Female engineers - what sparked your interest? Stats on gender distributions in FIRST

[ZipTie3182]

I'm writing a term paper for my AP US history class. It's on how society influences both girls and boys through gender stereotyping that surrounds us and how that causes hardship for both in school (especially boys) and limits possible paths later in life for both genders.

I was wondering if anyone has or knows a place to find a statistic of the gender distribution of boys and girls in FIRST, preferably separated by competition. I would be interested to see if there is an evident drop in participation in the higher grade competitions.

Also, if any female engineers could share how and why they perused engineering as a career that would be great. I'm looking for testimonials as part of my paper is interviewing those who are a minority in their fields and trying to coordinated that to society's perceptions on gender.

Thanks,
Anna

[Grim Tuesday]

I can't provide a testimonial because I lack the necessary biology. However, I can tell you some interesting statistics about females on our team.

We have ~55 people on the team. 13 of them are girls. 12 of the girls are in the same grade (junior) and 10 of them joined in their Sophmore year.

I'm no more than an armchair sociologist, but to me, this would point towards the fact that as soon as it becomes 'acceptable' for girls to join the team, many flock to it. But there is a hump towards it becoming acceptable within the school that's hard to get over that only the bravest do. And once the trend is set, it's smooth sailing. Also of interest is the fact that this trend doesn't seem to carry from grade to grade, it must be reestablished each year.

Of course, this may only be true with our team dynamic at Ithaca Highschool. I would be interested to hear the stories of others, and good luck with your APUSH assignment.

[smurfgirl]

I've always been interested in math and science, and I was lucky to have parents that encouraged my interest. I never really knew how I would apply that to a career though. For a long time I figured I would be a doctor, since my dad also likes math and science and he is a doctor. Engineering isn't exactly a visible career path to most children. I didn't discover engineering until I joined FIRST in high school, and that's when I realized that engineering was exactly what I wanted to do with math and science. Who knew that engineers apply math and science skills to solve problems?

Although I guess I'm not technically an engineer quite yet... I still have a few more months until getting my degree.

[Lisa Perez]

Hey Anna!

Like Ellen, I've always been interested in math and science, but wasn't even aware of what engineering was until I became a member of my high school's FIRST team. Through my time on that team, I discovered that the hands-down most satisfying thing that I could do was make something tangible through the "design, build, test, and repeat" process.

I've found that, while a few of my female engineer friends had experiences similar to mine, a lot more were inspired to go into engineering because of childhood experiences such as fixing cars or designing and building wooden dollhouses with close relatives. The family influence in the elementary-middle school years is definitely huge. I have some papers with statistics on that; I'll try to dig them up for you.

Let me know if you have any other questions, you know where to find me

[lhood1]

I loved math and science in school and my grandparents suggested that maybe doing something with computers would be good. This was early 1970s so they didn't have a computer but I guess they heard that computers may be big in the future. My father who was a an electrical engineer for NASA encouraged me to major in electrical engineering and I would be able to do whatever I wanted with computers and it would pay better. I have a computer engineering option on my BSEE but I specialized in Communications System for my masters in EE. So that is all of the school related reasons.

Growing up following all of the Apollo missions and the Space Shuttle is the more passionate reason that I became an engineer. There was a lot of pride knowing that my father contributed to those achievements and I wanted to do that in the future. Even though my father didn't work with a lot of women engineers, he encouraged me that I could be anything that I wanted to be.

I have worked for NASA since I graduated from college in 1985 and I work with a number of women engineers. When several engineers in our division started recruiting mentors for FRC team 2936, I asked if there were young women on the team and they said yes but there were no women engineer mentors. I decided to join as a mentor so that the team would see women engineers. I have really enjoyed the last two years with FIRST. I wish FIRST had been around when I was growing up.

[MamaSpoldi]

I am a software engineer who graduated from college in 1985... so obviously FIRST was not an option for me in high school, but how I wish it had been.

I did not start college as an engineering major... I started as a math major because I knew I liked math (and science) but didn't really know much about computers or engineering. We had only one computer class in my high school and the teacher of that class told me that I could never be a programmer because I didn't have the imagination for it.

Well, it turns out she was wrong. After my first semester in college where I took an intro computer class as part of the math curriculum, I was hooked... it was just so much more than just math. I immediately applied to change my major and ended up graduating #5 in my class of over 500 in the EE/CS department at UConn. There were not a lot of female engineering students back then (maybe 10% at most), but to be honest that didn't really make any difference to me. Those of us who were there worked hard along side the guys and, other than standing out a little in the classroom filled with testosterone, it was not an issue. I had always been a nerd in high school and always tried to remember that it didn't matter what others thought about me. It was my life to make of it what I wanted.

