Female Captains and Girls on FRC Teams

[Christopher149]

857 is one of those teams that has had big swings in female membership, and it's always (well, as long as I've been around, anyway) been light (never swinging past 50/50 to a male minority). We've usually had a mostly-to-entirely male mentoring group. The numbers are a bit better this year with 3 girls on the team to about 15 guys. Back in 2010?, we had 5 or 6 girls, and the driver/operator pair was two sisters.

Having more girls might be nice, but we can't fight every battle (inspiring any students, regardless of gender, can be hard enough!).

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

We don't distinguish between gender because leadership has nothing to do with thee amount of chromosomes in ones body.

Males and females have the same number of chromosomes.

[holygrail]

On our team, 1939, two of our 3 captains, marketing lead, videography lead, graphic designer, safety captain, driver and drive team coach (who took us to championships) are all girls.

Don't get me wrong, boys still have prominent roles as well, but essentially every girl on our team has taken a leadership position. They earned these positions, and they do a great job. As with any group of teenagers, there can be drama at times, but everyone on the team generally values the dedication and contributions of others. I just hope we can maintain a strong female presence on the team. We have some good female mentors, but I really have to recruit to keep the numbers close to balanced between boys and girls. As it is, we are about 35% girls now, but a couple of our female leads are graduating this year.

[Abby341]

This is actually something my team is super proud of. Female involvement in our team is very high. We've had a history of female captains, of course a majority of our history is male captains but this year the girls are really stepping up our game. I'm one of 5 captain on our team, 3 of us are girls. 8 of our sub team leaders are girls too. 26 of our 58 members are girls were really close to 50-50. Our team hosted a girl scout program to get young girls involved in FIRST and STEM. My team never really lets gender get in the way of things. Sometimes there have been arguments that a girl may get a leadership position because they needed a girl to balance it out, but generally my team is super chill and unbiased when it comes girls in leaderships positions. One of our head coaches is a girl, so there's hope. Our operator his year is a girl, but i have seen a lack of representation of women on drive teams, even if girls are way better a driving . If there is a lack of girls being represented it would be in the drive booth.

[xXhunter47Xx]

Originally Posted by inkling16

Males and females have the same number of chromosomes.

Unless you have a certain disease.
It doesn't matter if you're XY or XX, you're all the same.

We only have 2 girls on our team, it's rather awkward because of the amount of men. Testosterone and time constraints don't go well together. Late nights and lots of work make you really on edge.

[JoeWithTheSpecs]

We've got a fair amount of girls on the team this year, 22 girls on a team of 75, both numbers constantly growing with each year. Out of our 15 sub-team leaders, eight are girls. Five are leaders of business teams, and three are leaders of engineering sub teams, although, both of our team captains are guys.

Personally, I don't see a difference in leadership between the girls of the teams and the boys of the team. They all get their teams on task and are hard workers so....

We do have some competitions where a girl drive team is required, so when we go to these girls-only competitions we call the girls on our team "EveBots".

I personally am proud to say that three of my six sisters have been on our team though (with one of them potentially moving to another team in North Carolina once the rest of the family moves).

[ehoyla]

We are proud to say team 1311 is now OVER half females and every leadership position is filled by a female except for one. Our girls are extremely motivated and awesome. I think that the key to motivating girls is to really push them. You have to tell them to do something because they won't do it by themselves. Keep giving them things to do and soon enough they are telling others what to do. Promise it works every time!!

[Spatel7793]

I'm from New York and when I was in high school, there were two teams, 1155 and 2265. One was officially a co-ed team, and there was the all-girls team.

Speaking from experience, this causes a problem. As much as we love to promote STEM for women, having an all girls team creates a bad public image for the brother team. It looks like one team doesn't allow girls and sends them over to the all-girls team. You have to explain to everyone that while yes we are a co-ed team, all the girls are on that all-girls team. It perpetuates the "boys vs girls" feud and personally I think it's stupid.

That being said, I see the benefits of having an all girls team. You can put girls in leadership roles because I will be honest in saying that when I was captain, there were definitely people on my team who didn't respect our sister team. There were no girls on the co-ed team during that time. They automatically went over to the Iron Maidens (2265). On that team, there were pretty good leaders by the time I graduated. During 2010, they even made it to Championships. I myself had a pretty good relationship with 2265 so there were hardly any issues. I even helped them scout during regionals.

