Girls on Teams

[melissa]

Originally Posted by Church

I'm a girl myself, and I'd rather be treated like "one of the guys" than seen as different.

I agree with you. There are roughly 10 girls on the team this year out of 35... thats pretty good. Of the returning girls, most hold important roles. Some are programmers, mechanical, pneumatics, PR, and the new ones are coming in with lots of interest and enthusiasm. I think the guys on the team do view us as "one of the guys" (or at least me after 4 years of hanging around). I think that the more girls press the issue that they ARE different, they will be viewed as such. Girl or guy, you are a TEAM MEMBER nonetheless, having something valuable to contribute to the team.

[Sam Lipscomb]

This year, even though we have 7 girls out of about 35 team members, 2 of the 3 captains are female. Too bad 4 of the 7 girls leaves at the end of this season...

[CarpeDiem]

1/19

[|20807 61|2|_]

we have 4 or 5 girls on our team 2 on endofecter 1 on mobility and i think 1 or 2(??) on animation(??). okay well there we go :-D

[Mme.Miscellania]

2004:
We had five girls, all on whatever needed doing. About 15 guys.
2005:
Seven girls, with 1 mechanical, 2 spirit/publicity (the all-girl part of the team...), and four doing whatever project needed doing. Somewhere around 18 guys.
2006:
It's looking like seven girls, with 3 mechanical, 1 end affect leader, 1 publicity/awards/grants leader, 1 animation and 1 floating.
The girl/guy ratio is about the same as last year for students, but our mentors are almost all male. Lots of team moms, though!

[I'mwithstupid^]

all boys school!

[haywirerobotics]

Originally Posted by batbotcrewfrosh

Since we are an all-girls team, we have lately been interested in the roles of girls on co-ed teams. Some members of my team were doing a survey of the number of girls on teams and their jobs at the Buckeye Regional. We were very disappointed to discover that on some teams, girls were given only the job of cheerleader, or publicist. Continuing that, just please give the number of girls on your team, along w/ the number of students on your team, and what the girls usually do. Thanks a lot!

our team has 14 members, we HAD 4 girls but one dropped out, now we have three...so one of them is the head of PR, one does the website, and the other is in proggramming...

[riboSquirrel]

Originally Posted by AdamT

This seems to be the most common problem. We only have 2 girls on our team, and they both chose to mainly work on PR and such, even though one of them decided to help out where she could on the robot. In her situation she didn't think she was smart enough to do the stuff that was going on. I tried to get to understand that you don't have to understand all of it to be a great member. I don't know if my message got through, but I tried.

I think recruiting women is an important part of the program. And I do mean recruit. You may be lucky enough to have some girls filter into the team by word of mouth, but many times the best female members will come because they are asked. If you ask them to come and they want to, they are more likely to be productive members for the sheer fact that someone felt them valuable enough to ask them to come.

It's important for team members to follow through and invite them to work on different things if they become seemingly unmotivated to be aggressive. This something that not only mentors should do. Team members should encourage other team members to get their say in if they are quiet. Have the older members mentor the younger mentors.

I think the key to having women on a team is to show them that they can do this and it's not a "guy thing." If you tell someone they are stupid and can't do certain things, eventually they will think that (and women are still often told that in respects to engineering). Break that mentality!

In FIRST as in the rest of the world, apathy is our enemy.

we have three girls including myself, one is a junior,i am a sophmore and the others a freshman... thing is... i can't touch the robot(almost killed it last year>.<) but lynn, now SHE is like mighty woman... she is a really good robot driver, and i envy her everfy so often just because she is alowed to touch the robot and i'm not...

[aallen88]

My freshman year I was pretty much the only girl on my team. Now I'm in my senior year and there's a pretty good handful. Just appeal and support. I know I stuck with the team because I had mentors and students that were so supportive and helped me with every and anything. They never made me feel stupid or frustrated. Let the kids at your school know that robotics is engineering, but there's still a little bit of everything that needs to be done. Now I broke the status quo of my team and became the first girl team captain this year. Hell yes!

[Rohan_DHS]

girls on our team are prettymuch free to take on any role they'd like, if there's something they dont know, and want to learn then we teach them. its pretty open. but mostly, the girls choose to do business oriented tasks. last year, our team president was also a girl.

[Felix_The_Cat]

we actualy had a girl as our president last year
unfortunately she graduated and is now can't participate much at all
we still have some girls on the team but they tend not to want to lead anything crucial
we are always trying to get girls involved
some choose to help out with the bot others want to do PR
as far as the cheering goes whoever is not driveing the bot becomes the cheer team.

[Robert Flanagan]

We are a small, 3rd year team with only about 20 people on our team. We only have 3 girls on our team but two of them are our president and vice-president and they do an awesome job


Robert Flanagan, team 1390, St. Cloud, Florida

[Matt Fultz]

At Cyber Blue, we have a roughly 37 member team. 10 of those members are female. Two are the head students on the PR Team, 4 are on electronics, with one of them as the lead student, and 4 are in manufacturing and design.

[windup zeppelin]

well here on team 1515 we have quite a few girls on our team.all though many are in business and animation we have one who has done most of our electronics and pneumatics.

Yeah unfortunatley I am the only girl on team 104 except the teacher.I have tried to get girls to join but have been unsuccessful so far and the first year there was me and another girl.then the next year i was the only one.i showed pictures of the robots which ended up in the trash.