Discussion on All-Girl events

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

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.

While I agree a large part of the battle is getting more female FRC students (specifically, more of them involved with build, as they seem to dominate some of the other areas of many, if not most, teams), and getting to them young is definitely helpful, it's way too easy to say "well, it's something FLL will solve for us". Teams can and should do a better job at recruiting females. I've seen 50-person teams, coming from 2000-student schools have no females in the pits at competition across multiple years. My team comes from a 300-student all-girls school, and we manage to get 20-30 students every year. If we can get 10% of the girls in our school involved, why can't mix-gendered teams?

My personal hypothesis is centered around the way teams recruit. Show a robot! Robotics is fun! Look at a video of a competition! All ways to help drum up interest... but ways that can easily be intimidating. Like it or not, growing up as a male is much different than growing up as a female. I witnessed it growing up - I played with Lego's, built model planes, helped my dad and grandfather build stuff, and did countless related stuff with Boy Scouts. My sister, on the other hand, had her easy bake oven, dolls and such. She never built anything. Many (most?) girls today get treated the same way, forced into those stereotypical gender activities. Sure, in the long run programs like FLL will help as they grow. But right now today, we should recognize one thing: robotics can be intimidating. Someone may have an interest, but look at it and say "I don't know how to do that", or "man, I wish I had gotten involved in FLL years ago so I could do that". We need to emphasize with our recruitment training. Emphasize that everyone who starts is a beginner that doesn't know anything, and the whole point of the team is to train you in the tools, give you the knowledge, and help you figure it out. Do whatever you can to lower that barrier to entry (especially since it's almost entirely a perceived barrier and not an actual one) and then to encourage people to keep on with it once they get in the door.