What happened to the "Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism in robotics." thread?

[Tom Ore]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

Maybe someone should consider creating a similar thread but more for discussion of issues instead of a personal narrative.

How about this thread?

I don't know what sort of discussion was involved the the original thread but I'll add something.

I was a judge at a couple of FLL and FTC events last fall. At one event (probably an FLL event but I don't remember for sure) I asked the team how they were organized.

The answer was: "The boys designed the robot and the girls designed the T-shirts." I was so surprised by the answer I didn't know how to react.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by Tom Ore

I don't know what sort of discussion was involved the the original thread but I'll add something.

There are cached copies floating around on Google if you wish to read the original thread.

Originally Posted by Tom Ore

The answer was: "The boys designed the robot and the girls designed the T-shirts." I was so surprised by the answer I didn't know how to react.

Seems that we, as an entire community, have a lot of work to do.

[Madison]

I didn't see the thread posted last night until it had been deleted. Some of the responses were disappointing, to say the least.

[hiyou102]

In general I find on most teams the boy/girl ratio is poor at best. I think FIRST still has a long way to change the the culture that leads to both less girls joining the team, and more girls leaving. It's difficult to determine how many girls are put off by sexist attitudes both on teams and in society, but I'm willing to say that there are many.

[SenorZ]

The boy/girl issue will persist as long as society in general doesn't treat men and women as equals (not just on paper, but in reality).

I try to encourage girls on our team to do building, but they (on average) are more reluctant to. I am happy though that we have several girls who are happy to do work cutting, drilling, building, designing, etc. ...unfortunately there are pretty much only girls on the "spirit team".

[E Dawg]

We can all work harder at reaching out to girls specifically. I find (at my school) that many girls don't want to join simply because they think it's too "geeky". I find that they think FIRST is a bunch of boys sitting in a cave and never talking to each other.

[CENTURION]

Originally Posted by E Dawg

We can all work harder at reaching out to girls specifically. I find (at my school) that many girls don't want to join simply because they think it's too "geeky". I find that they think FIRST is a bunch of boys sitting in a cave and never talking to each other.

This has been an issue for us in the past, but as you get more and more girls on the team, it goes away. It's much easier for girls to recruit other girls.

I think it all sort of boils down to the culture you create in your team, and how you introduce new members (in this case, specifically female members) to that culture.

New female members may be hesitant to jump into power tools and robot building, and so may gravitate towards marketing, or spirit, or business/administration departments within the team. I always like to have new members hit the ground running so to speak, have them try to jump into robot design, or our off-season project, or start learning about power tools, just to see how they like it. If it doesn't take, and they want to do marketing and spirit, cool, but at least they tried it.

[basicxman]

I didn't see the original thread, but I think everything is a matter of conditioning. I'm a transgender individual and I find if I ever launch into an intelligent opinion of some sort, people tend to gender me male more (no matter what the gender of the speaker). There are many many root issues to fix.

[cmrnpizzo14]

Surprisingly, even though our team is based at a private all boys school, we have roughly 40% girls. For the most part they are involved in building and they take particular pride in their all girls sub team that this year worked on our floor pickup (which unfortunately did not make it on our robot this year due to weight but they had a very similar design to many of the top teams).

We only have 2 girls that are never actively involved in building but we have about equal number of boys that are not as well.

[CLandrum3081]

This sort of thing isn't just a problem in FIRST. I take Project Lead the Way Pre-Engineering courses at our high school, and this is the situation:

Digital Electronics: In its first term this year, I was one of three girls of fifteen students. In the second term, I was the only girl of nine students.

Intro to Engineering Design: I don't remember how many students there were first term, but this term, I am the only girl among upwards of twenty students.

As a student aspiring to be an engineer, this is what I will have to deal with my whole life. I'll be one of a few girls in science and engineering classes. For example, the boy to girl ratio in AP Physics, another of my classes, is 2:1. This is also how it'll be in the workplace. I'll be the only girl (or maybe one of 2! ) on my team.

That is depressing.

It's not that I don't mind working with guys. I don't at all - alright, I do when they make inappropriate comments about me being the only girl there. Not to mention the sexual comments from the boys I work with, one of the hugest problems I've faced in robotics and engineering classes. (Oh my god, she mentioned it AND bolded it!) The problem is... these are some real comments from girls that I received when I invited them to join robotics or sign up for Project Lead the Way classes:

"It's too nerdy."

"But you meet in the wood shop! Ew!"

"Sorry, I'm good at math and science, but I want to go on American Idol."

"Yeah, I want to be an engineer, but I don't have the time for robotics."

"I'm not even going to college. I'm going to be a mom."

"I'm not smart enough for robotics, and I'm never going to be."

