Engaging women in FIRST

Our team has tried several programs to get more girls involved in FIRST.

Probably the most successful way that I've seen is starting girls in robotics in elementary school. We had a few all girl or mostly girl FLL and JFLL teams last year. I started robotics when I was ten and have followed FIRST from FLL to FTC to FRC. This year we're considering doing a sort of "summer camp" and hopefully we'll have a nice turnout of girls.

Another reason girls join teams is if their friends (usually girls) who are on a team push them to join. When I've tried to convince my friends to join I've always tried to point out the different roles on our team. Even if a girl doesn't start out in an engineering role she may be inspired by other girls on the team to go into engineering (as was the case for one of my friends).

Of course there's always the possibility that a girl joins a team because she has a crush on one of the guys or her boyfriend's on the team, but from what I've seen girls who join for this reason usually turn out to be valuable members (even if they don't go into engineering).

Most of my friends that I've talked to about joining my team have said no mainly because "I just don't think I'll fit in" or "I'm not smart enough" or "I'm not into engineering" or even "It's more of a guy thing." I've always tried to point out that there are many different roles. Although our main goal is to encourage engineering there's always something to do on our team. No job is too small and all members of our team are appreciated.