Gender Equality: A Work in Progress

[Alyssa]

Recently, our team hosted a screening of Slingshot, the documentary about Dean Kamen, DEKA, and their attempt to solve the clean water crisis. In the documentary, he makes an early point that both women and men are welcome to be on his wall of personal role models and inventors. This sparked a conversation on our team about what female engineers in history we would put on our personal walls of STEM role models. Gender equality in STEM related fields has been an ongoing topic of discussion, and it’s something we are really passionate about. We are hoping to create a conversation around the issue of gender equality in STEM and create greater insight into the issue for ourselves and other teams.

Having role models to look up to is incredibly important and motivational. Qualcomm, a great sponsor of FRC teams in San Diego and globally, does a great job of addressing the gender gap in STEM fields by hosting annual events for students to network with women in science and technology. Although our team does not have a 50/50 ratio, Team 2485 makes working toward gender equality a priority and recognizes that there is more that our team can be doing to help.

That leads us to the main point of this post. These conversations have reinvigorated our team’s drive to work towards equality. We know a lot of teams are doing great things to address these issues, and we are always looking to improve our program. It would be great if teams could share any programs and/or strategies that they use to tackle this complicated issue.

[samfruth]

1710 created the "You Go Girl!" program a few years ago and continues to build off of it. I would say that the main objective of it is to inspire younger girls to get involved/generate some sort of interest in the field.

An FRC Newsletter form 2013 touched on it and our website contains more info as well.

[safiq10]

On Team 2950 we hold a near 50/50 ratio (I want to say that it is 57% girls), we have found one effective way is to actually start the two genders seperate and then slowly merge them.

We did this by starting an all girls engineering club and 2 all girls FTC teams. This allowed the girls to build basic skills without the powerhouse students and then they have to confidence to join in with the boy on our team for winter projects in preparation for FRC.

[angelah]

This is a big issue for me as a female mentor. I have been noticing the little things about FRC that can inhibit female participation (or, in some cases, just fail at improving female involvement), but that's a whole other thread.

I think as individual teams, recruitment of young women is the most visible thing that can be done, but just a small part of the strategy needed.

I have worked with my team to talk about the subtle ways behaviors and beliefs can drive young women away from a team. The young men are very receptive in my experience. These include changing the ways people speak to each other and treat each other's ideas, countering negative beliefs male students or mentors may have, etc.

We also work very hard to come along side young women on an individual basis when they are in the most vulnerable "girls aren't good at this stuff" years in late elementary and middle school. Our students coach FLL and FTC teams and work very hard to make connections with the girls on the teams and with keeping a positive environment for them as a whole.

[planetbrilliant]

I notice this to much on my team, which is kinda worrying. Like, a girl will attempt to help with building and later say she constantly feels excluded or belittled. We also tend to get pushed toward the more administrative jobs like attendence, financials, design, which, while being important, are not what some of us joined the team to do. Next year we plan on having everyone do like a google forms thing at the start detailing what they want to do, what they're interested in, etc, so we can make sure everyone is doing something they want to do. We also plan on marketing toward more girls and business classes, so we'll have people who are interested in business do that and people who want to work on the robot, can.

[stopyourself]

Originally Posted by planetbrilliant

I notice this to much on my team, which is kinda worrying. Like, a girl will attempt to help with building and later say she constantly feels excluded or belittled. We also tend to get pushed toward the more administrative jobs like attendence, financials, design, which, while being important, are not what some of us joined the team to do. Next year we plan on having everyone do like a google forms thing at the start detailing what they want to do, what they're interested in, etc, so we can make sure everyone is doing something they want to do. We also plan on marketing toward more girls and business classes, so we'll have people who are interested in business do that and people who want to work on the robot, can.

Eighty percent of girls in FRC work in the outreach/fundraising area, according to some FIRST publication I read. In our district (5 teams) we have 80% doing hands on work. This was not intentional, but I'm not sure how it ended up like that. Some of the teams do an approach where in the first year, a member has to do business or programming, and in the second they can opt for mechanical or electrical. Nearly all second-year members switch over.

[smurfgirl]

This is an area where mentors, leaders, and/or authority figures can make a big difference. In high school, my team's mentors encouraged me to go a little bit outside my comfort zone to try technical things and supported me through the process, leading to a positive experience. On the flip side, I've had many people in industry assume that I am not a "real engineer", or that I "couldn't possibly be interested in technical stuff". Of course, there are plenty of great people out there in the world too, but you can see how the frequent negative messaging can start to add up and push women out of STEM.

[Sperkowsky]

Our team runs on about a 40:60 ratio.

Our of our female members there is only one who is seriously interested in engineering. The rest do jobs like marketing, music development, cleaning, and sometimes nothing. This is their choice though. I wish some of the female members did more egineering but honestly if they have no desire then why push them.

[planetbrilliant]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Our team runs on about a 40:60 ratio.

Our of our female members there is only one who is seriously interested in engineering. The rest do jobs like marketing, music development, cleaning, and sometimes nothing. This is their choice though. I wish some of the female members did more engineering but honestly if they have no desire then why push them.

