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

[karinka13]

A mentor sent this thread my way and said I might want to weigh in, so here I am (I know, I know, I haven't been on this forum in quite some time).

While I would certainly never agree with telling a team how to run itself, I think a very important point to bring up is that when you purposefully separate by gender, you MAKE gender into an issue. Hear me out.

I'm not saying there aren't gender gaps in the world anymore. As a senior studying engineering at MIT, I can fully attest that girls have to work harder to earn the respect of their peers, even the other female ones. In many cases, especially the other females. I love working in the machine shop in my lab, and it took me at least a year to earn the respect of the shop guys. But now they give me free range and all is well. It takes extra work, but the end result is worth it. Besides, complaining about it isn't going to make anything better, anyway.

See, if you constantly run around talking big about how you're a "female in engineering" or an "all girls robotics team," you're making your gender a major part of your identity. My gender is a part of who I am as a person (see my love of miniskirts and Victoria's Secret), but it is not a relevant part of my professional life. If I were to make it part of that, I would be opening myself up to being judged based on my gender.

An all-girls robotics team that uses that label to define themselves invites themselves to be the point of judgment for all robotics teams. This means whenever they do poorly, that all-girls stamp will do poorly as well. When they do well, that stamp just adds to a thought of "look, they did well, and they even overcame that obstacle." It's a way of thinking that we aren't going to outgrow as a people anytime soon.

But if we do want to outgrow it, we need to stop labeling ourselves so strongly. Stop throwing those stamps in people's faces. When I was a member of 433 (a team from an all-girls high school in the Philadelphia area), my theory on the matter was always something along the lines of "Oh, we're all girls? What an odd thing for you to notice."

Refusing to make it a big deal is really the only way we'll ever outgrow this.

[Ogehsim]

Originally Posted by N7UJJ

Boys wind up on the construction and driving teams while girls are more likely involved in fund raising publicity. It is not necessarily because boys push them away, but because girls are more socially aware and are more willing to do what is best for the team. If a girl believes that a boy’s skills with tools are superior to hers, she is more likely to back off from the pit crew for the good of the team.

This corresponds with my own experience. I joined the team to build. I was encouraged to join the team by a middle school (male) tech teacher who helped me design and build my own hoverboard as an independent project.

However, between the fact that there were a large number of freshmen, young and inexperienced leadership, and a sudden gap in parent support as many of the most dedicated left with their graduating students within about 2 years, there was a gap. The gap namely being the entire side the team's existence that wasn't the robot.

No one else was volunteering, so I did. And that's what I did my entire time on the team. I have never contributed to any part that ever made it on to our robot - which was my entire reason for joining the team. I remember a crushing moment in freshman year after competition season, when the robot was sitting in my tech class and I realized I had not touched a single part on the robot, and I had learned absolutely nothing about building, designing, or anything else that goes into making a robot.

I have had bitter outbursts about my lack of a technical experience on the team to my friends, but I believed (and still do) in the mission of FIRST and in spreading it, so I organized the demos, and wrote the Chairman's, and ran recruitment, and did outreach to elementary schools willingly because no one else was going to do it and it needed to get done. I don't regret doing any of this, but now being at college with so many other FIRST alumni and they'll talk gear ratios and transmissions and other things and they go right over my head. I feel like I'm playing catch-up in my engineering classes. They'll shy away too when I mention what I did on my team. They'll be like "Oh, that's.... nice..." and then leave as fast it's polite to, as if I am not a "real" FIRST student.

I remember one incident my freshman year, I was helping to make a prototype with a mentor (just cutting and drilling some wood someone else had pre-marked). An older boy came and started helping us, and started slowly taking over my jobs, and relegating me to holding boards as he drilled and such. Eventually I was left watching. And then I was ordered to go somewhere else and find something else to do. The mentor was right there the whole time.

I agree, all-girl FIRST teams could prove extraordinarily beneficial to their members. In FIRST there is no way to dumb down the rules and the challenges, like what has happened as our district's all-girl technology classes. But I agree too that making a huge issue of girl vs. boy may only serve to perpetuate the inequalities. There's not really a right answer.

Really, all I want to say, is for all the mentors: do not ever let another student push someone away who is trying to learn. I'm sure 99.99% of you don't. But it happens. And the only way to fix it is to make people aware.

[lightsandmusik]

I think that each team serves to a certain area or group. i.e. My school serves to Mira Costa and Redondo Union High Schools. However, we do have a couple of home-schooled kids as well as another boy from a neighboring school. The all boy or all girl teams usually serve to the scout scout troop, or the single sex school. I know that Loyola(all male) and Marlborough(all female) got together to make one team. So really, they aren't doing anything wrong. They built a team in a certain environment and that is who the team is serving.

