Discussion on All-Girl events

[Chris is me]

I'm going to put aside directly responding to the ignorant and sexist comments coming exclusively from males who oppose this event in this thread to make a different point for a second. This doesn't mean I agree with them.

But consider this - even if you do think that this event is worthless, a great option is available to you and your team. For the low, low price of $0, you can choose not to attend this event and move on with your lives. That way you won't have to ever consider whether this event is sexist or hurts your team or anything like that. And if it's not your team and it's not your event, it's not your business, right? We say "live and let live" in threads about mentor built robots, but we can't in threads about having women attend a single day of competition without men? Just don't go to the event if it bothers you. Do you really think this event is catering to people who deny sexism against women exists?

This is a one day local off-season tournament for teams that want to give the full FRC competitive experience to women, without men intentionally or otherwise getting in the way of the students' experiences. Women who otherwise wouldn't get to be on the drive team, pit crew, scouting, volunteering, will get to at this event. Whether or not you think this is caused by intentional sexism, unintentional sexism, or you just think it's a giant crazy coincidence that the majority of key roles on FRC teams and key volunteers just happen to be male, in all of those cases women will get an opportunity they may not otherwise have by attending this event. For one day. At an off-season.

If you think this is sexist and unnecessary, I would encourage you to give this event a try, and if you really have to, just sign up for some other offseason and only let the boys go to that one (so it's "fair" to you, whatever). I bet if you compare and contrast the experiences your team gets at those two vastly different events, you'll learn quite a lot about gender dynamics and you'll learn more about subconscious bias.