HELP: GIRLS AND ROBOTICS

[Quantumman]

We have 12+ girls out of about 42 members(I'm not sure the exact count because I know we got a few new member since the list I have for our website was created) One of them has been on the team for 8 years and she is only a freshman(her older brother was on the team a couple of years ago and she has continued her involvement). The rest are on either their first or second year.

I'm not sure why most of them joined, but we had 4 girls on the team last year and I think they talked their friends into joining. We also showed off our robot at back to school night and had a few of our female members there to encourage people to join, so I think that seeing that it wasn't only a guy thing helped. I also convinced a few of my friends to join after bugging them for 3 years. (I don't suggest trying this because it doesn't work too well.)

On the team the girls are pretty evenly spread across all of our groups(sadly programming is lacking, but we are still recruiting). One of things I have run into in trying to convince girls to join is the fact that they think that all FIRST does is build robots. I think that showing everyone at your school(not only the girls) that FIRST does more that cut metal might increase the membership.