Discussion on All-Girl events

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by anfrcguy

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2680714/ supports that "the sexual dimorphism in the structure of the parietal lobe is a neurobiological substrate for the sex difference in performance on the Mental Rotations Test." In other words, neurobiological differences in the brain are likely causing the performance discrepancies.

I think the implied conclusions you are drawing from this study are a bit broader than the actual result shows. The implicit assumption is that the differences in neurobiology are the result purely, or predominantly, of biological sex's effect on brain development. But we already know that brain development is heavily influenced by a wide variety of outside factors, and it is impossible to isolate differently sexed people from social and environmental factors influenced by others' perception of their genders.

An oversimplified example: Say a boy and a girl go to the same preschool, which assigns the boys blocks to play with and the girls doll houses. These kind of external factors impact which parts of the brains are exercised during play and thus what part would foster growth. We can't isolate the variables enough to say what portion of the development is caused by something inherent to the human's sex and what portion is caused by differing life experiences based on being treated as a member of that sex's associated gender.

Even so, this point is kind of tangential - you can't use generalized trends to justify treating specific people differently. There are many women with better spatial reasoning with many men, but if sexist attitudes in society work from the generalization that women are weaker in that area than men, those women may not even get the chance to try and exercise the skills they have due to this perception. Social factors are everywhere. Events like all-girls events just try to eliminate those social factors for one day and let young women try whatever they want to try on a robotics team. For one day.

[anfrcguy]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I think the implied conclusions you are drawing from this study are a bit broader than the actual result shows. The implicit assumption is that the differences in neurobiology are the result purely, or predominantly, of biological sex's effect on brain development. But we already know that brain development is heavily influenced by a wide variety of outside factors, and it is impossible to isolate differently sexed people from social and environmental factors influenced by others' perception of their genders.

Good point. It's fair to say that further research is needed in order to conclude that this spatial ability disparity is nature and not nurture.

There are other performance differences between sexes that I feel would be more difficult to attribute solely to nurture. It's pretty known that the variance of male IQ is greater than the variance of female IQ. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...=rep1&type=pdf found that amongst the top 2% of IQ scores, there were almost twice as many males as females. Given that FRC is such an intellectual challenge, it wouldn't surprise me if the majority of students who choose to participate are pretty high on the IQ spectrum, which could perhaps explain why there are more male students than female students in the program.

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Even so, this point is kind of tangential - you can't use generalized trends to justify treating specific people differently

Exactly. I've thought about this more, and now the all-girl event in itself doesn't really bother me (although I disagree with the implications that all males need to be educated on unintentional bias). I just feel that sometimes males are actually at a steep disadvantage due to this "movement" to do whatever we can to get more females involved. There are less scholarships for males, and additionally, I've actually witnessed discrimination against males for Dean's list. Also, at one point when I was on a small team that happened to be all-male, judges had consistently asked "what have you done to try to recruit women," and even "why don't you have any women on your team?" Our team had limited member spots, so in recruiting members, our priority was to find people who would be capable (or willing to spend time learning), dedicated, and have plenty of time. After repeatedly receiving such comments, we talked about going out of our way to find females (who weren't interested in the first place) over more otherwise-deserving males (who were asking to be on the team) to avoid subjecting ourselves to such criticism in the future.

I guess my point is that we should just treat everyone equally, and that going out of our way to try to compensate is neither fair nor productive. If there is in fact an unequal nurturing epidemic (and at least some of the gender gap in FRC could be attributed to environmental factors), perhaps it would be best to address this at a younger age. I don't think treating women specially is good for anyone.

[Lil' Lavery]

Reading through this thread, it struck me how much of the discussion regarding female-centric events was taking place between males. Wil Payne made the same observation a few pages ago.

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

47 people have posted in this thread.
4 of those people publicly identify themselves as not being males.

Edit, 48/4.

Figured I'd give an update on where this lies now, based on my quick and imprecise tabulation.


56 (78.8%) of the individual posters in this thread have expressed themselves as males
140 (76.9%) of the posts in this thread were posted by male users

[MikLast]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Reading through this thread, it struck me how much of the discussion regarding female-centric events was taking place between males. Wil Payne made the same observation a few pages ago.




Figured I'd give an update on where this lies now, based on my quick and imprecise tabulation.


