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

[Chris is me]

What's that they say about "don't tell other people how to run [their] teams"?

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Don't worry about other teams, they are doing what they feel is best. Live and let live.

Ah, got it.

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Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Wouldn't it be better to have one team and let all the students learn from them?

It would be better, if mentoring effectiveness was equal to the sum of the intelligence of all of the team's mentors. But that isn't always the case. What if this team discovered that women work best with women mentors? What if this team decided the most effective way to inspire women was to give them a space where they *can't* be co-opted by the men? If studens have the option to do one or the other, all the better.

Why double the cost of this program, instead maybe build a great team instead of a pair of mediocre ones?

You're inserting your value judgement here. The single team might have been a great program for those students that get to fully engage in it. Perhaps those students are disproportionately male even relative to the gender ratio of the team as a whole. Maybe the team will have more on-field success, and one could argue that such success equates to inspiration, but I'd be willing to bet that teams splitting off into co-ed and all-girls believe they are inspiring a net greater number of people, especially those who may need that inspiration the most.

Course, as a male I CLEARLY can't understand this problem.

The concept of privilege is such that those in a majority class are inherently less able to perceive social difficulties that oppressed groups face. It requires active effort to observe as well as listening to the concerns and actions of those groups (in this case, women).