[dapub]

As a mentor, and female engineer, I really have to jump in here. While I think that it is important to give girls experience and confidence in engineering, I think some of the comments posted here are insensitive to girls' ability. They may thrive better in an all girls' environment as far as learning experience is concerned ( I actually went to an all girls' high school.... where there was less intimidation from the boys, and you didn't have to worry about how 'cute' you were in class.) This made us stronger and more assertive, and certainly prepared me to go into school for engineering (where only 7% of my graduating engineering class were girls - back in the Dark Ages.)

But.... I have a problem with this post. To say that the girls are weaker - blanket statement - is not helping their cause. Girls will not be treated equally until they are seen as equals - starting on their own teams. As FIRST teams, we have a lot of differences to deal with. Our team is extremely diverse - we have a mix of inner-city (minority) youth, suburban (non-minority) youth, deaf youth, hearing youth, males and females. Everyone has their issues. I think many of you would take offense if any of these other populations (besides boys) were singled out. "We left our white kids home." "We left our hispanic kids home." "We left our deaf kids home." Although it was just a tag line on a photo, it is an inflamatory remark for the average male member on a FIRST team. It would not be tolerated in any of these other instances.

That said, I can see the advantages of what team 842 is doing. If you keep a group in their comfort zone, they may actually gain the skills and confidence necessary to compete in a heterogeneous work world. As a team, we all have decisions to make on how best to handle our populations equally, without discriminating against any one group. Perhaps forming an all girl team is a way to go, as long as there is an all boy team available.

We, again, have some of the same issues - who has more confidence, and thus becomes more dominant on a team - the wealthier white kids, the hearing kids, the boys, the urban macho kids???.... It is a cute balancing act. As a team, we try to treat everyone as equals - no matter what their ability or background is. But everyone team member is also expected to meet certain expectation levels. So I would not agree to letting a member attend a regional, if they put, say 20 hours into build, half-heartedly, because they were of a certain gender, race, etc., over another student who put 300 hours in, full bore - because they are of another gender, race, etc. What is the incentive to work hard, and put your full effort in, if you will not be rewarded for it, and, in fact be penalized, because you are a certain gender, race, etc. What does it teach the kid who put in less effort - "aw, that's OK, we'll let you go anyway because you're (fill in the blank...gender, race, etc.)" You don't need to meet the expectation? [This is not what I am saying that 842 did with their girls - I am just making a philosophical point.]

I don't know what the answer is - same gender teams, same race teams, same socio-economic class teams, same teams with disabilities.... Any way you slice it, someone is going to get hurt, unless equal opportunity is provided to everyone. An all-girls team sounds good, as long as there is an all-boys team. The one thing that we have found from including everyone together on our team this year, is that we all have learned an awful lot this year. Our hearing kids and mentors have learned so much from our deaf kids and mentors, and vise versa. Our girls have learned to be more aggressive. Our inner-city students coming from lower quality schools have had higher expectations to live up to - and have done a stellar job. Everyone has become a lot stronger through this experience.

2 schools of thought - both have their pros/cons.