Why is it that not many girls are into robotics?

[Pielord]

Originally Posted by busterblade16

I am serious about this. Why dont they?

thats what id like to no

[Iain McLeod]

We have four girls on the team this year: an artist/typist and three design and construction people.

I think robotics is mostly made up of guys because of the whole conditioning thing someone was talking about earlier...
I know one of my teachers was telling me last year about how in our school there used to be a 'Mechanics and car maintenance' class for the guys, and 'Powder Puff mechanics' for the girls. The education system has a lot to do with it, encouraging girls to take different classes than guys... And as Bryan (my teammate) points out from behind me, there is no mechanics Barbie.


I really don't notice much difference between guys and girls in the robotics room. They all act nuts anyway.

[Mousepad]

Originally Posted by Iain McLeod

We have four girls on the team this year: an artist/typist and three design and construction people.

I think robotics is mostly made up of guys because of the whole conditioning thing someone was talking about earlier...
I know one of my teachers was telling me last year about how in our school there used to be a 'Mechanics and car maintenance' class for the guys, and 'Powder Puff mechanics' for the girls. The education system has a lot to do with it, encouraging girls to take different classes than guys... And as Bryan (my teammate) points out from behind me, there is no mechanics Barbie.


I really don't notice much difference between guys and girls in the robotics room. They all act nuts anyway.

I dont see how this question is really relevant to Robotics as a whole. I see no other purpose for this other than to raise a useless issue. If there is lots of girls then great! if not then so what. Difference in sex shouldnt have anything to do with robotics, or engineering.

[elknise]

I don't know about your team, but our team's girls hold the team together. We have Ms. Saxton who is a mentor. Linda who does programming and electronics. Caitlin who is the captain of the electronics team. Philis who is the captain of our PR team and designed our awesome t-shirts and sweat shirts. Then we have Robin who works with the drive train and arm teams.

Idk what we would do without them.

[davelu]

We have 3 girls on our teaml, use to have lot more but we scared all of them away. it be really nice if our team had more girls....

[Squeje250]

well for our team we actually have about 25% girls on our team. they dont really build BUT they are on what we call our spirt team (or our cheerleaders) i dont know exactly why the girls dont like building but thats possibly because i am not a girl.

[hansTP2S]

It appears that I have too much negative reputation to edit/delete my post (-227). I apologize for what I said, I don't know why I said it. I should leave the house more.

[DarkJedi613]

As was said before - we have a few girls on our team, and they're treated the same as all the other members. No one cares that they're girls. I think an important point is that when they do seem interested in being in robotics, they must be treated the same as all other new members - teach them things they need to be taught, show them around the machine shop, etc. But don't treat them differently, either way that is - don't treat them poorly, or better, or as if they can only do certain things.

I'm not sure if it the girls that we have on our team or if its something else, but most of the girls don't have a problem speaking up about ideas, asking for help if they need it or just asking for one of the more experienced members on the team to explain it.

[davelu]

we don't treat our club girls the same, we treat them better than how we treat each other, beacuse the teacher gets mad if the girls leave and then he's gonna lecture us for a hour or 2 about how sexist the club is.

well, most of us blame it on the school for not having more girls, i'll say 90% of the school is guys the rest is girls. the worst thing is in almost all my classes there are barely any girls, most of the time its all guys class.

[- Raven -]

While I'll agree that girls are in the minority in this sort of field, I find it encouraging that there ARE more girls interested in engineering and other such subjects than there were say, a decade ago perhaps. Maths/Science subjects are stereotypically male-dominated. I pride myself on being an exception to the girly-girl rule-- stubbornly refused to wear dresses as a young child, was more interested in cars than dolls, and have been keen to get into the science sector for my career. Well, hopefully anyway. Plus, our team has it's female members. In fact, our current captain happens to be female. And she makes a great team captain, too.

Alot of my friends that arent in robotics always wonder why i do it etc. like i try to explain it to them and they dont get it so then they think its a waste of time and stupid. So because of that i think alot of girls arent into robotics is because they dont understand what it is until they come to a competetion or come to a meeting or whatever.

[mandyo]

Our team has 13 girls this year, and most are faithful members. We were able to improve the recruitment of females because our coach (that's me) is a female and engineer. I think girls enjoy robotics, but need to feel connected to the team. I don't think boys need that as much as the girls do. BTW half of our girls LOVE to build.

[FlipperGiggles]

Originally Posted by busterblade16

I am serious about this. Why dont they?

I've wondered the same thing. I'm a girl and I LOVE robotics. We have about 4 girls on our team...and that's after several people quit. So far, I'm the only girl flying to nationals with 616. I wish more girls would get involved, but they just don't realize how great it really is.

[half geek]

My dad and I were dropping off my 5 year old sister at her friend's house a couple weeks ago. My dad mentioned FIRST to the parents, and their reaction was "It's too bad I won't get that experience, since we only have daughters." I couldn't believe this conscious prolonging of a gender stereotype, so I hinted that there were plenty of girls in FIRST as well as engineering. The parents continued to be skeptical, as if it was unthinkable for a lady to be doing such a manly thing.

This is where the problem starts. We should do something about it!
Therefore, our actions should include both short and long-term goals:
-Convince girls that are old enough to be students that it is OK for them to be in robotics.
-Convince the parents of younger ones that that they should not stunt their children's potential for interests based on stereotypes.

[greencactus3]

actually that must be only your team. our single girl was one of the most important designer/builder on our team