Girls on Teams

[DUCKIE]

I don't know the final count of our team at the moment... but it is really depressing when you have twelve girls at the September Kick-off meeting... and by the January kick-off there are only three. Since I am now a College Mentor on the team I have been trying my darnedest to keep as many girls as i can in the program.

[I apologize now that this will be a long post.]

I noticed quite a few people have mentioned that the guys on a team can be intimidating... and i wont deny it... It is especially true with MOE because as we have taken to saying this year -> "Welcome to the Cult!" <- because we are so tightly knit, we all wear the same colors, and we do the MOE chant at random times.

I personally am slow to warm-up to new situations, and FIRST was definitely a new "situation." I spent my first year on the team doing PR, Videography, and Mascot with Gwen. Lucky me got to wear the original uppet for three days straight in the Florida Sun. There were like 6 girls on the team my first year, I honestly don't remember what they did... but all i did or knew about the robot that year was I helped spray-paint some parts... and get high on the fumes..., what the grippers and wings did, what a robot should not do during a match, and that we won nationals.

My second year i was SO ready to work on the robot and wanted to be on Pit or Competition team. I took the initiative and started almost religiously following "Lou the Pit Lord" around the first meeting... and REALLY paid attention to the Machine Shop Training and Tutorials. I volunteered to help build our swanky pit just after Christmas, and got used to working on the machines, with our Machinist, and got to know the other guys who i was working with a LOT better. I worked on the Mechanical sub-team under Lou; working on the goal pushers (which we took off during the first competition. nothing like making two difficult pieces... and never getting to use them. I got to keep one though.) I don't think any one was as excited as me when i was voted onto the pit crew. (the first girl to do so if i remember right.) I also was voted co-captain that year. And won one of the ASME scholarships at nationals. A very swanky year for me... even though MOE-Hawk came off the field in pieces after EVERY match!

Last year i did not do as much... since it was hard to commute sometimes... and college work/classes in general. I did make the mascot again though. I hope to do more work with the robot again this year along with taking photos.

It just goes to show that Girls CAN do anything they set their minds to. They don't HAVE to settle for the lower jobs if they don't want them. I try to tell all the girls on the team now that "If there are a bunch of guys working on something... don't be afraid to elbow your way in and find what they are doing, and help."

I do have to give kudos to the guys on MOE though. They are pretty comfortable having a girl in there working with them... i hope other teams are as accepting of girls doing more than PR.

[The Lucas]

Originally posted by DUCKY
I don't know the final count of our team at the moment... but it is really depressing when you have twelve girls at the September Kick-off meeting... and by the January kick-off there are only three. Since I am now a College Mentor on the team I have been trying my darnedest to keep as many girls as i can in the program.

I only remember one or two girls attending my electrical presentation I had to give to all the new students are required to attend. That would make the team count 3 or 4. I could be mistaken since there are many new students and most of them are quiet. Also some people might have missed that meeting.

It is a shame if we have so few girls again since I remember many more at the kickoff. We do actively try to recruit more girls since we give presentations at many of all-girl schools in the area even if we do not have any current team members attending that school.

[Alaina]

At Cal Games a couple of weeks ago my team brought 5 girls, 4 of them new. We really, really, really hope to recruit more members for 2004.

[Justin Stiltner]

24 students
6 male
18 female
there are females on every sub team.. however what they do has yet to be seen.
the way our program is set up well was set up we had a rookie team of students every year. but this year we started accepting grades 9-12.

[BBFIRSTCHICK]

well last year there were a total of 12 kids on our team....
The number of girls were 8.
The girls on our team had loads of experience from FIRST due to previous years and other robotic compositions
2 of our girls were the main team welders (im one of them. my friend and myself were the main welders on our previous FIRST team as well, that contained about 50 kids)
Another 2 were our main programmers
... we were just all around.... we did a good amount of work

[akaria]

I don’t know about other girls involved in FIRST but when I first entered the club(this is my fourth year) I faced a lot of discrimination, no one would listen to my ideas until I told the one guy on my team that would listen to me and then when he presented it everyone thought it was great. But after a while of being loud and noticeable others started taking me seriously. Some of the problem was that the other girls only did PR. But now I am the field captain, head strategist, one of the head drive train people and do more that anyone else on the wiring. It took awhile but they came around.

