Girls on Teams

[Alex Salomonsky]

My team has 3 girls out of i think 15 members (we're kinda small). One only joined for spirit purposes, wasn't forced to do spirit. Another one brought Sobes for everyone and played HP one round at comp ( don't remind me ), and also came in on most saturdays, when some guys never came. the third was the only returning girl we had the previous year, she was a veteran leader, CAD drawer, historian, and actually helped "swiss cheese" sprockets which impressed the male mentors. the girls on are team are more helpful than some of the guys, and they were great to have around when i get tired of hearing the guys talk about their computers, i'm more of a sports person myself. I hope next year more girls will join, cuz we view everyone equal ( though the freshmen don't feel that way )

[Etbitmydog]

My school, University of Central Florida, recently had an artical in the school newspaper where they talked about women in male dominated science fields. (somebody brought up something about intimidation above) One former female engineering student actually said that the reason she quit was because she felt intimidated by the fact that there were so many men around. I wonder why this doesn't happen in the college of education where the ration of men to women is 1 to 5?! I still havn't heard of a man being intimidated by too many women around. Anyways, I think that does an injustice to some of the women I know in engineering who are much smarter than the guys and put in a lot of work to earn the place they've gotten to. I seriously doubt there is any intimidation by having a lot of guys around and it's a cop out to blame quiting engineering on us men rather than themselves for not trying hard enough in this very challanging field.

From what I think, and what I did see on my former robotics team, is that there are just as many women in RATIO that put in the same amount of work in a project as a guy does. What I'm trying to say is, on a team with 50 guys and 10 girls about 25 guys do work and 5 girls do work. The same ratio 1/2 puts in work on the robot and the rest seem to be tag alongs. (just my personaly observation from my old team but I'm sure this can be disproven case by case). It just seems like the guys are doing more work on the team because obviously there are more of us to go around.

[Sophey Chan]

Well, I am the only girl on a team of three. And lets just say, I am probably the most active member of the team, even though it is my first year and one of the guys second. At the beginning of the comp, I did recording of the kickoff, even though I wasn't in town, did the check list, and all that fun jazz, helped design the robot, come up with quick fixes, build it, sanded, drilled, did invetory, am a cheerleader, Mentor to University, team socialist (ask Suike on 312, haha) electrics, helped with programming, did driving, operating the lift, Human Player. I basically do anything you can do. I did the wiring, crimping, pricings, designing, web site (thoguht my teach hasn't put it up yet), wriote the Award essays we went for, and all the fun stuff...needless to say the girl on this team does everything, hee, they have called it my robot at times...odd, neh?

[Jacqui Sutton]

We have 13 girls, 9 guys.. students that is - and teachers we have 4 female, and like 6 male. Of the 13 girls, 9 are primarily on PR, although we do see most of them from time to time while we're working on the robot.. the other 4 girls are on both PR and Engineering, -- im lucky enough to be in this group, it's insane when you spend that many hours working on the robot and then any remote spare hours you may have are spent with PR, and then there's always the meetings that cause scheduling conflicts.. I love it that way! And 8 of our guys are solely on engineering, we have 1 who helped PR with the chairmans award It works out well, everyone on our team is somehow involved in every committee a little, and the girls on our team are definately just as big of a part of the team as any of the others - so when people claim PR doesnt do anything, we just show them our chairmans award trophy :-) the neatest thing is that everyone on our team is somewhat involved in every part, and we all know how hard each faction works so there's a huge respect shared between all our team members, guys and girls, students and mentors...gender isnt a qualification for anything on our team, and i think thats how it should be~!
- jacqui, team 388

[mtaman02]

When I was on a FIRST team the coaches made it very very clear that the girls on the team may help out in every area and aspect of the team. Whether it was building the robot, doing scouting, cheerleading, designing the robot, team logo design etc.

When students join a FIRST team they should not be limited to what they're abilites are but to expand and improve on them !!

[Alaina]

I'm the first girl to join my team. Actually, my team members said there was a girl last year, but she didn't do anything. This may be my first year on the team but I consider myself a valuable member. I helped as much as I could with Spicy and I'm one of the arm controllers (we made two teams out of 6 people ). And I don't do anymore cheering than the guys...I would feel guilty if I just hung around and did nothing for Spicy...

[kristen]

Originally posted by soezgg
6 of 25 students on our team are girls.

Generally speaking, on our team, most of them dont do anything.

But 2 of the cool ones do quite a bit of machining and handiwork.

The problem is, none of them take real initiative to do any of the design work, or fundraising or chairmans stuff. One of the parents on the team blame it on intimidation, most of us guys are pretty scary I guess.

I am trying to make them do more work and get involved, but its hard, Im not quite sure that they have the desire to learn, and if they dont, they are on the team for the wrong reasons.

Remember Steve... all of us girls are completely competent ;P

[srjjs]

We have 27 students, 7 of whom are girls.

Unlike many other teams, we have guys with uncannily neat writing and freshmen with small hands, so they are not irreplacebly important.