56 (78.8%) of the individual posters in this thread have expressed themselves as males
140 (76.9%) of the posts in this thread were posted by male users

It may be good to confine this to those who commented in relation to the thread (e.g. any of my comments in this thread) as this thread is a mess when it comes to staying on topic.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

56 (78.8%) of the individual posters in this thread have expressed themselves as males
140 (76.9%) of the posts in this thread were posted by male users

Does anyone know approximately what percentage of FRC students are male?

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

Does anyone know approximately what percentage of FRC students are male?

The latest study I see that stat in is 2011,
where the population of FRC team members is described as 30% female. However, if you're looking for the reference population for this thread, you'll likely want a stat for mentors as well. A stat for off-season active CD users would also be relevant.

Thread readers will likely want to review the various FIRST impact studies if you haven't; I'm surprised we haven't linked these yet.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by Siri

The latest study I see that stat in is 2011,
where the population of FRC team members is described as 30% female. However, if you're looking for the reference population for this thread, you'll likely want a stat for mentors as well. A stat for off-season active CD users would also be relevant.

Thank you.

If anyone had a reasonable stat for mentors or off-season active CD users I would also love to see it.

I would also like to see a unicorn someday, but since I think that is rather unlikely, I am comfortable looking at horses and letting my imagination fill in the rest.

[Karibou]

I've been avoiding posting in this thread because I didn't want to be the one to revive it after a week of inactivity, but for the sake of offering another female's perspective, here we go.

On the original topic (the panel discussions): I think that the post announcing the panel discussions could have been phrased differently, and I think it was taken the wrong way. I don't think the team/poster intended to insinuate that unintentional bias is something that only males are guilty of, but that is clearly how it was interpreted by several people. Unintentional bias is something that affects all groups, regardless of gender, age, skin color, sexuality, etc, but given that this is specifically an all-girls event, I assume that the main focus of this panel would be unintentional bias as it relates to gender, but it could also touch on other aspects of diversity. I could be wrong. But with that assumption, I think that the post would have been better as:
"Career, Opportunity, Education, and Challenges for Females in STEM"
"Unintentional Bias and Actions and the Impact on Diversity (focused on gender)"


On my experiences in HS/all-girl events: In high school, I had a very good experience on my FRC team. Not a lot of comments, actions, or other discrimination towards me based on my gender, and on the rare occasion that those things happened, the perpetrators were swiftly told in no uncertain terms that their comments were not appropriate. I was never told "you can't be in the shop/you can't be on the driveteam/you can't be on the pit crew/etc because you're a girl". I actually always wanted to be on the driveteam, but I proved very quickly that I was not very qualified in that department by driving our robot into a Christmas tree during practice time. There weren't any all-girls events in Michigan when I was in HS, but if there had been, I'm not sure my team would have attended them just because we probably wouldn't have been able to drum up enough commitment from the girls on our team - we were a small team (~25-35 active), and we'd need commitment from nearly all of the girls, and that would have been difficult for us to get with several of us doing fall sports.

I think that all-girls events are great, for the reasons others have highlighted in this thread - giving girls a chance to build confidence in an environment that turns many away because of both preconceived and perpetuated discrimination.

Here's a related post I made on here during my senior year of high school - funny how these topics repeat themselves.


On being a female engineer in the real world:
I graduated with a degree in Materials Science & Engineering, and now work as a metallurgist in a steel plant. While many other "typically male" fields have made great strides in diversity and inclusivity of women, steel is still very stuck in the past and is still very much a "boys club", which is off-putting and intimidating to a lot of women. It's a dirty, dangerous, rough and tumble environment that takes a lot of strength and dedication to stay in, for all genders.

I love the graphic that Karthik posted early in this thread, but as there's no breakout specifically for "steelworker", let me provide some insight. My plant, when operating at a good capacity, employs ~300 people. ~50 are salaried (managers, HR/office staff, and engineers), and the remainder are hourly (machine operators, millwrights, electricians, etc - this number can vary from 100-250). We have one female manager (in HR), and another non-manager woman who works in HR. There are no women in our maintenance department (in either salaried or hourly positions). I am the only female engineer in my plant. There are four female hourly workers, as far as I know. We're a very small plant, but it's not much better at larger facilities either, especially when you only look at employees who work "on the floor" (as opposed to solely in offices - accounting, HR, sales, supply chain, etc).

Basically, as a female, I stick out like a sore thumb.

(As an added bonus, I also have a college degree and am the youngest employee in my plant, so I stick out even more.)