[ArJubx]

Our team of 13 only has one girl, unless you count our primary mentor, our AP Physics C teacher. Then again since it was a class project, and only 2 girls are in the class (year started off with 3 but one moved to texas) and this was not a required thing, only 1 chose to do robotics. Honestly tho, she has been a great help to the team, not really getting down to the nitty gritty of robot building (not many guys did either), but a help everywhere else, especially at fundraising. She is also one our co-drivers, which handles our ball collection and control systems. All in all she has outworked (time devotion) probably all but 2 students on our team, myself and our chief builder (man he spent a few nights there just by himself in the early days, I felt so bad afterwards). Did she felt left out? Probably on the building part, but I must admit she was an integral part of our small team. My props go out to Kelly (known as itskelz here).

[Pin Man]

the past couple of years we have had girls as captains of the team... I don't know... We go with who's best for the job... Lately more girls have shown interest in the team... hehhehehehe I don't mind that!!!!

[Vince lau]

I'm mentoring an all girls school here in Toronto, in the Canadian regionals there will be 3 all girls schools competing

[Jay H 237]

The girls on our team aren't strictly PR and fundraising. They do some of the machining (using the mills, lathes), they also did some of the soldering of the electronics, and they also helped build our test playing field in the woodshop. We don't discriminate, basically if they want to do it we let them. We don't want them to feel left out and not part of the group. I worked with one of them, who hadn't had much experience with tools, in the woodshop building the playing field this season and now she's interested in taking woodshop next year.

[Meredith Rice]

Originally Posted by Vince lau

I'm mentoring an all girls school here in Toronto, in the Canadian regionals there will be 3 all girls schools competing

What teams are they? I am always interested to learn what other all girl teams are out there, as I am from one myself, team 433. It would be nice though if there was some way to sort through all the FIRST teams to see what teams are all girls.

[Charley]

Our team (#1350... rookies this year) had 2 females out of about 17 students.

I am one of those females, and I must say that I do alot of speaking/ orginizing/ strategizing/ accounting on the team. This isn't because I'm a girl, just more because I have no building experience what so ever.

People on the team help each other, and I think I do my part to help out, though I'm not always sure if everyone else agrees.

They usually say I do the B**** work, because if no one else wants to do something, I will. I don't mind doing crappy little jobs, once again, because I don't really know how to do alot of building.

I learned alot of programming and electrical this year, and next year, by default of being an orginized Junior, I'm captain.

[Kaelia]

Glad to see this topic still kicking ^_^ I'm from the same team as the topic starter...I was approached by a scout from some team who was very surprised that our team put a girl in as high a position as a *gasp* driver! I kind of chuckled and told her that we didn't really have much say in the matter =P

On that note, though, I didn't notice very many female drivers (not counting human players or strategists) at VCU...head count?

[bigqueue]

Originally Posted by batbotcrewfrosh

Since we are an all-girls team, we have lately been interested in the roles of girls on co-ed teams. Some members of my team were doing a survey of the number of girls on teams and their jobs at the Buckeye Regional. We were very disappointed to discover that on some teams, girls were given only the job of cheerleader, or publicist. Continuing that, just please give the number of girls on your team, along w/ the number of students on your team, and what the girls usually do. Thanks a lot!

If I remember correctly, we have 7 female students on the team. Two of them are in Manufacturing, three in Marketing, one on the CAD team, and one in Controls.

Two of the MFG gals ended up on our PIT team at the regionals.

-Quentin

[Heretic121]

our team has 3 girls out of about 20 students... 1 is co-spirit leader w/ one of the guys... 1 is co-captian and manipulator, and the other one is the backup manipulator... so they do take a pretty big role on our team...