Girls on Teams

[SarahBecker]

Despite what our guys want to believe, more than half of our team are girls, and our entire pit crew is made up of only girls, and they rock! They built most of the bot this year, and continue to be practically the only ones who work on it. Our boys have ended up in the stands working on scouting, with the rest of the girls on our team. Our human player this year (and last) was a girl, and the main operator this year was a girl.
So all you girls out there... keep up the good work... we ARE taking over!

[RLopez]

we have 7 girls.. some their jobs include:
some working on Chairman's
PR
Spirit (as the rest of our team)
Business

I am the photographer, so i take care of that ;D.. i also work with PR and business.. and i help around wherever available (building, etc) even helping with dotting the i's and crossing the t's .. In my first year with FIRST/Robotics team.. i didnt know much about construction and such.. so the only way to learn is to get yourself involved as much as you can.. so im just helping around right now.. and ive learned a lot ;D..

[davey_c]

We have 5-6 girls on the team out of around 25. Four came with us to nationals. All of them work on the robot (actually, everyone on our team does at least some handiwork with the robot).

Any ideas on how to attract more girls to the team? Also on how to attract people to do PR, fundraising, etc., and not work on the robot? We always only get people who want to handle the power tools and do the design, and no one who's willing to focus on other stuff like sponsorship that is also vital to the team.

[KathieK]

Originally Posted by davey_c

Any ideas on how to attract more girls to the team? Also on how to attract people to do PR, fundraising, etc., and not work on the robot? We always only get people who want to handle the power tools and do the design, and no one who's willing to focus on other stuff like sponsorship that is also vital to the team.

When you do recruiting in your school, emphasize that there are many roles to play on the team -we have a brochure that lists the many different skills we are looking for; i.e. writing (public relations, Chairman's Award), computer animation, computer programming, sports (don't forget those human players), mathematics, business, finance, accounting, art (designing buttons, t-shirts, painting wall murals at our facility, designing posters), etc.

One way to attract people in those areas is to contact the teachers of those areas to see if there is anyone they think might be interested.