And because of all of that, I know I'm treated differently. Some real-life examples from the past few weeks alone:

• Coworkers outright refusing to let me hold open a door for them (chivalry ain't dead, but it sure can be annoying sometimes)
• I was with two male coworkers one day, and we had to carry ~20lbs of samples across the plant. I was the one carrying most of the samples (I volunteered), and we were stopped THREE TIMES in a 1/4 of a mile by people commenting "why are you making the poor girl carry all those samples!?" (actual quote).
• Someone repeatedly handing me papers with my (male) manager's name written on them, knowing FULL WELL that I was the one responsible for handling the information that was on them, not my manager.
• Men apologizing after swearing or making off-color jokes in front of me (It's an industrial workplace. It happens.), or making comments like "I'd say something else, but there's a lady in the room", even though I established on day 1 that I don't mind the language. I know it's habit for many of the men to do it, but it's still a bias and still draws attention to how I'm different than them.

That's the tip of the iceberg, but you get the idea. Some of this is intentional, some is not, some is just habit on my coworkers' parts - many are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, have worked in this industry for 20, 30, 40 years, were raised to be chivalrous and overly respectful of women (compared to today), and/or are not used to women in positions of authority in their workplace. It's a generational thing. It takes time and thick skin to change minds when you're often a one-(wo)man band, and not everyone has patience and thick skin. I imagine these behaviors would be less prevalent if there were more women in my workplace, but this behavior is probably why a lot of women leave this industry. Chicken and egg.

I love my job. I love my coworkers. We joke about the gender disparity a lot. I'm not looking for sympathy or special treatment - I want to be viewed as an equal, not a unicorn. It gets better every day. But I have to actively work to be thought of as just "Kara" instead of "that girl". I hope that someday, this industry will be at the point where women don't have to do this, which IMO is why discussions and education on bias and inclusion are important (in moderation). It's a culture change thing. These discussions are important for everyone, no matter who you are and what field you're going into. This topic applies just as much to men in early childhood education (the most female-dominated field in the graphic Karthik posted) as it does to women in engineering.


On a different note, I think that someone earlier in this thread asked "why do people keep saying 'females' instead of 'women' or 'girls'?" and didn't get much of a response, so I'll offer one: personally, I don't feel comfortable referring to myself as either a woman or a girl. To me, a woman is still someone much older than me, old enough to be my mom, and a girl is someone still in high school or younger. As a young professional, I don't feel like I fit into either category, so I always refer to myself as just "a female". "Females" and "Males" also unquestionably encompass all ages, which is commonly the intent of using those words in these kinds of discussions.

[smitikshah]

Originally Posted by Karibou

I've been avoiding posting in this thread because I didn't want to be the one to revive it after a week of inactivity, but for the sake of offering another female's perspective, here we go.

On the original topic (the panel discussions): I think that the post announcing the panel discussions could have been phrased differently, and I think it was taken the wrong way. I don't think the team/poster intended to insinuate that unintentional bias is something that only males are guilty of, but that is clearly how it was interpreted by several people. Unintentional bias is something that affects all groups, regardless of gender, age, skin color, sexuality, etc, but given that this is specifically an all-girls event, I assume that the main focus of this panel would be unintentional bias as it relates to gender, but it could also touch on other aspects of diversity. I could be wrong. But with that assumption, I think that the post would have been better as:
"Career, Opportunity, Education, and Challenges for Females in STEM"
"Unintentional Bias and Actions and the Impact on Diversity (focused on gender)"


On my experiences in HS/all-girl events: In high school, I had a very good experience on my FRC team. Not a lot of comments, actions, or other discrimination towards me based on my gender, and on the rare occasion that those things happened, the perpetrators were swiftly told in no uncertain terms that their comments were not appropriate. I was never told "you can't be in the shop/you can't be on the driveteam/you can't be on the pit crew/etc because you're a girl". I actually always wanted to be on the driveteam, but I proved very quickly that I was not very qualified in that department by driving our robot into a Christmas tree during practice time. There weren't any all-girls events in Michigan when I was in HS, but if there had been, I'm not sure my team would have attended them just because we probably wouldn't have been able to drum up enough commitment from the girls on our team - we were a small team (~25-35 active), and we'd need commitment from nearly all of the girls, and that would have been difficult for us to get with several of us doing fall sports.

I think that all-girls events are great, for the reasons others have highlighted in this thread - giving girls a chance to build confidence in an environment that turns many away because of both preconceived and perpetuated discrimination.

Here's a related post I made on here during my senior year of high school - funny how these topics repeat themselves.


