Girls on FIRST teams

[Caio]

I might be repeating things that have already been said, and I apologize for that, but just consider me supporting what was already said, but wanting to put it in my own words.


Just this year i considered this issue. Why is it that a team of all boys gets asked "do you not have any girls" but a team of all girls never get asked where the boys are, and instead are congratulated. I understand where people are coming from when they look at an all girls team and say that its good to see more females in these areas, but at the same time i realized that you're not making them feel better, but instead somewhat degrading them in the sense that it seems you didn't think they could do it in the first place. I think it isn't so much that girls are unable to do the tasks, as their interests are else-where because of just how society is structured and what girls are somewhat portrayed doing and not doing.

I'm the team manager of team 1510, as well as the co-founder. We had i believe 2-3 girls the first year, followed by 2-3 girls again, but this year we were happy to have 4-5 girls. Our team requires no experience to join the team, and age or sex are not an issue in any way. We teach the kids as much as we can prior to the season. I am also the mechanical leader, and i frankly give a job to whoever isn't doing anything. If something needs to be done, I asked the nearest person near me to do it, and if they can't, i explain it as best i can and sometimes end up doing it with them. I don't care about them being a girl, boy, freshman, senior or anything. We structured the team to pursue this view because in past years (and on my old team) we saw cases of girls not being able to touch the robot. Or as one team member commented (and in no way meant to be offensive) called them "trophy girls" or girls that they just take the competition to make it seem like they had girls on the team. We've also seen teams that don't let underclassmen touch the bot. So when my family and I founded the Westview Wildcats we made SURE that it would never happen on our team, and its been working great so far.

Back to the point (i think), i think its great that girls are being part of FIRST and doing what they're doing, but I always expected them to be able to do it, they just mostly choose not to. I just think that there shouldn't be so much emphasis on the fact that there are girls, so much as there should be emphasis on how the team works together as a whole, whether all guys, all girls, mixed, different age groups, different races, everything. Its important how you work together, not with who.

thats just my opinion, and hopefully i haven't said anything that offended someone. If i did, i didn't mean it