Discussion on All-Girl events

[Nathan Streeter]

I approve of 234 having a female-focused event to try to ensure that girls and women are getting fair chances to step into various roles... I hope all teams are putting talent first though for role selection during most of the season... and ensuring EVERYONE has an opportunity to gain the skills for the roles they want.

Girls/women should be encouraged to pursue whatever field they want... just as boys/men should be encouraged. Since FIRST deals with STEM most, we should be encouraging girls/women and boys/men. Being cognizant of the fact that STEM fields are largely male-dominated, this may at times involve particularly encouraging girls/women... under the assumption that they're more likely to be discouraged by the male-dominated atmosphere. Really though, I think the bigger battle is probably in getting more female FRC students... by the time kids are in high school, they often already have a positive or negative impression of robotics, science, and math. This is where the academic system, toys targeted for boys vs girls, parenting, and younger programs like FLL really come in.

That said, I would like to make another point... There's nothing inherently wrong with having more of a particular gender in a profession. Every profession should be made welcoming to both genders (and all races and all socioeconomic backgrounds), but just getting to a 50/50 ratio in the nifty infographic that Karthik shared won't make society any better inherently. Making every profession more welcoming will make society a better place though... and hopefully as a result we'll have happier and more capable people in every profession and a lot of those ratios will be a little less split. If they're not less split though, I won't lose any sleep.

What I do have a problem with - and what does concern me - is when people are subconsciously OR intentionally selected based on their race/gender/religion/socioeconomic background. Maybe this is a girl or a boy being passed over by a sexist employer (instead hiring a less-qualified applicant of a different gender) or maybe it's an admissions counselor trying to meet a quota/ratio and so selecting someone of a particular gender or background. College admissions and the job market are not the times to be trying to push demographics one way or the other... I want the best doctors, engineers, business leaders, scientists, teachers, politicians, etc. If we want to push demographics in one direction or another, organizations should be working to motivate and equip people of all types prior to those critical junctures (as FIRST does, and tries to continue doing better).