HELP: GIRLS AND ROBOTICS

[Nita]

Get teachers to advertise robotics to their classes. Talk to the teachers you have... they know their students well and probably can convince some of them to join. It worked for me!
Oh, plan B... Drag them to the meeting, feed them something, lock the doors, then get them interested in one of the groups.

[Perndog_1656]

Sadly, we wish we could have girls but our school is an all boys school

[Seto Kaiba]

Yea we go to an all-guys school. So i guess this doesn't apply to us. But, I am sure there are plenty of girls at your respective schools, that would be willing to sign up. I liken it to the amount of female gamers in the world. They are out there, you just have to find them.

[june_2008]

We have several girls on our team, 547, but there are only two of us who are involved in anything except spirit or animation. I programm and we have a girl who builds and does CAD. None of the other girls really seem interested in working directly on the robot.

[spamified88]

Some of the girls at my school say that they're not good enough, or that they have a bad relationship with power tools. I said that we were all like that our freshman year. Actually, the girls on my team have a funny sense of humor saying that thet're now a "commodity" because they joined robotics. We do have a bunch of girls on our team, but they're in the PR department. Most of them don't want to do engineering, but I want them to. In engineering there are only 4 girls.

[Ashley Christine]

Some girls are afraid of technology. Guys are "supposed" to be "better" and so it is intimidating.

Show them that its not all about technology, and then when you hook them, show them that the tech stuff really is fun!

In general just get them to realize that its more than just a robot, its fundraising, spirit, teamwork, and FUN!

It seemed to work for me.

[Clam]

well, there are more guys on our team than girls, but there are about 5 or 6 girls on the team this year. I think you might want to advertise the fact that girls should also be involved in robotics and that it's not just a guy thing. Also, let them believe that it's more than just nerdiness, it's valuable experience, and they're missing out on so much by not joining just becase they think it's a guy thing or that it's too "nerdy".

[Donut]

We have 4 girls on our team (not including the teacher sponsor), though the 2 returning members have not been able to do nearly as much due to jobs. The other 2 are on programming and electrical, and typically show up more and do more than alot of the guys do.

We just recruit all around the school and tell people there is more to do than just build a robot, and we typically have at least 4 girls every year, usually on programming and electrical. If we could finally get a PR team decently organised we'd have double that at least.

[Laura 1547]

I think in order to get more girls on your team tell them about how much fun FIRST is. It's not all about building robots. Highlights points about where you travel, who you meet, what you do at competitions, how much you learn, and just the amazing experience in general. The things you learn in FIRST will be with you the rest of your life. Tell them that they don't have to want to be an engineer to be on robotics. Last year in my first year in FIRST, I didn't know much about machinery and tools and I decided to be on the fundraising team (at that time I either wanted to be a lawyer or an accountant). I saw how hard the girls on the technical teams worked and then at the competitions I saw how amazing all these robots were. This year I'm now part of the technical build team and FIRST has inspired me to become an engineer which I had never even thought about being.

So to sum it all up: just highlight points that you think will spark their interest. Tell them that they can do things like fundraising and public relations. Next year some of them might help out with the building

[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.

[dude__hi]

Our team is always at least half female. We've always had female presidents but the building roles and similar leadership positions have always been filled by guys. We can't seem to interest girls enough to build robots, I'm not sure how it happens this way...

[KillerCows456]

Last year we only had 3 girls, 1 graduated. But this year like magic we had so many girls that we had to create a whole new team of them. Now there are about 10-20 girls on the girl team and about 2-3 on the main team.

[GaryVoshol]

We were just counting today - 7 girls, 20 guys. Which is a big change, since last year they were half and half.

[Koko Ed]

The best way to hook non-FIRSTers in (be they boy, girl, black, white whatever) is to take them to a regional and let them feed off of the concentrated energy flowing free in the arena and catch the bug.
If they can deny FIRST then, then they're just never gonna get it.