Girls are still undermined?

[sciguy125]

Originally Posted by BurningQuestion

I think that the most widespread gender-based problem lies in sparking the interest of more young women in science and technology, not so much in gender-based discrimination.

I brought this up before but nobody took up the discussion. (You can ignore my closing comments there.)

This gender bias seems to be more prominant in engineering than science, but I haven't been able to figure out why.

[nehalita]

Just a thought:
After reading these comments, many of which I agree with, I'm making a hypothesis.

There is confidence in numbers.
Boys see other boys doing mechanical work so they feel more invited to do the same.
If there are girls also doing mechanical work, the next girl might feel encouraged, but if there are only boys working on the robot, then the girl would have to break the "invisible barrier". It may be, in fact, that there is no barrier, but to a girl who sees only boys working or designing the robot, they might have a preconditioned barrier of their own to cross.

This could be with anything. What if only girls did the electrical work and always do? I'm sure some boys might hesitate and do something else instead.

Just throwing this out there....

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by nehalita

Just a thought:
After reading these comments, many of which I agree with, I'm making a hypothesis.

There is confidence in numbers.
Boys see other boys doing mechanical work so they feel more invited to do the same.
If there are girls also doing mechanical work, the next girl might feel encouraged, but if there are only boys working on the robot, then the girl would have to break the "invisible barrier". It may be, in fact, that there is no barrier, but to a girl who sees only boys working or designing the robot, they might have a preconditioned barrier of their own to cross.

This could be with anything. What if only girls did the electrical work and always do? I'm sure some boys might hesitate and do something else instead.

Just throwing this out there....

You should try gathering some statistical data on this problem.

Come up with some type of questionnaire, or a poll asking about girl's interest and participation in science and technology. You can distribute it to your school to come up with some small scale results. If you like the idea, I do recommend making a Chief Delphi white paper out of this, and trying to get as many people as possible involved in the distribution of this poll.

I think it would be pretty neat to get something big like that going, because you would have some solid numbers to work off of. You would also be able to see how girl's perspective on engineering varies throughout different regions of the country, and try to draw some conclusions off of that.

What will this do to help the problem? No idea.. the balls in your court for that one. I just think doing something like this would be a worthwhile undertaking.

[KenWittlief]

It would be interesting to check the statistics: what percent of freshman enrolled at engineering universities this year, female & male? It would be a good indication of where we are, and by looking at past years, what is the trend?

One of the great dis-services that happened in the 70s and the 80s was confusing "equal" with "same".

Women and men should absolutely have equal rights, equal opportunities, equal encouragement and at the same time we need to understand and acknowledge the genuine differences in the way that men and women think, feel and interact with the world.

Some of those differences are a result of our culture, and some are due to the way our brains are wired. If you ignore the differences you are setting yourself up for frustration, grief, and in some cases failure.

Please dont take my comments the wrong way. Women can be excellent engineers, and men can be excellent nurses, but men and women are clearly drawn towards some occupations and shy away from others.

If we think that half of all engineers should be women by a certain date in the future, it would be best to first stop and understand why you think that is true?

[Cory]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

It would be interesting to check the statistics: what percent of freshman enrolled at engineering universities this year, female & male?

It's pretty much entirely disproportional. I know engineering schools like RIT/WPI/etc that are well known in FIRST all have extremely small female populations.

I think the gap is very slowly closing, but it's going to be a long long time until it reaches 50/50 or 60/40, or whatever it is that most colleges are at.

[KenWittlief]

my point is: is it reasonable to expect the ratio to be 50:50?

If you look at the present situation, and from your perspective you think it should be 50:50, and that makes you upset or angry, or it pushes you work towards making it 50:50, are you looking at things realistically?

Im only raising the question. What should the ratio be?

[Cory]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

my point is: is it reasonable to expect the ratio to be 50:50?

If you look at the present situation, and from your perspective you think it should be 50:50, and that makes you upset or angry, or it pushes you work towards making it 50:50, are you looking at things realistically?

Im only raising the question. What should the ratio be?

I have no idea what it should be. I was only comparing to non engineering focused colleges, where the ratio is much closer to 50:50 or even skewed in favor of women.

[dubious elise]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

my point is: is it reasonable to expect the ratio to be 50:50?

If you look at the present situation, and from your perspective you think it should be 50:50, and that makes you upset or angry, or it pushes you work towards making it 50:50, are you looking at things realistically?

Im only raising the question. What should the ratio be?

I say no ratio. Those that are interested should pursue their desires, rather than being handed a special incentive to make things "equal" when their skill levels may not be as high as the next applicant or participant.

But that is off topic entirely. My apologies.

On our team, we have one female mentor that always encourages the girls, especially the new ones, to listen carefully to the discussions and instructions, then grab the boys' tools and push them out of the way to show that they can do it too. Its a bit of a rough theory, but it works

I've never particularly had a firm spot on our team. My first year was largely animation, logo design, and, during competition season, photographing, scouting, and following Ricky. Last year, I was the human player, led some of the team meetings, painted the frame, and helped out with fundrasing and publicity as much as I was able. Both years, I picked up fairly random skills, one day I would work with 3DS Max, the next I would be welding, or soldering, or machining gearboxes, or assembling gearboxes, or using the plasma cutter, or organizing the nuts/bolts drawers.

This year, I've been working with our new FLL team and I have noticed an odd thing. Whenever the 7 boys get very involved in one aspect of the game, the 3 girls automatically withdraw to working on their research projects. The other two girls that mentor with me can't seem to get the younger girls to be quite so involved in the building process as they were for the first 2-3 weeks.

Maybe it is the lack of structure, girls want to work from a plan, guys want to freehand a project and see where it goes...I don't really have a concrete answer. What I can say is that the more passionate a girl is about a certain aspect of the team (and yes, this holds true for guys as well), the more respect she will gain from her peers and the more opportunities she will have within the team. Don't withdraw. Don't hold back. FIRST is a no-holds-barred opportunity. It is up to the students to make the most of their magnificent chance.

I would say that most of the girls at my school are either to embarssed to join or just think its wierd for girls to be in robotics.I have tried to get my friends that are girls to join and i just got laughed at and the pictures in the trash can in little pieces. i figured it was stupid that they did that but oh well.

[DanaRocks]

it does not happen on my team i am a girl and i am the captian of the team and the head mechanical person