But I never forgot what that teacher had told me (obviously since I am telling you now )... I guess you could say that she motivated me to prove her wrong. I have never regretted that decision and I love that it has provided me with skills that I can now pass along to students I mentor as part of FIRST.

[IKE]

We have a lot of girls on the team this year, and they decided to start a Blog. As part of the blog, they asked for us to pass out a survey to female engineering co-workers and some of the the results are here:
http://girlsgofirst.blogspot.com/

I think you will find some good material for your paper there.

[Mikell Taylor]

My parents decided before I was born that I was going to be an astronaut and raised me accordingly (the only Cabbage Patch Kid I was allowed to have was an astronaut). At some point around middle school or freshman year of high school I found out that most astronauts are engineers, so I figured that meant I had to be an engineer too. I went through a phase of wanting to be a chemical engineer (because I loved my chemistry class) but when a FIRST team got started my junior year of high school, suddenly it was nothing but robots for me. Ever since then, even though I changed my interest in majors a couple times and ended up in electrical engineering with a bunch of mechanical coursework, my internships, projects, and my jobs have all been focused around robots. Because... they're just cool!

I should mention that starting in seventh grade, I went to an all-girls school. Because of that, and because my parents had never implied that it should be otherwise, I guess while I knew on some level that it was unusual for me to have the interests that I did, I never really questioned whether or not engineering was "for girls". At my school it was really more that I was just a geek. Of course, once I got involved with FIRST, I found that 99% of our mentors were male, and experienced a fair amount of sexism first-hand at the FRC regionals and nationals (it was only nationals then) that I attended. And I'm not saying that to hate on FIRST -- there's been plenty of sexism in college and in my career as well. I'm just pointing out that until I was thrown in with a bunch of male engineers, my gender was largely a non-issue.

[BlandaTran]

When the sign up sheet for robotics went up I thought to myself that I had no reason not to join so I did and soon fell in love with FIRST.

When I was a kid, I was that girl who liked Legos and Hot Wheels. I was that girl who hung out with the boys more than the girls. I was that girl who dreamed of being an inventor instead of a princess.

For me, I started FIRST back when I was in the 5th grade in FLL. At that time I wanted to be an engineer (a pilot or air-traffic controller for years) and I was heavily influenced by my family to pursue an engineering-type career. I did build and programming and didn't enjoy the research/spirit side very much. I stayed in FLL until 7th grade and then joined an FTC team. At about 14 years old I decided I didn't want to be an engineer (I was also influenced by some of the students in my classes who told me that girls couldn't be engineers). I continued to stay in our school's FIRST program because I became friends with many of the people that were on my FTC team (and it was either robotics or a sport and I was never really that athletic).

I joined our school's FRC team when I reached high school and didn't expect to do much in the way of working with the robot. I learned a bit about each area of the team and nothing really jumped at me. When build season started I did small jobs (tightening screws, getting tools, etc.) though I still attempted (and later achieved) varsity credit. I didn't expect to do much the next year either.

At our first competition I was asked by one of my coaches to consider learning programming. My first thought was "Me? A programmer? There's no way I could do that!" I'd seen programming before and it looked too hard for me to learn. I ended up accepting the offer and learning programming over the summer.

And how do I like programming now? Well, I do like it. It took a while to comprehend and I'm sure my coach got frustrated with me (I got "fired" many times), but I stuck with it. As of right now I'm still unsure of what exactly I want to do for the rest of my life, but I'm considering going into a career that involves programming. I'm still learning LabVIEW, but I've been encouraged by many of my friends to learn other languages like Java and C++.

So, I was put into engineering by my parents, but what sparked (or I guess resparked) my interest in engineering was learning that it's something that I can do. It's something that I just can't get away from (I've always been told by my parents that I have "an engineering mind" though I've never really believed them). I like coming up with new ideas and fixing problems to much quit engineering.

Just my little (well... not really "little") story on how I ended up at where I am in FIRST. I apologize for the length.

[ZipTie3182]

Thanks for the responses everyone! For those of you who participated in FLL as well as FRC/FTC could you comment on the gender distribution between the two? Especially if your FLL team fed into your FTC team. I am interested to see if there is a trend at that "critical point" where girls tend to drop out of STEM activities.

Originally Posted by ZipTie3182

Thanks for the responses everyone! For those of you who participated in FLL as well as FRC/FTC could you comment on the gender distribution between the two? Especially if your FLL team fed into your FTC team. I am interested to see if there is a trend at that "critical point" where girls tend to drop out of STEM activities.

My first year of FLL there were about as many girls on the team as boys. The next year I was one of 3 girls on a team of about 13. My first year of FTC I was the only girl on a team of 11. The next year I was one of 2 girls on a team of 10. When I started FRC last year there were 19 boys and 9 girls on the team.

