[Chris Marra]

Our team currently has three active girls on it, and of them, only one really gets anywhere near engineering, and the other two were drawing and sewing all season long. We had several other girls at the beginning of the season, but they gradually dropped out from losing interest in what they were doing or finding that they didn't have a specific place on the team. Also, I know there are other girls in our school that have said they find robotics interesting and fun, but they feel that as a girl, they wouldn't fit in, and a lot find the shop intimidating.

It seems as though the main problem is that most girls who would join a team are either intimidated by the shop and hardcore engineering, or simply feel they'll be out of place and not fit in well enough. And even the ones who are interested in it aren't necessarily joining or taking technology classes because they are lower level classes and hurt their GPA's, or they feel its too stereotypically "shop-kid". Vex will be helpful to recruit girls into the team since they don't need to be in a shop to do it, and its much less intense 'engineering'. It still prepares people and acclimates them to the ideas of engineering and eventually does get them to be comfortable with machining things, but it works as a good step between Legos, and a CNC machine.

The other problem with girls joining FIRST teams is that a lot end up falling into the head of the spirit team, the promotions team, the t-shirt team, or something thats part of the team, but isn't really engineering. I'm not discrediting these things, but a lot of teams end up just sticking girls into them and thats how they get onto the teams. Either that, or they'll get stuck with other kids who are very motivated and getting into more hardcore things much sooner. We lost one girl this year because instead of letting her do Vex, she kind of drifted into the programming team along with two very intense freshmen coders, and by Kick-off, she had quit because she didn't feel like she had a place on the team. Girls on teams need to be offered a chance to get into things, but they can't be forced into something, nor allowed to just wander towards something, since I've seen both be very unsuccessful.