Attracting Females to STEM/FIRST

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Monochron

I see what you mean with this point, but I would argue that gender neutral recruiting can be just as effective as long as it is done right. Case in point, at one of our recent open houses I made a point to speak with most every girl who came by and give them more personal attention than the average boy. I asked them all what they are interested in, what they like to do, and what other teams or activities they participate in. Basically, I made the conversation much more personal with them and was able to pick out a few of their interests and say "Oh, we really need people interested in <blank> on our team" and list a couple examples of tasks/projects in that area. My goal was to make them feel necessary and needed and that their interests are incredibly valuable to us; that we need their passion.

Interesting. I could support this approach, but this is the exact definition of non-gender-neutral recruiting to me (since the techniques vary by gender, regardless of whether it's articulated to them as such). I suspect from his post that this is Andrew's definition as well.