(sorry if it didn't make any sense. I'm not the most eloquent writer)

[pianogrrl71]

I'm currently on an all girls rookie team called the Girls of Steel. We come from eleven different schools, and we're not from any organization like Girl Scouts or anything like that. We're simply a bunch of girls from a 400 square mile area around Pittsburgh that wanted to get involved in science and technology, and none of our schools had FIRST FRC teams. Most of us really didn’t know each other before we started the team in October, but now we are cohesive team, all friends. We also now know how to work all of the machine shop tools, design and build new parts, and how to use CAD to pre-prototype the parts we want.

So far this year, we've made it into the Pittsburgh Regional elimination rounds, won Rookie All Star in Pittsburgh, and then went on to win Rookie All-Star in D.C. as well. We're going to St. Louis in April (can't wait to see all the awesome teams there!)

We've also received some flack because we don't allow guys on our team. People have told us that by being an all girls team, we're discriminating against guys. But within a 10 minute radius of where our team meets, there are about 3 others teams that accept guys -- and one that only accepts guys (all-guy catholic high school). So it's not like because we don't have guys on our team, there aren't any options for guys to become involved in FIRST.

We've also been told that we're not getting "real world" experiences. And I wholeheartedly agree—we're not getting “real world” experiences. And that’s the way we want it to be!

We don't want to follow the "real" world model, where women make 77 cents to every dollar a guy earns. We don't want to mimic a world where the science and technology fields are populated by a large majority of male workers and women have to fight to be heard. We want to create a new "real world" and we want to change how the world views females in science in technology.

We also want to support and encourage more girls to get interested in these fields through opportunities like FRC, FTC, FLL, and other programs. By giving anyone (guy or girl!) the chance to feel valued in these groups, all FIRST participants will be more likely to be more interested in science and technology. Because there are so many all guy or mostly guy teams already, we want to create an environment where the girls can explore science and technology without competing with the guys to be heard so that when we get to college and our careers we will have the confidence to succeed and level the playing field.

Most of our mentors are guys, and we work with a lot of other co-ed and guy teams as well. We are proud to provide a different opportunity for high school girls in the Pittsburgh area and look forward to the opportunity to share our team’s story and the principles of FIRST to inspire many others—both girls and boys of all ages.

[Andy Baker]

Wow - what a thread! This is an excellent discussion. It is impressive to see the passion and conviction of opinions, along with the thoughtfulness of making clear points while also being open to others' opinions.

This topic resonates well with me, as I have seriously considered starting an all-girls FRC team in the Kokomo area during the past year. We have discussed this with many people, receiving many opinions from many friends, including influential women in FIRST. To my amazement, we received opinions from women which were both supportive AND non-supportive to an all-girls team.

Before I describe who was most influential to me during this process, I will give you some background:

My wife and I have three daughters, and the oldest will be a freshman next year at a high school which does not have an FRC team. Graciously, the TechnoKats (45) have invited her to be a member of the team. At the same time, we have also met with the Superintendent and Principal of her school (Northwestern High School in Indiana), and they have agreed to start a new FRC team. As a family, we have decided that the best thing for us to do is start this new team at NHS. I will still have close ties to team 45, but next year my focus will be as a mentor on this Rookie FRC team. This team will be a girls and boys team, with much emphasis on making sure that the team's culture allows for girls to have equal chances that guys have within the team.

So, back to the idea of starting an all-girls team: as I mentioned, we talked to many women in FIRST about this. However, there was one person who influenced me the most in making sure that girls should be welcomed and supported equally on a mixed gender team instead of purposely segregated from the boys. This person is one of the "rock stars" in FIRST: Kate Pilotte. Kate grew up with a house full of boys, and was successful as an engineering graduate of WPI. She even got to yell at guys at WPI as a coxswain (I think that's the term) on the rowing team. Now, she is in charge of the FRC Kit of Parts as a FIRST engineer. She serves as an FTA for many events, and has seen many all-girl teams in FIRST. If you can get her to talk about this, she definitely has some opinions. Her point is that girls should be supported and integrated with boys so that they can learn to work together, productively, at an early age.

Kate's opinion further opened my eyes to this issue, and I am pledging to continue to support a culture within FIRST that supports female involvement.

Thank you, Kate.

Sincerely,
Andy Baker

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by RoboMom

I have no idea what a "female rockstar engineer" looks like, but it appears there have been many women who have won WFFA in the last 6 years. Maybe someone can update Andy's list.

I have worked with some women engineers locally who are terrific role models.