On being a female engineer in the real world:
I graduated with a degree in Materials Science & Engineering, and now work as a metallurgist in a steel plant. While many other "typically male" fields have made great strides in diversity and inclusivity of women, steel is still very stuck in the past and is still very much a "boys club", which is off-putting and intimidating to a lot of women. It's a dirty, dangerous, rough and tumble environment that takes a lot of strength and dedication to stay in, for all genders.

I love the graphic that Karthik posted early in this thread, but as there's no breakout specifically for "steelworker", let me provide some insight. My plant, when operating at a good capacity, employs ~300 people. ~50 are salaried (managers, HR/office staff, and engineers), and the remainder are hourly (machine operators, millwrights, electricians, etc - this number can vary from 100-250). We have one female manager (in HR), and another non-manager woman who works in HR. There are no women in our maintenance department (in either salaried or hourly positions). I am the only female engineer in my plant. There are four female hourly workers, as far as I know. We're a very small plant, but it's not much better at larger facilities either, especially when you only look at employees who work "on the floor" (as opposed to solely in offices - accounting, HR, sales, supply chain, etc).

Basically, as a female, I stick out like a sore thumb.

(As an added bonus, I also have a college degree and am the youngest employee in my plant, so I stick out even more.)

And because of all of that, I know I'm treated differently. Some real-life examples from the past few weeks alone:

• Coworkers outright refusing to let me hold open a door for them (chivalry ain't dead, but it sure can be annoying sometimes)
• I was with two male coworkers one day, and we had to carry ~20lbs of samples across the plant. I was the one carrying most of the samples (I volunteered), and we were stopped THREE TIMES in a 1/4 of a mile by people commenting "why are you making the poor girl carry all those samples!?" (actual quote).
• Someone repeatedly handing me papers with my (male) manager's name written on them, knowing FULL WELL that I was the one responsible for handling the information that was on them, not my manager.
• Men apologizing after swearing or making off-color jokes in front of me (It's an industrial workplace. It happens.), or making comments like "I'd say something else, but there's a lady in the room", even though I established on day 1 that I don't mind the language. I know it's habit for many of the men to do it, but it's still a bias and still draws attention to how I'm different than them.

That's the tip of the iceberg, but you get the idea. Some of this is intentional, some is not, some is just habit on my coworkers' parts - many are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, have worked in this industry for 20, 30, 40 years, were raised to be chivalrous and overly respectful of women (compared to today), and/or are not used to women in positions of authority in their workplace. It's a generational thing. It takes time and thick skin to change minds when you're often a one-(wo)man band, and not everyone has patience and thick skin. I imagine these behaviors would be less prevalent if there were more women in my workplace, but this behavior is probably why a lot of women leave this industry. Chicken and egg.

I love my job. I love my coworkers. We joke about the gender disparity a lot. I'm not looking for sympathy or special treatment - I want to be viewed as an equal, not a unicorn. It gets better every day. But I have to actively work to be thought of as just "Kara" instead of "that girl". I hope that someday, this industry will be at the point where women don't have to do this, which IMO is why discussions and education on bias and inclusion are important (in moderation). It's a culture change thing. These discussions are important for everyone, no matter who you are and what field you're going into. This topic applies just as much to men in early childhood education (the most female-dominated field in the graphic Karthik posted) as it does to women in engineering.


On a different note, I think that someone earlier in this thread asked "why do people keep saying 'females' instead of 'women' or 'girls'?" and didn't get much of a response, so I'll offer one: personally, I don't feel comfortable referring to myself as either a woman or a girl. To me, a woman is still someone much older than me, old enough to be my mom, and a girl is someone still in high school or younger. As a young professional, I don't feel like I fit into either category, so I always refer to myself as just "a female". "Females" and "Males" also unquestionably encompass all ages, which is commonly the intent of using those words in these kinds of discussions.

I agree with everything you said, how you said it, and the sentiment behind it. Thank you so much for this, I can't express how much I relate to this.

I notice people treat me differently because of my gender (been explained stuff more in depth and had teachers have to carry my hand through learning experiences, but thrown guys right in to fend for themselves, been treated nicer to in the same setting as guys, etc.) and the best advice I've been given is "just deal with it - they are just guys afterall, it's stupid, but you have to put up with it."

Bringing it back full circle to the OP, I think that all-girls events can give the oppertunity to talk to other girls, share experiences, and everything, in an environment where we aren't treated differently, for one day.

Again Kara, thanks for putting this out there.