Girls on Teams

[littlemissLish]

On team 342, we let our students choose what they want to do. we have 1 girl on drive team, 2 in mechanical(drive included), and 5 in chairmen's, website, and business. I am the safety captain.

[Brianna_G#839]

On team 839 Rosie Robotics we have 6 girls on our team and 24 students in all, and 4 out of the 6 are part of our 9 student executive board. Their roles are Director of Manufacturing, Director of Risk Management, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer. The other two girls are on our Engineering sub-team and our programming sub-team.

[Citrus Dad]

Over the last 4 years we've had 30-40% girls, about 50% on our travel squad, 4 girls as captains plus 2 more co captains. Our 2013 drive coach was a girl (we now use an adult). We also stage a WiSTEM conference in the fall.

Our girls were asked a couple of years ago about playing in all-girls matches at a regional, and they said, "no, we want to compete against the boys."

[Dibit1010]

Our lead mentor is a girl so if anything (even the tiniest thing) seems unfair she will not hesitate to say something. Also, we are all one big group of friends (or we're dating each other) so if something does come up it is really easy to talk about and fix it. It makes me so mad to see some girls being pushed aside at competition or in the build room- girls have super important skill sets!!! Listen to and let your girls help!!!

[Aaron Kurtz]

I don't have the exact number of girls on my team, although I know its close to even with guys, girls on my team do anything from marketing to fixing our robot in the pits, some program, some do mechanical work, and a few do electrical fixes. To me it feels like a pretty equal makeup. adding to that one of the co-captains is a girl.

[OccamzRazor]

3506 has about 25 students and 7 are female this year which is lower than our norm. Last year we were closer to the 50/50 split but we had a lot of graduates. Our drive system with 3-stage shifting gearboxes, electrical system, and first climber were built by females.

When this year is over we should have a high influx of female participants from our all girl FTC/FLL teams.

[emmabdalton]

We have 3 girls in The Riot Crew now. One has a lapsed membership, but when she's around she is fully into building and maintaining the robot in the pits. A second is on the build/pit crew and knows the robot really well. A third spends much of the build season on spirit, but is our operator this year, which is fantastic.

When I was on the team (a decade ago) none of the girls were much into building or in the pits, but we had a great human player, two girls in the business / organization area, and I worked almost exclusively on the team's website. I think we've made a huge improvement, but should get more girls on the team.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

10 of our 50 students are girls. We have girls on Mechanical, Electrical, Finance, Imagery, Communications and Outreach, and multiple involved in Leadership. We even had 2 audition for Drive Team (although neither made it). Most perform key roles on the team. Like without these girls, our team wouldn't function.

[Liam Fay]

37% of our team are girls, and that includes two out of three build leads and both presidents, themselves being involved in design and programming before their presidencies.

Our drive team is male human player, male operator, male driver, female coach. Pit is four girls and two guys.

While both our business VPs are female, one is also the pneumatics lead, and our social media lead is a male.

[annzabelle]

About 40% of our active members are girls, including 2 of our 3 co captains, our electrical/pneumatics lead, and our mechanical lead(me!). This percentage is pretty constant throughout our subteams, including our business team, drive team, and pit crew. Also, our only mentor who is a mechanical engineer is female.

When I joined the team, my freshman year, I was the only active female member by the end of build season. The next year we didn't recruit any students who stayed active(we had a clique of seniors who did everything). I ran the interest meetings my junior and senior years, and we saw a huge increase in female retention. In one year, we went from 10% female to 40% percent female(we're a small team) among our active members. This year, we saw another increase in general student retention, but a less dramatic increase in female students.

What we've learned from this is that recruiting female students is easier if you have female leadership. Girls are more likely to stay active beyond the first meeting if they see other girls having active roles in technical areas. We are hoping to increase female representation further by doing presentations to girl scout troops(our lead mechanical mentor is the leader of her daughter's troop) and the GEMS(girls excelling in math and science) club at our school.