There is a serious problem in our society, but I think everyone on this thread - and this forum - is aware of that. As a girl in robotics, I have tried to recruit every girl at our high school I have met.

None have ever come to a single meeting.

There's nothing wrong with going into a non-science career. There's nothing wrong with deciding against college (although it's perhaps not a wise decision in the long run). But these girls I talked to were smart. And none of them - and I have asked upwards of forty girls - even gave coming to robotics, for even a non-technical role, a second thought.

And what is society doing in the meantime? Telling girls they need five pounds of makeup to be pretty. Telling girls the highest thing they can aspire to in life is having a size 0 waist. Oh, no wait - finding Mr. Right so he can support you.

This turned into a much bigger rant than I anticipated, but my main point is this:

It's everywhere. We can either accept it or we can try to change it. And I hate to be a pessimist, so we have to change it.

C

[asteb27]

I want to take this opportunity to brag about our team - out of our 5 student leaders, 3 of them are female. The judges always seem surprised that half the pit crew/drive train are women, but it's just the way it is. Unfortunately we have no female mentors, and next year we will have only one or two (out of 20) members.

[CENTURION]

Originally Posted by asteb27

I want to take this opportunity to brag about our team - out of our 5 student leaders, 3 of them are female. The judges always seem surprised that half the pit crew/drive train are women, but it's just the way it is. Unfortunately we have no female mentors, and next year we will have only one or two (out of 20) members.

I'm quite proud to say that I mentor an all-girl FTC team (okay granted, it's a three student team at the moment, but still)

To CLandrum:

Grab those genius girls and drag them to a robotics meeting!

Seriously though, that first step is the hardest part. It took some convincing from my friends to get me to come to my first robotics meeting, but once I was there, I was hooked!

They've been told that they aren't smart enough for robotics, you need to teach them how untrue that is.

[ZoeR]

Originally Posted by asteb27

I want to take this opportunity to brag about our team - out of our 5 student leaders, 3 of them are female.

My team is in the same boat, except we have 4 student leads, 3 of which are female. Up until this year, our male:female ration was around 3:1. This year, we are now 1:1. There's really no divide in technical to non-technical which is awesome. At my high school, we're also in PLTW and everyone's required to take at least 1 year in engineering, but 2 is recommended. Robotics is the varsity and junior varsity sport at my high school. Both FTC and FRC have a course at the school, which allows FIRST alone to reach 40ish kids, equally split between males and females. Keep in mind we're a high school composed of about 380 students.

I haven't personally dealt with sexism at any regionals, but I know in previous years my team has. Our mentors just tell that we know what we're doing and that if people have a problem that girls or boys are doing certain things on the team it's their loss to not see a group dynamic work so well.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by asteb27

I want to take this opportunity to brag about our team - out of our 5 student leaders, 3 of them are female. The judges always seem surprised that half the pit crew/drive train are women, but it's just the way it is.

I hate that people still seem surprised at women taking on technical and leadership responsibilities (in all areas, not just within FIRST), but that's not going to change overnight. In the meantime, while that worldwide change is happening, I do love seeing the surprise on someone's face when they actually see women leaders in action. Because I know that, at that moment, someone's opinion is changing.

The support for women in STEM is present and growing. Again, change won't happen overnight, but it's growing like wildfire. All it takes is one supporter, of any gender, to make a difference in someone's life. Positive impact, one person at a time.

Since I first began to show an interest in engineering, I've had countless supporters and influences that have helped me along the way. I'm not sure that I can ever repay all of them for their support, or that I can ever have that great of an influence on others, but I can certainly try. "Pay it forward," if you will.

As a side note, one tactic that I've found to be pretty effective: continue to ask "why?" when being told you can't do something. Unless there's actually a valid reason for not being allowed to do it (such as not having the proper training for a machine), you eventually force them to say "because you're a girl" - which probably makes them feel pretty bad. Bam, there's another opinion changed.

[Donut]

Originally Posted by CLandrum3081

Intro to Engineering Design: I don't remember how many students there were first term, but this term, I am the only girl among upwards of twenty students.

As a student aspiring to be an engineer, this is what I will have to deal with my whole life.

This is an unfortunate but true fact at the moment. The highest ratio of women to men I have seen in an engineering environment is on the FRC teams I have been apart of. In my ECE college program there were only a handful of women in each class of around 100 students. At my employer there is only 1 female in an engineering or management role in my department, most of the female managers at the site are in a financial or HR position.

Team 842 did an experiment with this back in 2007 and 2008 to give the girls on their team more exposure to roles that were typically male dominated. This topic was particularly relevant to them because of traditional gender roles in Hispanic culture. Their experience is an eye-opener showing how culture change is difficult even in an organization dedicated to changing our culture.