Attracting Females to STEM/FIRST

[popnbrown]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

I think the issue might be that teenage boys generally don't have a problem asserting themselves in a situation and grabbing all of the time and resources.

I actually think this is a bigger issue than having a continuous program. As I've seen, a lot of girls join FRC teams but slowly drop out of the STEM aspect of FIRST. It attributes to why you see more girls do more of the business development/outreach aspects of teams. There's just a different personality that people develop when "in the shop".

From what I can tell a lot of teams that fare well with girls, also have good mentor-ship. Just like a shy or challenged student, I think for most girls it just takes more/better support or time.

We are going to focus more on allowing more space and time for the girls to get comfortable. It also will be good for the boys to learn better social skills in all settings.

^ great idea but how? Are you guys looking at starting earlier for girls or doing separate training session for them? I find it hard (not with girls) but other shy students to get them to contribute equally during full team meetings.



Another interesting thing that I've heard/would like to read more about (probably will if I remember tonight) is biological differences if there are any or whether the majority of the gender differences comes because of societal norms. It seems as though at a young age, toys are also very gender-biased with girls playing a lot of things that are creative (tea/house) and boys playing with things that seem to be more structured and work a certain way. I'm curious (and I'm sure there are studies) as to why this is. I found this TED Talk interesting (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d77mMXahsME), as a mother she has an interesting perspective of having a baby boy vs. a baby girl.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by popnbrown

Another interesting thing that I've heard/would like to read more about (probably will if I remember tonight) is biological differences if there are any or whether the majority of the gender differences comes because of societal norms. It seems as though at a young age, toys are also very gender-biased with girls playing a lot of things that are creative (tea/house) and boys playing with things that seem to be more structured and work a certain way.

This section interests me. I've always thought boys' toys inspire creativity (building blocks) while girls' toys are pretty concrete (dolls). Also these toys reinforce a spatial awareness in boys and nurturing in girls.
I'm intrigued that you think the opposite. Creativity in roleplaying rather than creativity in creation.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by popnbrown

I actually think this is a bigger issue than having a continuous program. As I've seen, a lot of girls join FRC teams but slowly drop out of the STEM aspect of FIRST. It attributes to why you see more girls do more of the business development/outreach aspects of teams. There's just a different personality that people develop when "in the shop".

I think the important step here is to move girls into leadership roles. We'll have a female captain for the third year in a row.

Originally Posted by popnbrown

^ great idea but how? Are you guys looking at starting earlier for girls or doing separate training session for them? I find it hard (not with girls) but other shy students to get them to contribute equally during full team meetings.

The most important aspect is giving girls more time to participate and being conscientious about reaching past the first volunteer. It involves more mindfulness. It's almost making student leaders aware of taking these steps--leading by example.

[one_each]

When my oldest daughter joined the team, she was half the girls on the team. One of the male students (who is now an excellent mentor and RI) handed her a piece of wood and said, "we need this cut x by y". She didn't have a clue how to do it so he showed her how to measure and cut. The next time they needed something cut it was handed to her and she did it on her own.

Don't treat the girls any different then you treat the guys. Give everyone a chance to learn each aspect and let them gravitate to what they like. My oldest daughter is now considering a career in Engineering because of her involvement on the team.

This year our team was about 50/50 male/female and, with my youngest daughter and her friends joining next year, we may have more young women on the team then young men.

[Toa Circuit]

Originally Posted by AndrewPospeshil

One thing I want to point out is that just saying "omg don't just encourage girls to join encourage EVERYONE to join!" is a relatively fair argument for encouraging shy students to stand up and become leaders, but it doesn't help girls specifically at all. Really, most actions that aren't specifically aimed at helping girls join/stay with FIRST is going to lead to a decline. Because gender-neutral recruitment/encouragement really draws in mostly boys, as STEM is still a male-dominated field, and is seen as a "manly" thing. To encourage girls to become leaders in STEM you really have to bring them in specifically.

Now Monochron makes a very good point; recruiting girls because you need diversity or statistics or whatever is worthless. It tells them "we want you only to be able to say we have you, we don't actually care what you gain out of this." Which is very bad, obviously. But at the same time, just gathering people to FIRST teams yields mostly guys in most cases. A masculine-associated activity is not going to bring many women unless you destroy the stigma that building is for men. There is no blanket solution for bringing girls into FIRST because girls are vastly different people and aren't some "species" to "understand." The simple answer is to encourage girls as individuals, and don't make them join because they're female and you need females (for your purposes), but for them to challenge themselves, get benefits that men have that they might not have before, and so they can get the full advantage afforded to them (for THEIR purposes). Even if you just have each girl on your team bring one or two of their friends onto the team next year, this can have a positive effect because these girls will be joining the team already knowing they have a friend or two, and won't be completely alone.

TL;DR: Make girls understand that this is an incredible opportunity. Don't recruit them because they're female, recruit them because everybody deserves to be a part of FIRST.

