Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?

[Chris is me]

Apparently now it's popular to attack all girls teams, especially if you're an adolescent male who's never been on them. Whatever happened to the "live and let live" attitude toward team organization these same posters were pushing on people every time people argue about student versus mentor built robots? Does that just go away when something you disagree with happens?

Here's what happens with girls on many, MANY FRC teams. A girl joins. This girl is intimidated by the prospect of building a robot and doesn't have the expertise the boys do. She is pushed by other team members, consciously or subconsciously, toward Chairman's, Safety, or other parts of the team that aren't engineering related. This girl is now not doing anything relating to why she joined the team and gives up. The above cycle happens on so many teams it's not even funny. When a boy joins and doesn't know about robot making, his peers welcome and teach him. When a girl joins, she has to fight for that - but the societal pressures, team pressures, and general social stigma lead her away from that.

Yes, I know there are exceptions to the above rule - usually very independent, strong willed girls. But this does happen, a lot.

What all girls teams do is eliminate all of that. The environment is suddenly not so alien. They now have to learn about the robot, because no one else is going to do it. This gives them opportunities they might not have on mixed gender teams.

So maybe this isn't how your team runs, and maybe it isn't how you want your team to run. But, as with many team styles that aren't your own - there are good reasons behind what they do, so how about you live and let live instead of criticizing someone for actually trying to address a great societal problem in an innovative way.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Apparently now it's popular to attack all girls teams, especially if you're an adolescent male who's never been on them. Whatever happened to the "live and let live" attitude toward team organization these same posters were pushing on people every time people argue about student versus mentor built robots? Does that just go away when something you disagree with happens?

Here's what happens with girls on many, MANY FRC teams. A girl joins. This girl is intimidated by the prospect of building a robot and doesn't have the expertise the boys do. She is pushed by other team members, consciously or subconsciously, toward Chairman's, Safety, or other parts of the team that aren't engineering related. This girl is now not doing anything relating to why she joined the team and gives up. The above cycle happens on so many teams it's not even funny. When a boy joins and doesn't know about robot making, his peers welcome and teach him. When a girl joins, she has to fight for that - but the societal pressures, team pressures, and general social stigma lead her away from that.

Yes, I know there are exceptions to the above rule - usually very independent, strong willed girls. But this does happen, a lot.

What all girls teams do is eliminate all of that. The environment is suddenly not so alien. They now have to learn about the robot, because no one else is going to do it. This gives them opportunities they might not have on mixed gender teams.

So maybe this isn't how your team runs, and maybe it isn't how you want your team to run. But, as with many team styles that aren't your own - there are good reasons behind what they do, so how about you live and let live instead of criticizing someone for actually trying to address a great societal problem in an innovative way.

Personally, I have been pushing girls to try programming or something. It's great to see that one responded and I will start teaching her C++ or Java starting next week or something. The others did not want to program, but wanted to design and fabricate the drive or the next year's game piece manipulator. This year, the arm and claw was designed by an all freshman girl trio. The problem is that there aren't enough girls that join. I am nominating a girl for team captain next year fearing that I will become a dictator.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

What doesn't matter: Whether a team is all boys/girls/californians/etc.
What does matter: The work environment and outlook on group participation that the mentors foster.

For example, we're not an all girls team, but most of the student work on the robot is done by girls. We don't treat them any differently from the guys. And I'd be willing to put a couple of our girls up against any of the "best" and "brightest" students in FRC.

So really I think "all-anything" teams, with the exception of all girls/boys schools, are counter productive. If a couple of college guys can run a team where female high schooler involvement drives the creation of the robot, anyone can. You need to put everyone on a level playing field. Sure some of the girls (and boys) may need a bit of a push from the mentors to get them to feel comfortable joining the conversation, but you can't treat your team members differently in group situations based on that.

It's not fair to let "all-this" or "all-that" labels lower expectations for a particular group. I've never once in my time in FRC witnessed someone change their expectations of a team in a positive way once they heard it was all girls/boys/student-built/etc. It sucks, but it's the truth. I mean what are the boys who are supposedly pushing them out of the way supposed to think when they see some girls get a special all girls team? It just drives the division.

Am I absurdly off the mark here?

[CallieJ]

As a member of an all-girls team that shares a lab with an all-guys team, and currently attending a school with a co-ed team, I think that there's nothing particularly wrong, or right with any of these systems. Am I glad that I am on the team I am? Yes. Do we occasionally get all sorts of responses we'd rather not receive? Of course.