[narenr]

We have 5 girls on our team of about 20. They are all very active. 3 of them literally grab tools out of guys' hands because they want and love to work on the robot. It's really funny to see a guy who thinks he can do a job well fail miserably and watch one of the girls take over and execute the task flawlessly. The other two girls have no interest in building the robot, but they help by doing all of the little, non-building tasks. In addition, they help monitor the robot's weight by weighing every single part before we put it on the robot and entering the numbers in an Excel spreadsheet. Lastly, the girls keep the guys in check. They keep us from being too stupid or from doing anything too stupid. Sort of like our conscience.

[AlbertW]

We've got like 5 girls on our team, out of 20 or so active members. We're actually really gender-neutral when it comes to assigning jobs, mostly basing the meniality of the job on your grade ::cough::freshmen::cough:: than your gender.

3 of the girls are on the mechanical team, one willingly does spirit (we'd rather she not do it because she tends to come up with whacky ideas and makes us use them,) and one is sort of out in space.

and then theres the time when they complained cause we had everyone bending rods, cept they said they were too weak


so yeah. gender stuff on our team is pretty balanced (cept for the ratio. hm. we hafta fix that.)

LAST year it was a different story. (we were doing botball)

there were like 5 kids total, 4 guys and a girl, and since you can only effectively fit 3 people around a 1 ft^3 robot, and have one person programming, there were 3 guys around the robot (either got there first, or shoved their way in,) one at the computer, and we'd the girl would just sort of wander around not doing anything, eventually settling on the task of throwing legos at our heads

so. yeah.

[Madison]

Originally posted by Etbitmydog
One former female engineering student actually said that the reason she quit was because she felt intimidated by the fact that there were so many men around. I wonder why this doesn't happen in the college of education where the ration of men to women is 1 to 5?! I still havn't heard of a man being intimidated by too many women around. Anyways, I think that does an injustice to some of the women I know in engineering who are much smarter than the guys and put in a lot of work to earn the place they've gotten to. I seriously doubt there is any intimidation by having a lot of guys around and it's a cop out to blame quiting engineering on us men rather than themselves for not trying hard enough in this very challanging field.

Welcome to Male Privilege 101.

The glass ceiling still exists most everywhere, and old-school ideas of gender roles are still very well entrenched. Things in the world aren't as equal opportunity and peachy keen as people would like to think they are.

Males, largely, are oblivious to this. They don't understand the privilege they experience just because they're male, and they very wrongly assume that everyone else is afforded the same opportunity for advancement, error, or experimentation.

Males don't feel as intimidated in a college of education because education (especially pre-university level) is still considered to be women's work. Women's work is inferior work, requiring less strength, intelligence, and time. Yes, it sounds archaic, and you may not find many men who are still willing to admit feeling that way, but the sentiment does exist.

I agree that it's tempting to blame trying to break into a male-dominated field for one's failure, but I don't think it's fair to immediately assume that's the case. Until you've been on the other side of the fence, I don't think you'll ever be able to truly comprehend the immense strength and hard work and perseverance it takes to make it. To assume that you have any idea is really nothing more than that same male privilege rearing its ugly head.

Sure, if you don't understand something right away, you can try and try and try until you get it, and you can do so without facing an endless wall of discrimination and scour. Women aren't afforded that same luxury. The standards they're held to are much more limiting, much more strict, and far less forgiving.

Be careful next time you try to speak about things you don't really know all that much about. Until you've experienced it, it's a bit arrogant to think you understand it.

[Team238-aholic]

I'll admit when I was on the team 3 years ago...i knew absolutely nothing about how to build the robot....

I was always involved in fundraising, chairmans, shirt design, buttons...you name it...i did it...lol

But I was also the president of the team...even though I didnt know how to build the robot, I still helped out a great deal...


I think the team now has a few girls that have been helping out with the building of the robot and such...but then theres a few girls who are like me and just like the fundraising and other things....but as long as they help out the team...i say it doesn't matter what the girls do....

[BandChick]

At Hightstown I am the only girl...of approximately 13. at first, i will admit it was pretty intimidating. I didn't fit in as all the guys talked about what video games they had played last night, including our advisor. but, as time passed, i blended in with them. i worked just as hard actually doing the building & driving as anyone else. I also manage our website (which i might add was comepletely built by me as well) and do some PR. That's pretty much shared amongst all of us, though. I wrote the Chairman's Essay & designed the logo for out t-shirts. So, as far as girls are concerned, i worked just as hard, if not harder than the other guys on our team.

Doesn't mean i don't love them though

[the doors]

As team captain of Cyber Blue, I like to think that we as a team look at members solely for their own individual talents. We choose the best person for the job regardless of their gender. Our male to female ratio is 13:9 and everyone plays an important role.

out of 30 team members (not including coaches ) team 314
has 6 girls on communications, chairman's and spirit and we have 2 girls on the build crew which at one compatition also drove the robot. ( i am one of them)

it is fun being on a build crew that has mostly guys.