Agreed mostly.
If a team is 90% boys and 10% girls, whatever. If that's the opposite, whatever. If it's equal, whatever. A good program is a good program regardless of how many males or females it has involved. A program that focuses on equality is prone to produce those 'token minorities', and that's even worse since it leads to further enforcement of stereotypes and demeaning of individuals. A segregated approach to recruiting only leads to segregation, in my experience.

[Moon2020]

Originally Posted by Littleswimmer14

Any suggestions on how we can help encourage them to sign up?

I just saw some information on how to build those and thought it looked pretty interesting. What was the event and how long was that specific workshop?

We started a joint program with the local engineering magnet middle and magnet high school. Reaching out to the general public is more difficult and takes way more organization and advertising (I can't stress time in advance to advertise enough). Thus, I am going to suggest reaching out to the local Girl Scouts, Boys and Girls Club, 4-H, day care/childcare centers, etc. or just do the workshop within a local teacher's classroom as a guest speaker on career day/teach-in day/science day.

The workshop can take anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes. It really depends on how much you want to talk and how much help the workshop leader has in the room to help the students troubleshoot the batteries/pager motors.

For 170 students (35 students per class with 3-4 adults to help), you will need to order parts for 200 kits. By shopping around on the internet for the parts, the cost should be about $200. The 10-15% parts overage is needed because not all the pager motors/batteries will work or the students will accidentally 'disable' their pager motor by various methods of handling it. The toothbrush handles will need to be cut off in advance. We placed each KOPs in snack-sized ziplock bags.

We take a roll of paper with us to put on the tables to protect them from the hot glue (about 8 to 10 hot glue guns), a couple power strips are a must, and set-up time to let the glue get hot before the first class. We also do the safety briefing that the glue is hot and the students have to be careful not to burn themselves with it. Also, make sure to have a package of glue sticks.

[thegnat05]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

I think the important step here is to move girls into leadership roles. We'll have a female captain for the third year in a row.

The most important aspect is giving girls more time to participate and being conscientious about reaching past the first volunteer. It involves more mindfulness. It's almost making student leaders aware of taking these steps--leading by example.

I agree with this 100%. This year was my first year being an official captain and last year I really started to spread the word about robotics. This year we had 6-8 girls that showed up to meetings regularly. Last year we had 1. Having dedicated females in leadership roles that are passionate about what they do will draw more people in. I find myself constantly talking about my team as well as other teams in the community to my friends who aren't in robotics. Some of them even came to support the team at regionals and are joining next year! Having a girl as the one who would speak at meetings and outreach events around the school seemed to make girls more comfortable in joining this male-heavy sport.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Toa Circuit

Agreed mostly.
If a team is 90% boys and 10% girls, whatever. If that's the opposite, whatever. If it's equal, whatever. A good program is a good program regardless of how many males or females it has involved. A program that focuses on equality is prone to produce those 'token minorities', and that's even worse since it leads to further enforcement of stereotypes and demeaning of individuals. A segregated approach to recruiting only leads to segregation, in my experience.

I think you're missing the point of this discussion. Currently women are underrepresented dramatically (not just ~45%) and their is a dearth of girls in the STEM education pipeline. The point is not to focus on a final objective with a fixed % (a failure of the Title IX sports program enforcement in my view), but rather to focus on WHY girls aren't participating. Having a "good program" that continues to do what it did in the past and is still 90% boys is actually a failure by this measure. What we need to do is to change the culture of these programs. This probably means reigning back the brashness of many of the boys who like to join robotics teams and then feed each others' egos. It means focusing on improving social networks and events on the teams. There will be side benefits--many of these boys will have improved social skills as well as better technical knowledge.

Acknowledging that current behavior by boys on these teams can be driving away girls may be uncomfortable for some, and teen age boys don't like to be told that they should reconsider how they behave and interact. But that's what is as the core of changing the FRC culture.

[caboosev11]

Probably one method that's taken for granted is telling girls that STEM activities isn't just for boys. Most of the time, they have doubt and would probably feel like there aren't any other girls in the team. Give an example of a girl in the team who has made massive contributions. It does work.

[popnbrown]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

I think the important step here is to move girls into leadership roles. We'll have a female captain for the third year in a row.

So interesting you bring this up, 2/4 captains of a team I'll keep undisclosed, are girls, but they both take on more roles in the non-STEM aspects of the team. While at least one of them was initially very active in building the robot.

My impression is that they are probably the MOST excited about FIRST, but are overwhelmed by the boys that are REALLY into building. I don't know the dynamics of the team very well, but there's certainly a subconcious gender conflict happening that keeps things separated.

[popnbrown]

Originally Posted by Taylor

This section interests me. I've always thought boys' toys inspire creativity (building blocks) while girls' toys are pretty concrete (dolls). Also these toys reinforce a spatial awareness in boys and nurturing in girls.
I'm intrigued that you think the opposite. Creativity in roleplaying rather than creativity in creation.

I suppose you're right. I will say, that girls still need to come up with what to do with dolls, and invent story lines or whatever else.