Our team has coached and mentored several all-girl teams in the past. Most of the FLL teams last year had a mix of girls and boys. A few of the guys I made friends with in FLL and FTC stayed in the program and are with me on our team now. None of the girls I made friends with in FLL or FTC went on to join the FRC team (although they were one or two years younger than me).

I think most girls start to drop out around junior high. I know I was heavily pressured by my "friends" I met in junior high to drop out of robotics and start "acting like a girl." I valued the friends I made on my team more than the friends who were telling me that robotics was a waste of time.

[Ceal Craig]

Great topic. Elements of your question have been part of the researchbasis for my dissertation, begun in 2010, hope to finish sometime in early2013, currently being written. Feel free to reach out to me directly at cealcraig@druai.com

To your question, I graduated in mechanical engineering in 1974 from The Ohio State University, one of 698 female bachelors of engineering graduates that year, and one of 66 female MEs in the United States. Times were different then. I was inspired to study engineering after attending a six-week long National Science Foundation program on engineering during the summer between my junior and senior year of high school.

Women earned about 15% of bachelor degree graduates in 1986, that rate climbed steadily until about 2000 where the rate has stagnated at about 20% overall. Some degrees have much higher numbers than others. Over the 30 plus years I worked in high tech, I reached the Director level, ran manufacturing plants,and led program management teams for company’s new product development. My husband and I became involved in FIRST as FRC mentors in late 2002, through 2009. I am a FIRST volunteer and also am involved in organizing CalGames, an off-season event in the Northern CA area. That's my background: now on to the research!

Another point of information: The National Academy of Engineering did a recent study about what appeals to young people and the public about engineering and what doesn’t. This research and the messages that havedeveloped from it can be found at engineeringmessages.org. Great site to explore.Interesting connections to much of what FIRST is about.

Some places for research if you have access to a journal & dissertation database through public library or university library. All below are in APA 6th edition format (chuckling…)

Let me know if you have questions! Happy to help.

FIRST Specific:
(two dissertations & one study commissioned by FIRST)

Hurner, S. M. (2009). Robotics as science (re)form: Exploring power,learning and gender(ed) identity formation in a “community of practice”(Doctoral dissertation0. Available from ProQuest Dissertation Dissertations andTheses database. (UMI No. 3369846)

Hospodor, J. & Hospodor, A. (2007, April). All-girl teams make their presence felt at regional high school robotics competitions. IEEE Spectrum: Inside Technology [Digitalversion]. Available from http://spectrum.ieee.org/

Melchior, A., Cohen, F., Cutter, T., & Leavitt, T. (2005). More than robots: An evaluation of the FIRSTrobotics competition participant and institutional impacts. Retrieved from http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedfiles/who/impact/brandeis_studies/frc_eval_finalrpt.pdf

Welch, A. (2007).The effect ofthe FIRST Robotics Competition on high school students' attitudes towardscience (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from Dissertations & Theses(Publication No. AAT 3283939)

Related to your overall topic:

Barker, B.S. & Ansorge. (2007, Spring). Robotics as means to increase achievement scores in an informal learning environment. Journalof Research on Technology in Education, 39(3), 229-243.

Craig, C. D. (2006, April 28). Why companies should want to help you: Engineering enrollments down, globalpressures, ideas [PowerPoint slides]. 2006 FIRST Conference, Atlanta GA.

Eccles, J. (2005, Winter). Studying gender and ethnic differences inparticipation in math, physical science, and information technology. New Directions for Child & AdolescentDevelopment, 2005(110), 7-14. Retrieved February 11, 2009, from AcademicSearch Premier database.

Jacobs, J. E. (2005, Winter). Twenty-five years of research on gender and ethnic differences in math and science career choices: What have we learned? New Directions for Child andAdolescent Development, 110, 85-94. Retrieved on June 21, 2008, fromhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cd.151

Morrison, A. (2006, September). FIRST Vex challenge inspirescreativity, ingenuity, and innovation. TechDirections. Retrieved from http://www.techdirections.com

Singh, K., Allen, K. R., Scheckler, R., & Darlington, L. (2007,December). Women in computer-related majors: A critical synthesis of researchand theory from 1994 to 2005. Review ofEducational Research, 77(4), 500-533. doi: 10.3102/0034654307309919

Vollstedt, A.-M. (2005). Usingrobotics to increase student knowledge and interest in science, technology,engineering, and math. [Master's dissertation]. Retrieved from Dissertations Theses (Publication No.AAT 1429847).

NOTE: this post is a personal one and does not reflect any statement or opinions of WRRF.

[ZipTie3182]

Wow Ceal, thank you! Its inspiring to hear stories of women who persued engineering when it was so uncommon! I will look through these, they seem like they will contain tons of information. Now returning to my paper....