As for recruiting more students, there are definitely people on teams that you could do without. And don't give me that self-righteous speech of "Oh you should include everyone...." Out of necessity for members, you have to take in some people who you know could be trouble down the road. If we had had only one co-ed team, a truly co-ed team, I'm certain it would have been fantastic. There were smart, dedicated people of both genders who on a single team would have done well. It's definitely a case of united we stand divided we fall. Divided is just not good.

If the choice is up to me, I don't care whether you're male or female. If you step up, do your part well, and are a good person, you can lead. So what if you're called catty or bossy? It's only because you step up where others do not. They may not like being told what to do, but how else are things going to get done? It's a team game, not a one man or woman army.

[Jon Stratis]

I just came across an article that describes the situation this thread is talking about fairly well.

http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in...1-f0feafdd1394

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Spatel7793

If the choice is up to me, I don't care whether you're male or female. If you step up, do your part well, and are a good person, you can lead. So what if you're called catty or bossy? It's only because you step up where others do not. They may not like being told what to do, but how else are things going to get done? It's a team game, not a one man or woman army.

I like what you said, but this part (emphasis mine) I feel like I needed to respond to.

The problem is that you wouldn't call a guy 'catty' or 'bossy' if he were in charge. You'd call him 'driven' and 'a leader'.

It's a really unfortunate double standard in our society.
There's a great Pantene ad about this that illustrates the point I'm trying to make: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOjNcZvwjxI

As a woman, who even as a high school student was a leader on my team and in other subsections of my life, I couldn't print some of the things I've been called just for stepping up and taking care of work that needed to be done. It's part of the culture- within FIRST, and out in the real world too - that we need to change.

Edit:: I have more thoughts on this thread, but I've gotta head to class. Perhaps later.

[Bob Steele]

I didn't really think much about this until I was sitting in our leadership team meeting one day and noticed that of the 8 student leads.... 6 are female.

This includes the overall team student lead and the pit captain...
We are proud that we have a greater percentage of girls on our team than the overall percentage of girls attending our school.

It didn't start that way though... we worked in the first few years to attract more and more girls.

[IronicDeadBird]

Took a while for anyone to notice what was said but now that what I did say was noticed I will admit that leadership roles have nothing to do with what gender you have, if you are an introvert or extrovert, there are all sorts of things that make a good leader. Conformity be darned a leader to me needs a way to sense what is going on, the ability to calmly react, and just competence. Who cares how you get it done as long as you get it done? (I mean within reason we aren't going The Prince in here.)

[Animal Control]

Our Team has 5 female students and all of our coaches are female (3 of them) but there are 28 kids on our team. We have 7 male mentors one female.
So you are not alone.

[WaterClaw]

I walk around a lot in the pits and talk to a lot of teams. Some of them are all girl teams. Now, when I evaluate other teams, what I catch onto very quickly is anxiety and tension. We all want to win and react entirely differently to it. With high school students, there will also be an added variable of insecurity from how I'm looking at it. I see it in girls and boys alike.

What you're picking up on I think is a failure to communicate. When talking with the girls of teams in the pits, I can easily see how enthusiasm could be misinterpreted as over confidence or being confrontational. Body language is an art to read into, and one never truly mastered. Actions are different for every person and when you've been talking and taking stock of teams all day, you tend to revert to thinking from only your own perspective and interpretations as a pose to the intended message.

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by rmiko

I feel like when I go to competitions, I see the same pattern. A handful (at most) of driven females on co-ed teams, and the rest are in supportive roles (not that being in supportive role isn't extremely helpful and useful).

Just saying, you'll observe the same type of thing in guys. A few of the most dedicated guys are really in the thick of things, while the majority of guys are either in the stands or just finding tools. At least on our team, there are always only a few girls and guys that really "get it" and live and breath FRC, while most kids (regardless of gender) settle into more of a follower role. This is natural, and in my opinion, totally OK. Not everyone has to be 100% into FRC, and not everyone has to be a leader.