I think that female teams offer a much more comfortable environment for girls who are intimidated by the level of prior knowledge and intensity on some teams. I've found that most of the guys on both the all-guys team and the co-ed team had some experience with engineering, machining, programming and electronics before they joined. This is true of some girls on our team and on the co-ed team, but there are a lot fewer of them. If you are going into robotics as a girl, with no experience, it can be an uphill battle.

On the whole a lot of our team members are people who probably would not have joined FIRST if our team was not available. We tend to attract a demographic that is not the FIRST norm and have had great success with introducing a wider range of girls to science and technology, which is the point of having a team in the first place. Personally I think this is exactly supporting the philosophy of FIRST.

[Jaine Perotti]

Like Kim, this is a topic close to my heart -- as I am also a female engineering student who is close to completing her degree.

There is a false equivalency being presented in the OP's poll question, which asks -- "should exclusive teams be allowed in FIRST?"

The question implies that having a female-exclusive team is equivalent to having a male-exclusive team. Let me ask you this question -- do you think that a team which only includes ethnic minorities is just as discriminatory as a whites-only team?

I sure hope that the answer is no -- as there is a clear difference between starting a team to give a leg-up to underrepresented minority groups, versus starting a team which allows only white students (who already enjoy a great deal of cultural advantage within STEM fields).

Likewise, starting a male-only team only serves to reinforce dominant cultural narratives that engineering/science is meant only for boys. There is already a WHOLE WORLD out there telling young men and boys that -- yes, if you are smart enough and work hard enough -- science and engineering are easily accessible careers for you. To deliberately exclude women from a team (other than by circumstance, such being from an all-boys school) is unequivocally sexist, just as a whites-only team would be unequivocally racist.

But what about the girls? We are not advantaged in the same way men are. All of our young lives have been punctuated with subtle messages that we should leave mechanics and electronics and computers to the guys. Starting literally from day one, media (especially advertising) shows us that girls play with dolls, furry animals, and tea-sets (and generally act passively), whereas boys play with legos, transformers, and nerf-guns (and generally act assertively). Just take a walk down the toy aisles at Toys-R-Us, or watch the advertising on a channel like Cartoon Network that's geared towards children -- it's clear that these ideas about technology and gender are instilled in us from a very young age.

When I was in high school, I ran several Lego League teams and summer camps. One summer, I ran a girls-only camp called RoboCamp for Girlz. We surveyed the students about why they never felt comfortable joining the co-ed Lego League team or summer-camp. The responses were summed up by one particularly memorable quote by one of the girls -- "I was afraid that it would just be taken over by the boys." We have been conditioned since birth to just leave the mechanics/electronics to the guys... and holding our own in those realms can be pretty intimidating sometimes.

Some people have expressed worry that girls-only teams will not prepare girls to work in a mixed-gender environment. I disagree however -- my RoboCamp for Girlz helped the girls build a foundational level of confidence -- such that they had no worries about being pushed aside by the boys once they joined the co-ed team. The boys already had that foundational level of confidence just by virtue of their upbringing. The girls-only program merely served to level the playing field.

I really believe that there is a place for programs which give a leg-up to culturally disadvantaged students. They enable the participants to envision themselves successfully completing engineering challenges, without external judgments about their gender or race weighing them down. One of the hardest things about being a woman in engineering (and probably for ethnic minorities in engineering too) is having your failures being representative of your gender (or race), not who you are as an individual. The following xkcd comic just about sums it up:



-- Jaine

[Phcullen]

thank you for your thoughts i am glad most of you are taking this maturely and putting though into everything that you are saying.

again i would like to state that i do not include teams based out of already exclusive groups like schools and scouts.

though my years on my team i have worked with and developed close relationships with people that i probably would have never met without FIRST mentors and students we were always equal maybe things are different on other teams but i never saw women being discouraged from doing anything on our team and were always clearly just as capable as anyone (if not more as in many cases). it would certainly be nice to see more women mentors. but there really are not many out there and that is because historically that is not seen to be a womans profession and first is there to change that by exposing students to these fields because things certainly feel more tangible when you see peers doing them.
FIRST's goal, as it has been explained to me, is not to make everyone who joins become an engineer or whatever but to expose as many people who would not be exposed otherwise as possible to the field. and with that in mind it is certainly important to get girls involved but when groups will only fund/support a team that is "girls only" then you are placing that one demographic at a higher importance. and that is where i see these teams conflicting with FIRST's philosophy. why are all girl teams seen as more impressive when they exclude men from joining? wouldn't it me more impressive to have a strong female population on a co-ed team, showing that they have encouraged others that statistically are less likely to have tried it out? why is it when they announce all girl teams at competition they announce them as all girl teams just as they announce a team from a school for the deft like they had to over come a challenge just because they are girls? the formation of all girl teams seem to be more for political reasons then for the benefit of the members of the team

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Makes you wonder what sort of person would want to teach kids that if you have money you can make the rules.

