the machine shop helping out. But if you think about it, I give the people who DO build the robot a big advantage because then they don't have to worry about such things. You can't have one group without the other.)
My point, we all would like to see more girls designing, testing, and machining on FIRST teams, and girls are not uncapable of doing such things... but the in most cases the interest just isn't there.
Unfortunately, females in the world today are mostely raised to do 'girly' things. I wouldn't say that it's because of discrimination that there are not many girls are on FIRST teams, if a girl came to a team and told them that she was interested in the robot or already had skills... I'm sure the team would be more than happy to accept them.
It's only when the mentors know they're qualified and still refuse to let them show off their skills that I'd call it discrimination.
I believe that unless there is a drastic change in the American culture, there will NEVER be a 50/50 ratio between guys and girls on FIRST teams. The only way that there could be is to reverse descriminate against guys... which is also wrong.
Ok, so I've just babbled for a little while too long... last year I tried to get my sister to join FIRST, and I learned that it's IMPOSSIBLE to drag anyone on a team unless they have a personal interest in doing robotics.
There are many things that girls can do on a team, it's just unfortunate that most of them won't want to build the robot.
That's the fact... accept it
(But congradulations to all the girls out there who break the stereotype! Keep spreading the word and the enthusiasm of being techy's... and maybe a culture change will occur someday)
ByE
erin
p.s. I'm not completely mechanically inept... I am doing well as a Mechanical Engineering student. I just agree with the more experienced guys on my team that they have the better ideas when it comes to building robots... lol
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Yeah, we debated about that in this
thread .
Personally, I am against discrimination. (Ok, that was stupid, everyone is, LOL) Coming from a family that has gone through a lot of it, i know the effects of it. Our team doesn't really expirience that much direct discrimination. It is just assumed that a friend of mine and I can't do a lot of stuff because we are the "Blonde Ditses: of the club. We like to laugh and mess around alot, ok, all of the time. But give us something to do and show us how to do it, and we get it done. I admit i do not know that much about the function of the robot, but that is because i spent most of my time welding the frame. Even though i was voted to be Captain this year i still get some, whats the word....criticism. Some one even came up to me and told me the only reason that i won the "election" I guess you could call it, was because of my mom. |Granted, my mom is one of the mentors in charge, there were ten other people there that voted. I worked my butt off welding that robot. They changed the design three times and we had to do tose over a couple of times because someone did the measurements wrong. (I am not pointoing fingers or anything), and at one point i broke down into tears, and still, i get discrimnated against. I think that the only thing that can solve this problem is by learning to step into another person's shoes. I know, everyone has heard this saying, but it really needs to be taken seriously.
I don't think i really answered the question, but those are my thoughts.