Q&A Discuss: Girls on Teams

[Collin Fultz]

cyberblue is very proud of the girls on the team. we (like all teams) have girls who don't do much (of course some guys don't do much either) but we also have a girl who is lead on electronics, and a girl who will be the first one in there to burn her hand or cut herself wherever needed. go stanish!

[m3ch4num470r]

Our team is almost all boys, but we have five girls who come with some consistency. Of those five, one is President, one if vice president, and one is treasurer and head of scouting. If there's a lack of opportunity for girls on other teams, we certainly don't share it on 449.

[EricVanWyk]

On the team I mentored in college, we had a trio of young women who ruled supreme. Simply put, they were the most motivated students we had. I'm reasonably confident that if I had told them they couldn't make the robot fly, they would have proven me wrong. Over the years the team had between 4 and 7 students total.

On the team I participated in during highschool, there was a much wider spread in the responsibilities of the females. We had upwards of 50 students total, so the statistics averaged out a bit. We had a lot of strong young women that did everything anyone else did. Unfortunately, we had a few other girls who brought stereotypes with them.

There are sexist people out there that will attempt to force young women to be girls. Hopefully, they are a dying breed. However, they are not 100% of the problem; It is the burden of young women everywhere to not be sexist against themselves. A few refrains of "I'm just a girl" and it becomes true.

I've had the pleasure of working with a lot of really smart/capable/fantastic women engineers. It is clear to me that gender doesn't play into engineering capability, only perceived capability.

[OZ_341]

This year we have a female captain, assistant captain, lead competition driver, booth coach, pit crew members, head of media, head of electrical and 2 out of 3 Chairman's presenters.

Generally our team runs about 40% female, but it just seems like the girls are always ready to "step up to the plate" and take on responsibility.

Way back in 2000 & 2001 we had a few guys give the girls a hard time for being in the shop. We quickly put an end to that behavior and have not had a problem since.

[ttldomination]

Well, our team also has females...and here are a few of the roles they hold.

1 is Vice President
2 of them are part of the pit crew.
1 of them is involved in community outreach.
1 of them is really involved in scouting.

The school representative/mentor is also a female. We have never had a problem with females on our team. Over the years team 1261 has encouraged females to join our team.

[jess523s]

I was the webmaster and media producer because I had the most experience as the Chief Technology Editor of the high school newspaper.
Us girls had the option of doing whatever we wanted, so I also helped with design, tried my hand at Autodesk, and helped with wiring when I needed to. I was also part of the pit crew at the Oregon Regional. As the webmistress, I also ended up doing a lot of communication with other teams.
I wouldn't think that any team would openly say girls aren't allowed to do shop and such. It's just easier for us to slip into doing what we supposedly do good: the whole human relations thing.
And so I suppose I did the same thing... this year. But that's only because I knew I had next year. I wanted to help this team do its best by doing what I know best. But even so, over the course of our team's short history, my knowledge and interest in the STEM fields has increased dramatically.
Now that I'm addicted to FIRST, next year I'm going to be the team captain, coach/teach the FLL kids, and so on. My personal goal is encourage girls not to be so scared of robotics, like I was when I switched out of my Introduction to Robotics class freshman year. My team and FIRST is doing a much better job at encouraging me to learn in these fields.
My second-in-command, the other returning senior next year, will also be a girl. Next year, OCPro seems like it's going to be predominantly female led. It shall be great, I tell you.



Cheerleading?... that's pretty sad.

[Master_Cheez]

Out here in Colorado, Alpine Robotics Team 159's got two female captains, one of them the head of programming and the other cocaptain of the team as a whole. Also, we've got two girls working on public outreach, and one who's one of the best we have in the shop.

[gnat89]

Out here in Austin, TX, estrogen is essential! I'm one of two female student project managers on the WHS Chap Robotics team. Each of our 9 females on the team (out of 34 students total) has taken on such a leadership role, utilizing both their organizational talents and technical expertise. In fact, only one of our subgroup leads is male (we have women heading such divisions as build, marketing/business, media, and education/outreach).