Team Hammond (FRC #71) is one of the winningest FRC teams around. The team operates under an explicit "Golden Rule": Their sponsor has the gold, so gets to make the rules.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by SGS

At Alamo and Lone Star we have girl come to our pit saying "You guys are an all girl team? Really? The girls on our team just do outreach and PR." If this is the result of a co-ed team, I fear for the future of engineering.

I'm not on an all-girls team (last year we had 3 girls and 25 guys, this year we have 7 girls and 30 guys), but I have found that a lot of people are surprised when they find out that I do a lot of mechanical and machine work. I try to talk to other teams as much as I can at events, and most people sound really impressed about that. I think that I've only had three or four people blatantly say "our girls pretty much just do PR," but it is still obvious that a lot of other teams are like that as well.

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

You would be hard pressed to find a school/area with enough money/sponsors to support two teams so close.

Welcome to Michigan, namely SE Michigan. Oakland County has an insane density of FRC teams, and many of them are big-name teams to boot: Killer Bees, Wings of Fire, HOT, RUSH. I know that Rochester Community Schools sponsors two teams (201 and 245). Returning to Wayne County, there are two teams located in the Grosse Pointes, one from the public schools (1189) and one from a local private school (3175)...and we are by no means a large city. Our public school system will not allow students who do not attend our public schools to join 1189 due to liability, tax, and political issues.

Back on topic:
I don't have a problem with single-gender/"exclusive" teams. Single-gender schools will often lead to single-gender teams. While all-girl teams don't give the girls the kind of real-world immersion into science and technology that a co-ed team would - the male-dominated environment - they do eliminate the gender-domination issues that sometimes happen on co-ed teams. No girl will be faced with sexual discrimination of any kind on an all-girls team. For some, that's the only barrier preventing them from doing mechanical work, or even joining a team. The girls will still have to work with male students at events. They're not totally isolated from the real world. No matter how much anyone argues "well, they have to get used to dealing with men," that doesn't solve the problem of girls not joining a team because they're scared of the boys.

Is it fair to the boys who want to join a team, but said team restricts itself to females? No. So therefore, should all-girls (or all-boys, or all-Jewish, or all-anything) teams not be allowed? IMO, no - you'll be hard-pressed to find a blanket rule that benefits everyone. I think a rule saying that a FRC team must be open to any student willing to join would hurt far more people than it would help, since many districts, schools and clubs only allow students from that district, school or club to join that organization's sponsored activities.

Since we're talking about female underrepresentation in engineering:
I think that I am very fortunate in my immersion into engineering. I joined my team during the first year that they started really pressing females to do robot-related work, and thus I did not face any discrimination when I started working in the shop. Still, I would not have gone to my first work session if I had not gone with my friend. I didn't know anyone on the team at that point, and was a very shy freshman who had real problems with introducing myself to new people. If I hadn't gone with her, I wouldn't have gone at all, and probably would have stopped showing up shortly after Kickoff because I wouldn't have had anything to do (we didn't really have any kind of designated PR team at that point, just a few upperclassmen that I didn't know and were not actively recruiting PR members). By the end of freshman year, I was a lathe operator. My friend dominated the mill. We were both part of the uncrate team and the pit crew. She became our build group leader sophomore year. We never faced discrimination from the male members of our team. Due to my establishment as a hardworking team member, I haven't had any problems from new mentors and students over the past few years.

If I had joined an all-girls team, I would not have felt so intimidated about going to work sessions. However, I don't think that I would be as comfortable around guys as I am now. I'm sure that my involvement in other male-dominated activities (radio astronomy team, drumline) has helped with that, but I joined the radio astronomy team because of the influence of a female teacher, and the drumline because of the influence of a female friend. It takes a lot of willpower for a girl just out of the torments of middle school to find her place in a male environment without another female to help her along the way.

As a note, I don't think that 1189 has had a female engineering mentor until this year, which is our 9th season. We didn't have a female build group leader until the 2008-09 season, or a female build captain until 2009-10.

[CallieJ]

Originally Posted by Phcullen

Again I would like to state that I do not include teams based out of already exclusive groups like schools and scouts.

Just out of curiosity-- are there many all-female teams that are not based out of a school or Girl Scouts?

