Girls on Teams

[Jay H 237]

Originally Posted by KingsvilleKukes

There are about 25 students on our team, five of wich are girls. We are all doing PR this year, but i know i definatly will be helping more on buliding next year! I hope that next year more girls will want to join, i don't think the boys would mind.

When you are demonstating your robot at different events it's good to have some of the girls on your team there. This way when other girls are interested they'll feel more comfortable talking to the female members of your team and they will also realize if you can be part of the team, so can they. Let them know they can program, machine, weld, assemble, wire, and drive the robot and not just doing the chairmans award and misc stuff.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally Posted by Jay H 237

When you are demonstating your robot at different events it's good to have some of the girls on your team there. This way when other girls are interested they'll feel more comfortable talking to the female members of your team and they will also realize if you can be part of the team, so can they. Let them know they can program, machine, weld, assemble, wire, and drive the robot and not just doing the chairmans award and misc stuff.

Exactly!
The culture on our team several years ago were girls and freshman to be tolerated, not encouraged.

For the past couple of years we've changed that culture. A girl has to be up on the drive team each time, all members work on something robotically AND PR wise.

It's helped shift the guys or upper classmen perception about gracious professionalism and being inclusive rather than exclusive.

It also helped our team to double the number of girls on the team, and encourage 2 of them to take the jr college welding class and become TIG welders. It also helped this past weekend in AZ for the brand new girl to realize she could participate in many ways, AND choose to be trained as a programmer for this next season.

[Vivelation]

8 girls out of ~40 members on GRT (192), one of whom is our team leader this year. We all participate in designing the robot as well as machining. Some of us also work on other projects, like Chairman's and website. About half the girls have experience in everything (except for a couple areas like animation and programming). Other than that, we usually ask around to see if anything else needs to be done.

[Lisa Rodriguez]

There are 8 girls on our team of about 34..........but of those 8 girls, all 6-7 consistantly show up and do thier job. I am currently the only girl in the machine shop, i had another freshman girl, but she got caught up in other things. We have 2 girls running battery and myself and another girls on drive team.
Its interesting to have girls, because (as i've found) we tend to think differently about almost everything, and having an all guy build and all male engineers, i tend to think totally different then them, which can help at times or we can just confuse each other

[Jonathan M.]

We're a small team of 15 students, 3 of which are girls. One of these girls does electrical, another is on PR, as well as mechanical, and the other girl does PR and mechanical as well. I've got about 3 or 4 girls to join the team next year, who will do much more than just PR. We believe greatly that no student should be left out of anything. (That's why there are more GUYS on PR than girls! Lol) Oh and I must say the girl on electrical is the best student electrician the team has ever seen!

[swdshfsh]

We have 40 students on our team, 10 of us are girls. Two of the girls are solely devoted to robot and course build. Our marketing team is run completely by girls and we find that females generally have better organizational skills and can get this type of work done quickly. Our marketing team has stayed strong and busy all season as we are one of the hardest component teams of our group. When the girls from marketing felt like taking a break, we worked on building the course and learning as much as possible about robotics. This has been a great experience, and I would encourage and girl to take advantage of robotics and try to learn as much as possible. Don't let the guys think the only good thing you can do is serve food, clean up, and make buttons.

[golf_cart_john]

This year, we have "3" girls on a team of "23" students. In reality, only 1 girl out of 15 members show up. Most of the girls on our team seem to have preferred electrical work, but many of them did mechanical work as well. Oddly, no girls on our team have ever worked on programming. Maybe I scared them all away...

[danielkitchener]

Our team has 5 girls, and is about 20 big. We have 2 who work on the robot, one of whom drives and is our leader. We also have 2 who do PR and promotional stuff, and 1 who actually was one of our human players. Additionally, this may sound a lil sexist, but it's true: girls are really useful in the pit if you need to borrow something from another team. People are a lot less likely to say no to a decent-looking female than to a pasty-loking male...especially if they have spent the past 6 weeks in the shop building the robot with no contact with the outside world. (notice the number of females doing analysis, too...most teams realize the advantage females have and use it to benefit their team). I'm not saying females can't build or drive...our team is a living testament to the fact that they can. I'm simply saying that females do have an advantage over males when it comes to persuasion and extracting information

[Crash852]

we have several girls on our team. One of them is our HP. She is a really good HP and rarely misses. She also represented our team in the alliance picking process after the qualification matches.