But our rise to these leadership roles could not have occurred without a support network, a network that was decidedly male. Like many have said, oftentimes girls will find themselves relegated to a second-tier status in technical fields due to their sheer lack of experience. But rather than denying us for our want of training, the males on our team embraced us and taught us instead, communicating the secrets of the shop. I've never been treated with anything less than complete respect. And though we've had to earn our positions, we women have always been acknowledged for our merit.

Just yesterday, when fundraising and distributing outreach information at our school district's 50th anniversary, multiple female engineers came up to me and told me how proud they were to see women excelling in robotics. They, themselves, had faced much resistance in their professions, but were excited to have passed the torch so successively on to a new generation.

Well, anyway, we've been quite lucky, having both strong women and supportive males. The gender divide is so non-existent that I'll work hours at a robotics event and not realize until it's over that I was the only female present.

Because we realize how much the pursuit of robotics has affected our lives, we've sought to extend the favor to female youth at the Ann Richards School for Young Women leaders. By exposing them to science and technology at a young age we hope to dispel any lingering misconceptions about estrogen and engineering.


(apologies for the length, this topic is close at heart )

Natalie "Gnat" Craik
Project Manager
Chap Robotics
Team 2468...Appreciate! (feel free to smile, we all do!)
Westlake High School
Austin, TX

whschaprobotics@eanes.k12.tx.us

[AdamHeard]

On 973, girls are allowed the same privileges as guys.

We had three this season, one was a valued leader and did a lot of hands on work with the robot (assembly, machining, etc...). One did a tad bit of software, but mostly ran scouting and did a pretty good job of it (I have high standards for scouting, and she met them). The final just painted our crate, but she wasn't really that active of a member on the team because of other conflicts.

[XaulZan11]

I would take these reponses with a grain of salt. There is a lot more motivation for a team that has girls playing a big role to respond, than teams that have girls forced to be cheerleaders. I'm not saying that these teams are lying, but that the teams that have problems with lack of girls are a lot less likely to respond. So, remember that voluntary samples are filled with biases.

As for 1732, the two years I was on the team, we were made up of just one school, which was an all-male school. This year, I know we included students from the all-femal school, but I was not around to answer the question.

[XaulZan11]

Opps...can someone delete this...

[JaneYoung]

This is a great read for insight into teams that are developing in this area and what some of the trouble spots are as well as some of the growth, initiative, and acceptance.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=19560

Also, gnat89 is spot on in describing these aspects of her team.
I've had the privilege of visiting them in their working environment, the classroom at Westlake High School, and I've met the team leaders. We'll be seeing some good things coming out of this LSR Rookie All-Star team.

[Karin1649]

My team is small (about 12 members, 3 of which are girls), and I'm the Co-Captain and Arm Operator...plus it's my first year on the team.

[Katie_UPS]

My team is about 20-25 kids (some kids are on/off)
And only three of them are girls.
Renee is one the two team captains- She also heads chairmans, logistics, outreach and media type things
Janelle is our Animation Captain (but she's trying to be familiar with the shop).
And I'm an aprentance (sp?) welder and a help-when-needed-in-the-shop person.

So with our team, the girls kinda fall into the steriotype, but we're working to break that.

[ingrid]

Well on my team the roles the girls have are earned. However, we do feel like sometimes guys take over so we recently had an all-girls team at the Los Angeles Regional. We left our boys at home and it was awesome. Our girls got to do every single job. We got to drive the robot and we also had to fix it everytime we broke it because there was no one else who would do it for us. I had the opportunity to be on the drive team and ever since then I can't leave the position!! Even when we are with the boys!! So I recommend that every team give the chance to the girls to perform hte different jobs on a team in order for them to realize if FIRST is for them or not.