Those are the only two groups I have ever run into that support all-girls teams, and the only Girl Scout team I've ever met is our own (I know there was another Girl Scout FRC team in Austin on 2009 and 2010 but I don't think they're operational this year).

If so, are these teams more common in other parts of the country? Does anyone have any reason why that might be? The last regional my team attended there were only 3 all-female teams out of ~55 teams, and two of those were from Catholic high schools (the other one was us).

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by CallieJ

(I know there was another Girl Scout FRC team in Austin on 2009 and 2010 but I don't think they're operational this year).

If you are talking about the Lady Cans, FRC 2881, they competed at Lone Star this year.

Jane

[nitneylion452]

Originally Posted by treffk

Although, I do support single gender teams especially within Girl Scouts because they are focusing on introducing the girls into technology. There are single gender schools that also have teams. Do you think they should combine with another single gender teams of the opposite sex?

I find it interesting that you would bring this up, and that I would read this. The situation which you described is very similar to what my team did. We are from an all-boys Catholic high school. For our first year, we were an all boys team. Over the summer, we opened membership to a local all-girls Catholic high school. Currently, we have about 2 or 3 active members from the girls school.

When we first opened membership, there was a very good response. Roughly 30 or 40 girls showed up to our "orientation" meeting, which we held to get the girls ready for an all girls competition hosted by the Firebirds (FIRST Team
433). About 10 of those girls showed up to the competition, which was about all we had enough room for. Since then, we haven't seen most of those girls (many of whom admitted to their friends that they showed up for the boys. Who can blame them? We've got some fine looking gentlemen on our team! ).

[N7UJJ]

Generally, because of our culture, girls do not enter high school with the same technical skill set (power tools, mechanics, etc) that boys do and male mentors value. As a result, girls, generally, lack the experience that would allow them to excel in a relatively short time. Males, culturally, have a great advantage entering engineering fields.

The 842 "We Left the Boys at Home" showed how quickly the girls learned with the experience of designing, maintaining our robot at a competition.

I emailed the girls who were on that team to read this thread. Most of them have or are about to graduate with an engineering degree. Hopefully, some will share their experiences.

We are also dong research on gender distribution in engineering education, engineering companies, and FIRST competitions. While we had not completed our study, the U.S. has a lot of "culture changing" to do before women are equals in STEM education and employment. While FIRST actively seeks to attract women and minorities into FIRST teams and STEM, it is obvious that women are not yet on par with men in their numbers nor their responsibilities on teams, and in FIRST itself.

So what can we do to "change the culture" so more females will participate? I think an all girls team is a great experiment.

[Phcullen]

Originally Posted by N7UJJ

The 842 "We Left the Boys at Home" showed how quickly the girls learned with the experience of designing, maintaining our robot at a competition.

I emailed the girls who were on that team to read this thread. Most of them have or are about to graduate with an engineering degree. Hopefully, some will share their experiences.

thank you i hope they do too.

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Apparently now it's popular to attack all girls teams

I am not attacking any teams and i hope nobody else here is. i am just proposing a thought i have not seen this presented anywhere before bur according to you it has come up before so maybe this is worth thinking about.

As for student vs. mentor built robots. Please keep this out of my thread i would like this to keep on subject.

[Molten]

Originally Posted by Jaine Perotti

The question implies that having a female-exclusive team is equivalent to having a male-exclusive team. Let me ask you this question -- do you think that a team which only includes ethnic minorities is just as discriminatory as a whites-only team?

I sure hope that the answer is no -- as there is a clear difference between starting a team to give a leg-up to underrepresented minority groups, versus starting a team which allows only white students (who already enjoy a great deal of cultural advantage within STEM fields).

As long this is the opinion of the majority, those that believe in equality will have failed. To truly support equality you must try to remove the differences that are already there, not instigate new ones to balance the problem. Yes, you can allow for about the same opportunity by doing this but in the end everyone is just going to be prejudiced against in different ways. I firmly believe in equality in its purest form. If you want to make things "fair" eliminate the cultural advantages given to the white males. Teach your little girl to use a power drill and other tools. The only way we'll ever have a truly equal situation is if we start giving our girls lego's and our boys dolls. Treat them the same, and in their eyes they will be. Anything less isn't true equality at all and to some extent abandonment of the original goal.

I know its hard to have a co-ed scenario where the girls and boys have equal treatments. I'd suggest rather then separating the two completely, to find a way to work together. The real world has made it work, why can't we? In the business world, a person who makes sexist/racist comments is fired. Why shouldn't we be similar? It could be immediate removal from the team depending on the nature, but at the very least sent home from the meeting or reassigned to a less favorable task. A year working on shirt designs and PR would certainly make the guys think twice before suggesting a girl be better suited there.

