Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?

[Kims Robot]

This topic is very very close to my heart, as I am a female engineer... am an engineer because of FIRST... and have seen how hard it is to be a female in engineering and how few women engineering role models there are.

I'll start with that I see absolutely nothing wrong with all-girls teams. Teams "exclude" all the time... some teams are seniors only, some require applications and hand select students, most ONLY allow students from their school. Whatever the reason, those teams aren't "complained" about. Exclusivity is not just in all girls teams.

1511's second year I organized a "Girls Night"... all the girls came over to my apartment, we had food, painted nails, stuff like that. Yes we excluded the boys on purpose, it was a chance for the girls & female mentors & moms to "bond". The boys complained to no end. I told them I had ZERO problem with the boys organizing a "boys night". Yet they never did.

I also offered to personally sponsor an all girls FLL team if one got started in the Rochester area. I feel VERY strongly that especially at the middle school age boys push girls aside and don't give them the chance/credit that they deserve. And most girls will just back off and let the boys do the work. This (IMO) is why so few girls end up in technical careers. The only girls that "make it" in engineering are the ones that aren't afraid to push past the boys and give it their all. I often see the same happen on FRC teams. Unless a mentor actively drags girls into design & engineering tasks, the girls often gravitate to things like the Chairmans Award, media, spirit, etc.

Thus I think an all girls team is a great way for girls to have exclusive access to all tasks and realize that they really CAN do it just as well as boys. The point isnt to exclude the boys or deny them opportunity, the point is to push the issue that arises when boys & girls mix. Now the real world is Co-ed, so to me FLL is the most appropriate place to do an all girls team. FRC should be a micrcosm of the real world. But I see the point of continuing it in FRC. I had the chance to see 2 all girls teams at DC, and it was great to see girls really getting their hands in the robots, not just standing on the sideline charging the batteries.

Originally Posted by Karthik

Andy makes a list of 43 technical mentors who have had huge impacts on the engineering evolution of FRC. Every single one of them is a male. Why is that? Where are all our female rockstar engineers?

This provoked a lot of thought in my head... and also a little bit of hurt at first. I remember sitting at the Championship Panel presentation last year staring at all the men. It was frustrating and aggravating. I knew the answer to every question that was asked, and I was a female engineer. But I'm not a "Rock Star". Why? I have no idea really. I can talk gear ratios, battery capacities, power curves, PID loops, PWM wiring, networking, scouting statistics, rules & ranking points with anyone. But the odder thing was sitting there, knowing I knew all of that, yet I couldn't think of a single other female mentor that I knew that knew all the same. Every "involved" female mentor outside of my team that I could name was a team leader, a mom, a teacher... none were engineering mentors. Even sitting here now, I am dumbfounded to think of one. But I also think about nearly all my posts here on CD. Most have to do with organization, leadership, scouting, strategy, rules, etc... I don't do a lot of the tech-e talk here. And maybe thats what makes an FRC engineering rock star?

I graduated from Clarkson with an Electrical Engineering Degree and have worked as a Systems Engineer for nearly 9 years now. I have a nearly complete Masters in Robotic Intelligence from RIT. In looking at my career and watching other women, I have to say that I think some of what I have noticed has spilled over into FIRST.

In general, Women are big picture thinkers. They are organizers, they are managers. Its the reason I gravitated towards systems engineering. I liked the big picture better than sitting at a desk drawing up digital electronics for the rest of my life. I like having enough technical depth to work with customers to define their exact needs and define the requirements & specifications for our products & systems. Am I doing the board layout? no. Do I do the packaging design? no. Do I design the power circuits? no. Do I program in the networking stack? no. But can I tell you a heck of a lot about all of it? of course. Its the same reason I liked being an FRC team leader, and the team's systems engineer.

I guess I wish I knew how to change this. We need to find the female engineering mentors in FIRST and start having them present/co-present technical conferences at the championships. We need to start showing the girls on the teams that there are female engineering "rock stars" to look up to.

But personally, I think its fine to have all-girls teams. For the original poster... Think about the DC regional you were just at... even with 2/63 FRC teams being all-girls, I guarantee that less than 20% of the students attending the event were female. (And heck, I know the boys on our team loved having the all-girls Waldo team to "hang around" with!) Plus I am pretty certain that there was an All-Boys team there... and no one complained (Boys Latin School).