One of my personal rock stars.
Abbie Roth. She is featured in the very first segment of the Chesapeake shout out video: http://www.youtube.com/user/Maryland.../2/paCYkuoPDHE

[JosephC]

I'm a firm believer in FRC teams that are multi-gender. One of the main reasons being that all guy (or girl) teams are missing huge parts of what makes a FRC team different then any other high school team.

All guy teams miss out on the calming, soothing effects that girls bring to a team. And lets face it guys, Most of us wouldn't want to be in the business group or spending 4 hours a day making buttons (which mainly girls do on our team). Our team wouldn't be able to survive without one of our female members, who runs the meeting 75% of the time, and gives 105% to our team.

But then there is the other side to it. All female teams miss out on the egocentric guys who really push that robot to the max. See, this is what happens during our design stage. 2 guys end up having different ideas (say a telescopic arm or a 3 stage arm like the one 68 has right now), and both of them want the team to use their idea. So what ends up happening is the 2 males go home and spend all night doing math and making a prototype. The next day they come in and we spend the day figuring out which is right. You see, if it wasn't for their egos we would never have prototypes done so fast.

So no matter which way you turn it around, The true thing that seperates FIRST from other high school teams is the chance to do something you love, while at the same time spending time with the opposite gender. Besides, I swear our girls do a good job at humanizing our more "serious" teammates.

[whackedwatchdog]

Originally Posted by JosephC

I'm a firm believer in FRC teams that are multi-gender. [...] All guy teams miss out on the calming, soothing effects that girls bring to a team. And lets face it guys, Most of us wouldn't want to be in the business group or spending 4 hours a day making buttons (which mainly girls do on our team). [..]

But then there is the other side to it. All female teams miss out on the egocentric guys who really push that robot to the max. See, this is what happens during our design stage. 2 guys end up having different ideas (say a telescopic arm or a 3 stage arm like the one 68 has right now), and both of them want the team to use their idea. So what ends up happening is the 2 males go home and spend all night doing math and making a prototype. The next day they come in and we spend the day figuring out which is right. You see, if it wasn't for their egos we would never have prototypes done so fast. [...]

I really hate to say it, Joseph, because I agree with th co-ed teams (something I realize puts me in a minority), but I have to disagree with your reasoning. It sounds a bit like you're continuing to put people into boxes and follow stereotypes, even if the ones you're portraying are positive. I'm sure it's not what you meant, but the end of your first paragraph, and second in particular seem to imply that women "are more useful" on the business side of things, while guys are inherently more useful building and prototyping. That, in particular, is what a lot of the all-female teams are created to combat.

In my personal opinion, all-girl teams are somewhat counter-productive towards the goals of FIRST, but like others, I can see how they are fairly necessary. In a perfect world, everyone would work together perfectly, and there would be no sexism, de-facto or otherwise. That's not the case, though. A lot of people, mostly unconsciously, lump people into one group or another, and gender is one of the easiest and most obvious ways of characterizing a person. Give it time, and wait until STEM has a 50/50 -- or even 60/40 split (who knows, maybe women and men are mentally "wired" differently...), and then I think that's the time that they should fade out.

[Dancin103]

Originally Posted by JosephC

All guy teams miss out on the calming, soothing effects that girls bring to a team. And lets face it guys, Most of us wouldn't want to be in the business group or spending 4 hours a day making buttons (which mainly girls do on our team). Our team wouldn't be able to survive without one of our female members, who runs the meeting 75% of the time, and gives 105% to our team.

Hey now, some of our greatest button makers have been the boys! It's not just a job for the girls.

Why do we classify jobs like this to different genders? Would you then say that the PR/Marketing department is just for girls and that the boys are the only ones that are allowed to build the robot and be in the shop? One of our greatest PR/Marketing leaders was a guy, who has been very VERY successful in this field, he will be graduating at the top of his class in college, and has taken what he learned as our teams leader and applied that to the concept of being the student body president in college. He was a phenomenal leader to our team. As well, we have had outstanding females that worked down in the manufacturing department that could "show the boys up" in that field as well. No department or job on any team should be boy or girl designated.

Cass

[Madison]

Originally Posted by JosephC

I'm a firm believer in FRC teams that are multi-gender. One of the main reasons being that all guy (or girl) teams are missing huge parts of what makes a FRC team different then any other high school team.

All guy teams miss out on the calming, soothing effects that girls bring to a team. And lets face it guys, Most of us wouldn't want to be in the business group or spending 4 hours a day making buttons (which mainly girls do on our team). Our team wouldn't be able to survive without one of our female members, who runs the meeting 75% of the time, and gives 105% to our team.