Perhaps the better idea to compare is how rigid the boundaries for the toys are. It seems like boys' toys (building blocks, car tracks) work a certain way, but girls' toys (dolls, tea sets) require going beyond the limitations or perhaps maybe it's the girls that go beyond the limitations rather than the toy "requiring it".

Well...one thing's for sure, there are differences in the toy sets, and I wonder if that alters things. Playing with dolls vs. cars, I can definitely see how that would change you. Dolls are more of a social toy vs. cars are more of a "engineering" (not the right word) toy.

Hmm, perhaps that's the difference I'm trying to allude to, and this is something CitrusDad mentioned about girls being more socially aware than boys.

[Jasmine Zhou]

I've hesitated to post here because I'm pretty sure I'm an edge case, or at least, not representative of any sort of majority of girls.
I wish my experience with STEM as a young girl were typical. When I was seven, I asked my dad to teach me how to talk to computers- and he tried. I wanted to be a fairy princess, then found out that engineering and science were essentially magic. I had a big sister in STEM. I had a close friend (also female) who I moved ahead in math with. And I was always, always encouraged.

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

From my team's experience, sometimes you just need a critical mass of girls. It can be extremely intimidating to be a female walking into a male-dominated team.

Yes. This is where I had an advantage my first year- I've always been somewhat socially oblivious, so I didn't quite notice. For another girl on our team, she saw it as a challenge and loved breaking expectations. But we were probably outliers, and there were others who left. Out team's better about it now, with about 30-40% of our members being female, a few female mentors, and about half of our student leadership being female.
(If you're curious, for 2014-15: captain- female; co-captain- female. Subteam leads: mechanical design- female, machining/fabrication- female, electrical- male, robot programming- female, app (scouting) programming- male, business/media- male. I'll pull out the gender ratios by subteams from 13-14 later.)
We're going into our third year with a female captain. The first year with a female captain was about the same time we reached that critical mass. I don't know which one caused the other, but I'm happy about both.

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Girls and boys grow up in very different worlds. I got experience with machines and tools early as part of just being a boy - I build birdhouses and toolboxes in cub scouts, I helped my dad replace light fixtures and run cable around the house, and had all sorts of opportunities to do such "manly stuff". The girls we get in our program don't have those opportunities.

At some point, I realized that I had already been exposed to many important lessons of FRC, though in a different medium. I'd learned to sew, knit, crochet, and spin at a young age, and had already been unconsciously using what I'd learned there: iteration, problem-solving, meticulousness, necessity of simplicity, deadlines, need to understand the lower level, design requirements, practicing, consequences, putting things back where they came from, importance of mentors, healthy respect for but not fear of power tools.
I really wish I had noticed the similarities earlier. As soon as I did, I gained a level of confidence that helped me.
It would be a good idea to reach out to the yarn/fiber/fabric communities. There are a lot of good potential students there, many of them female.

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

I think the issue might be that teenage boys generally don't have a problem asserting themselves in a situation and grabbing all of the time and resources. (The cover story for the latest Atlantic Monthly discusses this type of issue.) We noticed this and tried to control how the boys jumped in without waiting for others to participate. This was a particular issue among our programmers. Teen girls tend to be more concerned about the social situation and to be more deferential to others. Shy boys are more willing to tolerate overly assertive boys (remember that often they are friends) while shy girls may find it too intimidating.

(Note: Mr. McCann is one of my team's mentors.)
My first year I managed to pretend my way out of being shy, and I stayed, but I've never been quite as assertive as I needed to be. As the team captain in 2013-14, even with all the support I needed, this was a bit of a problem. I don't know if that personality quirk is because I'm a girl, but...
If I hadn't been a girl, would I have learned to always be accommodating and be a good hostess? Learned to walk a half step behind anyone who I thought of as in a position of authority, usually including anyone older or taller than me? To wait for the invitation, then for a fairy to fix my problems? To not draw attention to myself to avoid being labelled a girl?
Some of those would have happened no matter what gender I was or am. Others I'm not so sure about. The culture that little girls (including me) grow up in often doesn't help us in historically male fields.

Originally Posted by Littleswimmer14

I'm wondering if hands-on STEM focused camps could help attract females to STEM?

I don't have much experience here, but for me the answer was yes, sort of. Some made me super excited about STEM, including COSMOS (coed, one month) and Expanding Your Horizons (all female, one day) and some from our local science center. Others... well, let me just say that one reason why I'm in FRC is because I did a summer program with lego robots and I absolutely hated them.

One last thought.
If you offer me an opportunity because I'm a woman, I'll still take it. I'm going to take every opportunity that comes my way, because I know I'll need to take advantage of all of them in order to get where I want to go. If I find out that it's because of my gender... well, I'll still take it, but don't expect me to be happy about it.

[Jpatterson1710]

Originally Posted by Littleswimmer14

How does the 15 number break down in terms of the areas the girls are involved on the team?

We get that question a lot actually. There is a fairly even distribution. We do have more girls in non-build positions, however, most of our team is in a non-build position. Our team tends to focus on other things. As far as drive team, we have had a girl on drive team the past three consecutive years, and have had them on it in years before that too. At offseason events we try to get completely female drive teams out there.