How did this happen!?!?! 7 new girls in a team of ~20

[dhitchco]

Keep in mind that the ratio of boys-to-girls (or men to women) on any team SHOULD be 50/50.

And.....that includes 50/50 split doing the driving, or 50/50 doing the mechanical......the rations shouldn't be biased by things like "let the girls do the spirit stuff".

It's the sharing in the learning process that really counts once you get to the business world! It will never be equal, but it's a graciously-professional goal to aspire to...

[Dan Zollman]

Though this is our FIRST team's first year, the team is part of the larger Lower Merion Technology and Engineering Club. This is the fourth year of the club's existence.
In the first three years of the Tech & Eng Club, the president was a girl. We also had up to three other girls in the club in any one of those years. The club started with around ten people, and last year it went up to 40 or 50.
This year, the club's numbers suddenly rocketed up to over 100 and became the second biggest school organization (about 6% of the school's population). We're not sure why, but it's partly because of a) the large incoming freshman class, and b) the recently started TSA team in the middle school from which some of our freshman members come. This doesn't explain why the increase was so large.
The point is that we also have about 25 girls in the larger club, some of which are on the FIRST team. This is a jump from 2 to 25, while the overall club went from under 40 to above 100.
In short, yes, we have a lot more girls in the club this year.

[Ebolagirl]

I made a post earlier (#9) and since then our team numbers have exploded (for now at least, we'll see what it's like in the middle of build). We have 5 new people that I have counted, 2 of which are girls!! We're a growing team...

[nehalita]

I think an addition of girls is good for the team. No matter how hard we try t avoid it, girls and guys work differently (mentally, verbally, physically) and that's a diversity that I think is needed. A nice mix means more things are assessed and possibly adjusted.

[Mike]

Originally Posted by dhitchco

Keep in mind that the ratio of boys-to-girls (or men to women) on any team SHOULD be 50/50.

And.....that includes 50/50 split doing the driving, or 50/50 doing the mechanical......the rations shouldn't be biased by things like "let the girls do the spirit stuff".

It's the sharing in the learning process that really counts once you get to the business world! It will never be equal, but it's a graciously-professional goal to aspire to...

Umm... no.

I hate it when people say for a certain area to be truly "gender-bias free" it must be 50/50 split. If 10 girls join the team, and all 10 of those girls want to do marketing, let them do marketing. Similarly, if they all want to do mechanical, let them do mechanical. Make sure that they really want to do marketing, and not that they are just intimidated by being a girl on the mechanical team.

There should never be a time when someone says "We need gender equality, therefore you have to be on the mechanical team." If a person likes to do mechanical work, let that person do mechanical work. If a person like to do public relation work, let that person do public relation work. Don't let their gender come into play whatsoever.

[GaryVoshol]

1188 took 6 girls and 5 guys to Atlanta last year. It didn't help that some of our guys had grade problems, and were suspended. The drive team was all girls, plus a woman engineer coach. They were asked several times if they were from an all-girls school.

This was after 4 years of my daughter being on an all-girl FLL team. (That came about because when they organized, there were too many for one team, and the boy/girl split was about 50/50, so they divided up that way.) The girls got sick of hearing, "You're an all girl team?" GP prevented them from answering how they wanted, "Yeah, don't you think girls can do this?" They proved they could do it by being runner up for State Director's trophy in their second year, and winning it in both their 3rd and 4th year.

[BandChick]

We took about 8 girls to Atlanta last year. I'm excited to see the numbers for this year. We have at least 3 new students thanks to one of the girls on our team. She basically bothered her friends all year to join, and they've stayed so far! Danielle even wants to learn how to wire the robot, and she's the head of our media committee. Chrissi is the head of our spirit committee and Sarah is the head of our Records & Business committee. Carli (who I hope will be back on our team soon!) is the head of our Fundraising/Events Planning Committee. So who says girls aren't essential to a team? 1089's girls are!

I agree with Mike. Our girls prefer to do the spirit, media, marketing stuff, but we do make sure to include them in building if they want to be involved. The best part about our team is we strive to let everyone have an opinion. This year we divided up into four groups to strategize and start brainstorming our robot design, the girls had the most to say.

[sciencenerd]

I haven't counted, but it seems this year 1318 has at least as many girls as guys. Last year we had two girls that came to Portland with us, and another that was involved with the build. We lost a couple, but got... many* more.

*I can't count worth beans. It is one of my flaws.

[nkauj_ntxoo16]

That's really awesome to hear.

For the past couple of years that I've been on the team, continuing with my third year, there has been some changes. Currently, we have been having more girls on the team than boys. Out of 28 students, 15 of them are girls while the other 13 are boys. Last year, we had one more girl on the team than boys. I do wonder what will happen in the near future.

[santosh]

The Georgia Robotics Alliance, a team comprised of students who are homeschooled kids and kids whose schools don't have enough money to start their own teams., is about 80% girls.

[StephLee]

Our team had 11 members last year, 2 girls and 9 guys. Two of the guys left for different reasons, and now we've gained 3 new members. All girls. As far as I know, we didn't gain any new guys this year. So now there are 7 guys and 5 girls, which is a good ratio as far as I'm concerned.

[Jak DiGriz]

Wow, Sandragg, our team had a really similar experience this year! We had some 25 or so members last year, and only one was a girl. This year the mentor wanted to sort of equalize the gender balance and practiced affirmative action, which is pretty dumb and would not be tolerated in the working environment (There were a number of well, more than qualified male applicants wishing to be exposed to the world of engineering, and their dreams were denied for the "greater good" of balancing the genders... and by the way most of the girl applicants were not voluntary applicants. Rather, the mentor pressured them into joining. Oh well, I guess it's ok to practice gender-biased acceptance).

So, all of the veterans who graduated and went off to college were replaced mostly by female rookies. We got only 1 new male rookie, and maybe 9 female rookies. Is it possible that suddenly all the males became idiots and couldn't fill out an application for robotics? I don't think so. Affirmative action.

Hey, and I'll state two facts:

1. This year we had maybe 25 members, maybe 10 of which were female.
2. We had more internal team communication/management/fabrication problems than EVER BEFORE.
3. Our robot didn't get finished, we had to scrap a crapload of stuff, and basically a lot of stuff never got done.

You put 2 and 2 together.

Now, DON'T GET ME WRONG. I'm all about women in robotics... in fact some of the greatest engineers were women! What I am NOT ABOUT is practicing non-EOE style employment with gender-bias! IT IS AN INSULT TO FIRST ROBOTICS to do this. If a female wants to join a FIRST team, the bar should not be lowered to let her in (as in our situation). She should demonstrate the same qualities and meet the same requirements as the next applicant, male or female.

Now, Sandragg, how were your girls accepted? Did they get any special acceptance treatment?

-A supporter of Equal Opportunity Employment

[Sila741]

Our team is all girls and pretty solid. We work well together. What I am annoyed by is the fact that people linger over this more than our actual performance. We got some publicity at our regional that, in my opinion, should have gone to other teams. Jak, you are right. If a competent and interested girl wants to join your team, good for her. But uninterested or worse, inocompetent, girls should not be pressured or allowed to join simply for the sake of having female members. I can't wait for the day when it isn't so special that a team has new girls, when the fact that they have new people is more important..

[Dan Petrovic]

Originally Posted by KathieK

Won't it be nice when FIRST finally reaches the stage where there are equal numbers of either gender on a team and it no longer catches our attention?

A few years ago there were actually more girls on the team than guys.

Times have changed...