But then there is the other side to it. All female teams miss out on the egocentric guys who really push that robot to the max. See, this is what happens during our design stage. 2 guys end up having different ideas (say a telescopic arm or a 3 stage arm like the one 68 has right now), and both of them want the team to use their idea. So what ends up happening is the 2 males go home and spend all night doing math and making a prototype. The next day they come in and we spend the day figuring out which is right. You see, if it wasn't for their egos we would never have prototypes done so fast.

So no matter which way you turn it around, The true thing that seperates FIRST from other high school teams is the chance to do something you love, while at the same time spending time with the opposite gender. Besides, I swear our girls do a good job at humanizing our more "serious" teammates.

April fools!?

You wouldn't last two seconds on my team.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by JosephC

I'm a firm believer in FRC teams that are multi-gender. One of the main reasons being that all guy (or girl) teams are missing huge parts of what makes a FRC team different then any other high school team.

All guy teams miss out on the calming, soothing effects that girls bring to a team. And lets face it guys, Most of us wouldn't want to be in the business group or spending 4 hours a day making buttons (which mainly girls do on our team). Our team wouldn't be able to survive without one of our female members, who runs the meeting 75% of the time, and gives 105% to our team.

But then there is the other side to it. All female teams miss out on the egocentric guys who really push that robot to the max. See, this is what happens during our design stage. 2 guys end up having different ideas (say a telescopic arm or a 3 stage arm like the one 68 has right now), and both of them want the team to use their idea. So what ends up happening is the 2 males go home and spend all night doing math and making a prototype. The next day they come in and we spend the day figuring out which is right. You see, if it wasn't for their egos we would never have prototypes done so fast.

So no matter which way you turn it around, The true thing that seperates FIRST from other high school teams is the chance to do something you love, while at the same time spending time with the opposite gender. Besides, I swear our girls do a good job at humanizing our more "serious" teammates.

Joseph, come find me sometime tomorrow morning. I have some people you should meet. (I'm serious)

[Kims Robot]

Originally Posted by JosephC

All female teams miss out on the egocentric guys who really push that robot to the max.

Haha... you've never been in a design debate with me... I don't back down until you prove me wrong, and I have some very very strong (and well founded) design opinions.

Trust me, there are girls with "egos" as well. There are girls with very strong opinions. And jeez... try putting a whole ton of girls in a room together... you DEFINITELY get some opinions then! I don't think having an all girls team will stop this dynamic. In fact I would argue its one of the few places you will see girls push the limits, when they don't have to "worry" about what guys think of their ideas, or of a "guy" coming up with a better idea.

I will admit that through this discussion, I have realized that it is very true that in general (not always), women/girls will decide to do what is "needed" on the team... not necessarily what they really "want" to do. If there is a job that needs doing, even if its not as exciting, the women/girls will make sure it gets done. The men in general (again not always) tend to gravitate towards what they WANT to do... the tech-e type stuff... the design/build. These are of course very general statements, not true for every person in each gender, but I think it does explain why we often hear people assume that girls are "better at buttons, PR, etc..." and the boys "are better at design & build".

But I'm back to the point of "to each their own". I don't advocate that every girl in FIRST should be on an all girls team. Nor do I advocate that we deny these "exclusive" teams access to the competition. There is a place for all of them, and good reasons for all of them. As long as we are working on getting girls more involved in the technical side of things, I think we are on the right path.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Kims Robot

But I'm back to the point of "to each their own". I don't advocate that every girl in FIRST should be on an all girls team. Nor do I advocate that we deny these "exclusive" teams access to the competition. There is a place for all of them, and good reasons for all of them. As long as we are working on getting girls more involved in the technical side of things, I think we are on the right path.

Quite true!

[mwtidd]

Go 1868!

Girl Scouts tearing it up at SVR !

[Foster]

Originally Posted by karinka13

<snip> all but the signature at the end.
Evil and Smart?
Fear it. Embrace it.

Exactly. I've seen the Firebirds in action for a number of years. Top notch engineering, amazing sponsors, roboteers that work their fingers off, drivers that drive the wheels off the robot. They have been a "point to them" team for me for my VEX girls teams.

While they are an all girl team, they are the Firebirds, feared and loved on the East Coast.

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

... but next year my focus will be as a mentor on this Rookie FRC team. This team will be a girls and boys team, with much emphasis on making sure that the team's culture allows for girls to have equal chances that guys have within the team.

Cool, Andy at the helm of a new mixed team, again for the right reasons for them. (Maybe they can get FIRST to assign them team number 4500, I think it's up soon.