Attracting Females to STEM/FIRST

[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.