Okay, I am by no means targeting you and your team specifically and i might have misunderstood your statement, but I feel like lots of people kind of automatically assume that the girls aren't into engineering. Like a girl could be into engineering but when they get assigned into sub-groups they get pushed toward design, finance etc, and if they try to work on the robot they feel excluded or unwanted. This might not be purposeful on behalf of the manufacturing team, but intentional or not it is a problem. All four of the girls are interested in working on the robot, but instead they are pushed toward scouting, attendance, design, chairman's etc.

[Shrub]

Originally Posted by smurfgirl

(snip snop)
Of course, there are plenty of great people out there in the world too, but you can see how the frequent negative messaging can start to add up and push women out of STEM.

This is a big part of it, sadly. "Nerd" culture can be as elitist as anything else.

Originally Posted by planetbrilliant

might not be purposeful on behalf of the manufacturing team, but intentional or not it is a problem. All four of the girls are interested in working on the robot, but instead they are pushed toward scouting, attendance, design, chairman's etc.

This ties into this I promise. Microagressions-little statements/actions that are common in speech/life and "accidentally" hurtful-are common in normal life, and there is no difference for people in FRC. (an example is assuming female-presenting members aren't on build, hardy har har.) Just being aware of microagressions can change a lot on a team's culture. Communication is also really important when confronting stuff like that.

Passion is also instrumental. If a person on the team is passionate about something they are not typically expected to be passionate of, so be it. FIRST is about reaching out even if you don't fit a STEM archetype and learning not just about engineering, but other things one may be interested in. I'm not saying it's bad to push students if they have potential, but on the other side, don't try and discourage a student from their passion because they might be stereotypically better at something else (does that make sense).

yay opinions

[Steven Smith]

Decent article by Scott Adams I read this morning. Not specific to STEM, but just an open discussion on gender bias in the workplace and how it relates to pay-gap.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1140555...-the-workplace

[346CADmen]

As a male mentor, maybe my appreciation of this thread may differ. I don't know what "girls" are up against, having not been in that place.
That said, our team had a female CEO last year, two young ladies this year provided most of our precision machining work. it also looks as if next years CAD lead will be female. I can't imagine what is holding ladies back in FIRST, except maybe themselves. And please, I say that not to demean anyone or any team, but to encourage all to use their talents and desire to achieve their goals.

[moamomen]

A lot of people have already touched upon several good points. There are very subtle ways that girls can be excluded from team activities, and it's even harder to point these things out as they're unnoticeable unless you're the one being targeted. There are some excellent programs out there that are doing amazing things to provide better representation for women and minorities, but in general, the STEM community needs to change.

The STEM community can be horribly exclusive. There's this overall impression that you have to be this natural genius to participate. I'm sure you've come across these people at one point in your life, but there are a couple of elitist gatekeepers in STEM that just enforce that stereotype, and take it upon themselves to weed out people that they consider not to be up to par. Which is really silly, because there shouldn't be an entry-level for appreciating STEM. Advances in STEM are meant to benefit everyone, so even the most basic-level of understanding deserves to be validated and encouraged.

To fight sexism the STEM community, we can’t only advocate for the girls who already excel. We also need to actively support and engage the girls who want to participate, but aren’t conventionally good at math and sciences, even if they don’t end up being STEM majors.
tl;dr http://goo.gl/mnBGvP

[chris_odonnell]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Our team runs on about a 40:60 ratio.

Our of our female members there is only one who is seriously interested in engineering. The rest do jobs like marketing, music development, cleaning, and sometimes nothing. This is their choice though. I wish some of the female members did more egineering but honestly if they have no desire then why push them.

Brother, I'll be blunt, this is exactly the sort of attitude that we must avoid. You can safely assume that someone pushed you / helped you to become interested in STEM. Why? Because you're a guy. Why can you not help out your fellow colleagues and spread some STEM interest around. Everyone deserves an opportunity. This is the vision statement of FIRST after all. We have to ask why are the women members not interested in engineering? Only a small reason is some students just want a place to hang out, and so don't have much interest in the team. But the big reason really is the subject of this thread and its poignant title. It's quite likely that simply being the wrong gender, they were never pushed into STEM starting at a young age.

The root cause of gender equality in STEM is a cultural problem, at least in the US. In all aspects of life, boys and men are way more likely to be welcomed into STEM. Can't find the article at the moment, but the ACM had an interesting article on gender equality by country and tried to analyze the findings. Good article though, it also echoed some of the stories being shared in this thread. But how do we fight a culture problem (I say "we" since gender equality is not a women-only problem): well we start with ourselves of course:
[Now's a good time to duck]
So men, hack your brains! Learn to be fully conscious of your words, actions, and behaviors! Ensure that you are always inclusive / encouraging / respectful to women with your words, actions, and behaviors. Remember to see the big picture. Remember STEM is not a boy's club, STEM truly is for everyone. Everyone can participate in STEM, it is the vision of FIRST.
[OK, done flinging wisdom around, you can stop ducking now]

Pretty good rant, eh?

[Hallry]

Something I noticed in the news today: