[FRC Blog] Something New - SWE Grant

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by inkling16

If NASA (or any other organization) believes that the "team" they are creating will be the better for having a more diverse membership, aren't they justified in hiring anyone who adds to the diversity of the team?

If you disagree with the idea that more diversity does not create better teams, that is fine, many don't. However, if you accept that some organizing bodies believe this, then their implementations make perfect sense.

That is a very good and noble reason for promoting diversity in a group. I think, however, you will find that that altruistic motivation is rarely the one at play. In every instance of a less qualified applicant being selected based on minority status that I have witnessed (admittedly small sample size), the reasoning has not been that the presence of certain genitals or skin coloring will improve the effectiveness (or "betterness") of that group.

[Joe G.]

Another issue that I face with this grant is that even if a team selects members/leaders/drivers without using the grant as a driving factor, the mere presence of these grant funds will lead others to assume that female leaders would not have their positions without the grant money. Unfortunately, these toxic, negative attitudes will be directed most pointedly at the female leaders themselves.

It's a sad reality, but it's something that I see all the time around things like college admissions for engineering schools trying to improve their gender ratio. If a guy gets in, he gets congratulated. Unfortunately, if a girl gets in, there will be people who tell her "you only got in because you're a girl, it's easier for a girl to get in there." This will be heard no matter how accomplished the girl in question is. This mere suggestion not only cheapens the achievement in her mind, but also can lead people to value the wrong things about themselves.

I want my students, regardless of gender, to know without a doubt that if they earn a prestigious position within my team, that it's because they worked ridiculously hard to get there, and that they've accomplished great things. I want them to recognize the value of hard work, skill, dedication, and inspiration, and I want them to understand that no matter who they are, working at similar attributes will allow them to achieve anything they set their minds to. We will continue to push for increased involvement by all within our team, and continue to be mindful of and react to the unique societal pressures young girls can face when joining a robotics team in our approach to mentoring and supporting them, but we will not compromise the integrity of our team or undermine the hard work of each of our students in order to chase money and create feel-good stories. I want people to congratulate girls on FIRST teams in leadership positions on their technical and leadership accomplishments, and on being the best person for the job, instead of congratulating them for being girls on FIRST teams, and being the best girl for the job.

It's a sad, widespread reality of our culture, which isn't really addressed by throwing money at teams that have already achieved a high level of diversity. These teams are the ones who need the extra influence the least, it's the people who will make derogatory assumptions about female students whose culture we need to work on. I don't really have an answer here besides solid mentoring and more role models, but I don't think cash incentives is it.

I hope that the teams that receive this grant are aware of, and able to react effectively to, the negative attitudes and assumptions that some both outside, and potentially within, their teams will unfairly have towards female leaders who have worked incredibly hard to get where they are.

[Katie_UPS]

Originally Posted by Shrub

I think that a lot of the grant should also depend on if the females in question actually feel comfortable in the enviornment. Just because you do have a solid 50:50 or what have you ratio or a female on the drive team does not mean that all or even most girls on the team feel they are given the chance to speak their mind and allowed an equal chance to participate in what they want to participate inside the team.

Lets say a student didn't feel comfortable in an environment. Would they have the confidence to say so when the team could lose out on money if they told the truth?

Originally Posted by jman4747

We recruit mostly based on, do you want to join & are you old enough. Really the ideal way to recruit is to recruit, not to try to recruit more of this type of person or that type of person. The best you can do is make sure you are being fair.

What if your recruitment is inherently off-putting for people of a certain type (race, gender, religion, etc)? Why would it be bad for a team to look at themselves and explore why they are not diverse? Lets say a high school is 60% female (not unlikely) and a robotics team is 80% male (also not unlikely). Why is it absurd that the diversity of a team reflect the diversity of the school/community that the team pulls from?

Originally Posted by Joe G.

the mere presence of these grant funds will lead others to assume that female leaders would not have their positions without the grant money.

Pretty much any STEM-related accomplishment I've achieved has been belittled by someone "because you only got it because you're a girl." Girls already receive those comments anyways. Might as well get something for it.

Originally Posted by Arpan

Providing a financial incentive for teams to achieve gender equality (by cutting male members or recruiting more females) or for teams to promote females to positions of authority is, in my eyes, just plain wrong.

Man, that gender equality. What a bummer. I can't believe they actually want to support teams that encourage hands-on STEM exposure to females. It's not like research shows that its the most effective at getting girls into STEM.



edit: Why driver and not captain? Not all teams assign a captain (ie 148), but all teams have to assign a driver.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS

Man, that gender equality. What a bummer. I can't believe they actually want to support teams that encourage hands-on STEM exposure to females. It's not like research shows that its the most effective at getting girls into STEM.

I don't think anyone is saying its wrong to work harder to reach girls considering I will work a little harder to make sure the girls in the group are getting engaged but that doesn't mean I'm going to give them a position they don't deserve because of their gender.

Yes, encourage and reward teams for getting females hands on in robotics in active, meaningful ways but don't do so in ways that eliminate those meaningful teams or celebrate bad actions. We should celebrate the teams who are actively working to create female leaders among their team regardless of their position on the team and overall team size.

I am also all for groups using their money as they wish but this was not done without some oversight/advice from FIRST. I'm a little disappointed with how this was implemented.

[snoman]

what we did is we give presentations to and questioned all females in the high school almost 40% of them showed some interest if there was an all-girls team. this is also a high school of 200 total students in grades 9 through 12

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS

edit: Why driver and not captain? Not all teams assign a captain (ie 148), but all teams have to assign a driver.

If I was going to phrase that, I would use "high-visibility position".

I would then define that "high-visibility position" to include the drive team, the team captain(s), the team representative for alliance selections, and possibly Chairman's presenter/outreach lead. I would NOT include head scout, business team, or other similar roles, because they work in the background for the most part. Any one female in any one high-visibility position would work (at least, the way I see it).

Just assuming that the drivers are the most visible isn't necessarily the case-I would say that unless the drivers are actually getting camera time and that feed is actually displayed, the team representative for selections might actually get more if they make it to the field.

[Chris is me]

Think about it this way.

Sponsorships and grants make it easier for teams to compete. That's what they exist for. People try to get them in order to lower their burden of entry.

If the SWE wants to make it easier for a subset of teams to compete, it seems completely reasonable that the subset of teams they want to help are the ones that are demonstrating that they actively engage many women. If it's a bar you can't or won't meet, the grant isn't for you.

Think less as the grant trying to force an 80/20 team to become a 50/50 team and more a reward for those teams that are doing well with gender equality. It's not perfect; I think the terms and conditions have some problems, but we don't need to act like the sky is falling because one grant of thousands isn't for us.

[jman4747]

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS

What if your recruitment is inherently off-putting for people of a certain type (race, gender, religion, etc)? Why would it be bad for a team to look at themselves and explore why they are not diverse? Lets say a high school is 60% female (not unlikely) and a robotics team is 80% male (also not unlikely). Why is it absurd that the diversity of a team reflect the diversity of the school/community that the team pulls from?

I don't disagree. I think that everyone should take an objective look at their practices and employ them fairly, not tailor them to gain a specific demographic. I think the most we should do is not put anyone of then make sure the message is spread as widely as possible. Theoretically even if a team was perfectly fair with team roles and recruitment exsternal factors (parents, peer pressure, media, etc.) can offten (not always) prevent it from evenly representing the community it is in.

[ehfeinberg]

[quote=Lil' Lavery;1407044]The driver requirement is leaving me scratching my head. Why must "driver" be the leadership position they chose for this grant? There are plenty of other high profile leadership positions on a team, many of which carry far greater responsibility than driver./QUOTE]

Who are the four most visible, photographed, video taped, etc... members on any FRC team? The two drivers, the human player, and coach.

FIRST doesn't just want women to have a high profile leadership position on the team, they want women to have a high visibility position on the team. If is 50-50 men to women, but all the drivers/coach/human players are all men, then to an outsider it would look like the team is mostly comprised of men. Having a woman on the drive team would help provide the visibility to outsiders to show that FRC is not just for males.

I am not saying that I think the implementation will be effective, but it accomplishes what the Society of Women Engineers wants to accomplish, making women a highly visible feature of FRC.

[Katie_UPS]

What would teams prefer be the criteria for this award?

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS

What would teams prefer be the criteria for this award?

Something along the lines of measurable attempts at progress, versus already achieving a goal (that could easily be unachievable by some of the best programs by circumstances outside their control).

[Katie_UPS]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Something along the lines of measurable attempts at progress, versus already achieving a goal (that could easily be unachievable by some of the best programs by circumstances outside their control).

I don't really have opinion on this one way or the other, but what is a realistic way to measure this? Number of girl scout events attended? A graph showing the female ratio on team over time for the previous x years?

Do we want to base this grant on feelings or data? Do teams have to include an essay outlining their attempts? Should there be any minimal requirements (such as x% female)?

[marshall]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Something along the lines of measurable attempts at progress, versus already achieving a goal (that could easily be unachievable by some of the best programs by circumstances outside their control).

I would agree. I've been asked several times by judges at competitions if we are an "all girl team" because the pit is often staffed with girls since they are some of the most dedicated students on the team and in positions of leadership. It used to be that we were a 20-30 student team and we had a roughly 50/50 ratio but now we are are 60+ student team and our ratio is more like 65/35. I think we take an amazing number of female students compared to most teams but we are no where near achieving this and I can't fathom putting our team at risk of winning an event by committing in November to have a female driver when it remains to be seen who the best student for that role is (Keeping in mind that our driver who won the off-season event this past Saturday was a freshman female driver. WOOO!).

I love that we have a lot of female students and I always want to see more of them but I'm not sure the conditions for this grant are going to generate more of them for most teams.

[snoman]

one of the reasons I believe they chose lead driver as requirement is that it can be verified at competition. anything else is hard to verify. 50 50 on a team roster isn't just having a token girl. one of our teams applied we have a 100% girl team as well as the boys team. we did have to provide our strategy for diversity. I will give an update November 21st that's when they will be letting you know if you receive the grant.

[thegnat05]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Something along the lines of measurable attempts at progress, versus already achieving a goal (that could easily be unachievable by some of the best programs by circumstances outside their control).

I personally think that this would be a great way to determine if teams are promoting gender equality but would also be hard to measure. If you look at 2531's past members there have been very few girls on the team, maybe 4-5 total over 5 years. I was the only girl on the team my sophomore year of high school, but over the last year or so we have had almost 10 new girls join our 30 person team. This is because we have become a more active team in our school and community and because of this we have generated more members of all genders, but this is also because our head leader (myself) is a female. When people see me speaking for my team or demonstrating our robot they take notice that our team isn't just a 'boys club.' It is also very clear to the female members that they can be a leader and a valuable member of the team too. Something my team tries hard to convey is that I am not head captain just because I am female but I also wasn't overlooked because I am female. We are not 50/50 but we do our best to encourage females to join FIRST teams.

Going back to the "driver" predicament, I don't feel like this is necessarily a measure of leadership for all teams. I understand they are 'seen' the most at competition and for some teams their leaders are all on drive team but that isn't a universal leadership title. I am not on drive team at competition, my strengths lay elsewhere, but that doesn't mean I am any less of a leader. I don't really know what term could have been used instead to ensure that the team is represented by a genuine female leader.

Originally Posted by Shrub

I think that a lot of the grant should also depend on if the females in question actually feel comfortable in the environment.

Honestly, feeling comfortable is key. If teams have an environment that is overall inclusive and makes members feel comfortable then they will most likely generate more female members. Something that drew me to FIRST in general was how accepting and inclusive my team was to me. They didn't treat me any different because I was a girl and I honestly rarely noticed that I was surrounded by boys. To me, they were my teammates and I fit right in.