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

[Alexa Stott]

*puts on women's studies hat

Outside of cases where the team comes from an all girls school, girl scout troop. or another all girls organization, I actually disagree with having all girls teams. It was discussed in this thread about having two teams at the same school: one for girls and one for boys. I think this sends the message to young women that they can only succeed so long as they are segregated from the men.

It may seem like a good idea in that it would guarantee that the young women on the team would be able to fully participate. Though, as others pointed out when this thread was first started, it's almost like viewing being female as a handicap.

I think it's far more valuable to teach boys (and male mentors) on FIRST teams to value girls' input and to see them as equals than it is to remove girls from the equation entirely by putting them on a separate team. Girls should be in leadership positions based on meritt Segregating the genders just leads to further reinforcement of the that women cannot succeed in a male-dominated field.

Unfortunately, this is not FIRST's problem; it's a societal issue.