[disturbedislife]

on our team of 35, 14 of which were active members, 2 are girls. i did scouting at the event, but at school, i was part of construction, and design. the other was mainly programming and whining about boys being dumb. (ok, so i did that when our guys fudged it up, i admit...) but it was nice seeing other teams having girls, though i personally find it easier to talk to men, because in some cases, they just think *oh, female, listen, stare, flirt, talk.* but mostly the guys i spoke to were very knowledgable on all subjects even the pr.... so even though the guys generally stick the chicks with the "simple tasks" they are capable of it all, and so are the girls. so, if youre a girl readin this, stand up for whatever position you want, and if it comes down to skill level in that position, show your skill, chances are, if you are confident, you will do just as well. so.. boys, dont automatically assume that girls deserve menial jobs on the team, or jobs that require less physical work, just give em a shot at what they say they can do. you might even like having a girls opinion there to help out...

[ThetaDot]

Originally Posted by summerstar215

girl stuff?? excuse me

oops looks like someone forgot to turn on their sarcasm detector!

[MisterX]

[quote=Jay H 237]When you are demonstating your robot at different events it's good to have some of the girls on your team there. QUOTE]

I dunno maybe I am looking at this wrong and if so pleas correct me but couldn't that be portrayed as a bit shovanistic that you parade your female memebers around just so you can increase your numbers on the team? I am not saying lock them up in a room so people don't know you have female memebers, just to specifically bring female memebers to events to increase your numbers seems wrong to me. They should be dealt with as if any other person and not specifically do a certain taks based on there gender... or am I just reading WAY to into this?

[JoshJ]

MisterX-
Th rest of his post makes more sense than the first line. Basically, he's saying that it is a good idea to have girls present when you are demoing (trying to spread word about ur team anyway) so that any girls that may be interested in joining ur team know that they wont be the only ones on it. Hope that makes sense.

[Jay H 237]

[quote=MisterX]

Originally Posted by Jay H 237

When you are demonstating your robot at different events it's good to have some of the girls on your team there. QUOTE]

I dunno maybe I am looking at this wrong and if so pleas correct me but couldn't that be portrayed as a bit shovanistic that you parade your female memebers around just so you can increase your numbers on the team? I am not saying lock them up in a room so people don't know you have female memebers, just to specifically bring female memebers to events to increase your numbers seems wrong to me. They should be dealt with as if any other person and not specifically do a certain taks based on there gender... or am I just reading WAY to into this?

I think you're looking at it the wrong way. I'm sorry if my post came off that way to you. My idea isn't to parade the females around as models for our robot or the team for that matter. The fact is there ARE females interested in careers in the science/technical industry. The fact is SOME females are reluctant/hesitant to talk to, let alone join the team when all they see is males on the team thinking they won't be accepted or allowed to join. When they see other females on the team they realize that they could join also and that we don't discriminate against them. When they find out that some of our female members machine, program, assemble, wire and drive the robot they realize that they could do that also and start pursuing thier interest in science and technology. It's unfortunate, even in these days, but some people ARE still sexist and don't feel females should be doing (or can't do) machining, programing, wiring, ect.

Just remember the idea of FIRST (other than GP) is to allow ANYONE thier interest in pursuit of a career in the science and technology fields.

[pink967]

I'm actually very proud of the role of girls on the Linn-Mar team 967!...we've got 9 girls out of a total of 35 students. We've got a system where we have leaders for each team, and there are like 8 teams. 3 of the leaders for the teams are female!!! (Myself included) We have a mentor who does a TON of stuff for our team like you wouldn't believe! I am the documentation team leader which means i oversee about half of the team including the whole website team. My best friend, kelsey is the PR/Finance leader, and the travel coordinator is also a female. The guys were gonna be our cheerleaders at competition but, let's face it, most guys can't handle that kind of pep. SO, we also play the role of cheerleaders as well, but that's jsut basically us freaking out over the stuff that we helped accomplish and knowing that our team would be nothing without us yep, progress is being made considering we had 3 girls on our team last year.