In short, treat the problem not the symptoms. Otherwise the problem will never be solved.

Jason

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Molten

As long this is the opinion of the majority, those that believe in equality will have failed. To truly support equality you must try to remove the differences that are already there, not instigate new ones to balance the problem. Yes, you can allow for about the same opportunity by doing this but in the end everyone is just going to be prejudiced against in different ways. I firmly believe in equality in its purest form. If you want to make things "fair" eliminate the cultural advantages given to the white males. Teach your little girl to use a power drill and other tools. The only way we'll ever have a truly equal situation is if we start giving our girls lego's and our boys dolls. Treat them the same, and in their eyes they will be. Anything less isn't true equality at all and to some extent abandonment of the original goal.
...
In short, treat the problem not the symptoms. Otherwise the problem will never be solved.

While I'll withhold judgment as to the best course of action with respect to teams and gender constraints, I note that there's both a short-term and a long-term component to this sort of question.

For example, is it always objectively preferable to immediately banish discrimination at every turn? Or are there legitimate reasons for using those classifications as a proxy for hardships that are systematically related to disadvantaged groups?

When the same classifications that were once used to discriminate against a group are instead used to improve the relative standing of that group (in other words, to discriminate in their favour), there is presumably a tangible benefit to the disadvantaged demographic in the short term. Contrast that with a strict equality regime, suddenly imposed—will we actually see that same degree of improvement with any immediacy? Over the long term, so long as some sort of social mobility is possible, it's plausible that the social situations will average out—but should we as a society wait that long? Is that actually the right thing to do, given that the affected people may not personally reap the benefits of this enlightenment within their lifetimes?

I note that this isn't really about "righting historical wrongs" (as such endeavours are often misconstrued). It is fundamentally more about using an approach that is feasible in the context of society, and which results in a modest but tangible short-term improvement rather than an idealized, hypothetical long-term benefit.

Practically speaking, isn't it easier to segregate a few all-girl teams than it is to remove the relevant cultural obstacles? While this is somewhat lacking in elegance, once the "friction" in the system is accounted for, it may prove to be the only reasonable course of action. (After all, given the political and social climate in the United States, would it actually be possible today to impose a perfect equality between women and men?)

In short, if there are practically unassailable barriers to treating the root cause, is it appropriate to treat some symptoms instead? Possibly.

What if the treatment exacerbates some symptoms (employs discrimination) while alleviates others (disadvantages of being female)? Isn't this situation-dependent? I don't think that the assumption that all discrimination is equally odious is appropriate here.

Originally Posted by Molten

The real world has made it work, why can't we? In the business world, a person who makes sexist/racist comments is fired. Why shouldn't we be similar?

Ideally, yes, in civilized society, such consequences exist. The reality is a lot less clear-cut—to the point where I must strenuously object to the notion that these are solved problems in the real world. Sexism and racism (in the negative sense—discrimination against those groups) are hardly artifacts of the past. In the same jobs, with the same responsibilities (i.e. controlling for a number of explainable differences), women in the United States earn substantially less than men on an annual basis (ranging from around 10% to 30%, depending on the study). Members of racial and ethnic minorities are similarly observed to be systematically less successful than might be inferred from their qualifications. One potential explanation for those disparities is that racism and sexism have not been banished, but merely driven deeper, into places beyond the reach of simple occupational regulations.

Another problem I have with this comparison is that business dealings are driven to a much greater extent by a model of economic costs and benefits. The difficulties of describing social justice in terms of economic value are a constant thorn in the side of economic theory. At present, if we were to take a cynical view of the situation, we might say that a person is fired if the costs of defending them against the allegations of impropriety outweigh the benefits of retaining them. It's easy to let a middle manager go—they're a dime a dozen, but if the successful CEO is the subject of the alleged wrongdoing, a simple firing isn't the usual course of action.

Now, although I disagree with your comparison to the business world, I do see value in disincentivizing insensitive behaviour. But a year's worth of penance? It won't work, except in the rarest of cases. This is a voluntary activity, and high school students are not to be trifled with—if they sense you're just punishing them to prove a point, or if they decide that their new assignment doesn't interest them anymore, most will just quit. And if they leave, either out of dissatisfaction or because you actually kicked them off, there are plenty of other things to occupy (and perhaps even inspire) them. These sorts of drastic measures are last resorts—the actions you take when you're not sorry to see them go, because their continued presence and behaviour is so intolerable that you've exhausted all other options.

Their ignorance needs to be alleviated with education, not crushed with discipline.