Girls are still undermined?

[Cory]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

It would be interesting to check the statistics: what percent of freshman enrolled at engineering universities this year, female & male?

It's pretty much entirely disproportional. I know engineering schools like RIT/WPI/etc that are well known in FIRST all have extremely small female populations.

I think the gap is very slowly closing, but it's going to be a long long time until it reaches 50/50 or 60/40, or whatever it is that most colleges are at.

[KenWittlief]

my point is: is it reasonable to expect the ratio to be 50:50?

If you look at the present situation, and from your perspective you think it should be 50:50, and that makes you upset or angry, or it pushes you work towards making it 50:50, are you looking at things realistically?

Im only raising the question. What should the ratio be?

[Cory]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

my point is: is it reasonable to expect the ratio to be 50:50?

If you look at the present situation, and from your perspective you think it should be 50:50, and that makes you upset or angry, or it pushes you work towards making it 50:50, are you looking at things realistically?

Im only raising the question. What should the ratio be?

I have no idea what it should be. I was only comparing to non engineering focused colleges, where the ratio is much closer to 50:50 or even skewed in favor of women.

[dubious elise]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

my point is: is it reasonable to expect the ratio to be 50:50?

If you look at the present situation, and from your perspective you think it should be 50:50, and that makes you upset or angry, or it pushes you work towards making it 50:50, are you looking at things realistically?

Im only raising the question. What should the ratio be?

I say no ratio. Those that are interested should pursue their desires, rather than being handed a special incentive to make things "equal" when their skill levels may not be as high as the next applicant or participant.

But that is off topic entirely. My apologies.

On our team, we have one female mentor that always encourages the girls, especially the new ones, to listen carefully to the discussions and instructions, then grab the boys' tools and push them out of the way to show that they can do it too. Its a bit of a rough theory, but it works

I've never particularly had a firm spot on our team. My first year was largely animation, logo design, and, during competition season, photographing, scouting, and following Ricky. Last year, I was the human player, led some of the team meetings, painted the frame, and helped out with fundrasing and publicity as much as I was able. Both years, I picked up fairly random skills, one day I would work with 3DS Max, the next I would be welding, or soldering, or machining gearboxes, or assembling gearboxes, or using the plasma cutter, or organizing the nuts/bolts drawers.

This year, I've been working with our new FLL team and I have noticed an odd thing. Whenever the 7 boys get very involved in one aspect of the game, the 3 girls automatically withdraw to working on their research projects. The other two girls that mentor with me can't seem to get the younger girls to be quite so involved in the building process as they were for the first 2-3 weeks.

Maybe it is the lack of structure, girls want to work from a plan, guys want to freehand a project and see where it goes...I don't really have a concrete answer. What I can say is that the more passionate a girl is about a certain aspect of the team (and yes, this holds true for guys as well), the more respect she will gain from her peers and the more opportunities she will have within the team. Don't withdraw. Don't hold back. FIRST is a no-holds-barred opportunity. It is up to the students to make the most of their magnificent chance.

I would say that most of the girls at my school are either to embarssed to join or just think its wierd for girls to be in robotics.I have tried to get my friends that are girls to join and i just got laughed at and the pictures in the trash can in little pieces. i figured it was stupid that they did that but oh well.

[DanaRocks]

it does not happen on my team i am a girl and i am the captian of the team and the head mechanical person

[C.Roberts 1089]

Neha's already heard this, but I'll post so everyone else can see what she's talking about.

Though I absolutely adore my team, they are a bit disrespectful at times. I'm friends with a lot of members of other teams, mostly through Corey Balint (25). We're the "chat kids" - we have chats just about every night so we can all catch up with each other and whatnot. Basically, acknowledging these people and other random people that approach me at competitions has gotten me the reputation for being a flirt. In reality, I'm a hyper kid that's just extremely friendly. I don't really mind being called a flirt. But it's now been taken to another level.

An occasional joke was okay, that's all well and good. But I've even just recently gotten comments such as "Take off your shirt and go stand on the corner, we need more people to come" (at a car wash we held last weekend). That's just degrading and rude. It may have been a joke, but I didn't find it too funny, especially since it was delivered with a condescending smile. The weekend before, at a fair for the town my school is in, one of the other girls on my team, who I happen to be good friends with, interrupted me while I was doing PR [we had our bot there, I was explaining to parents & kids alike about our robot and about FIRST], and called me over, saying "Carli, could you hold these oreos and stand in front of the tent? We need more people to buy them, and you're the hot one." Well, I was flattered by the compliment, but I'd trade being considered 'hot' for being taken seriously any day.

During build last year, every time I asked to help do something, I was told that people "didn't have time" to teach me, or that I "didn't know anything" and I should go back to doing 'other stuff'. Which brings me to another situation where a new male member of the team (joined end of school last year) commented to myself and a few other girls on the team that we should "go back to making up weird things to make us look like freaks at competitions" and "stop worrying about important things" because we didn't know anything about them, or something of the sort. What he was referring to is the fact that we're all involved in spirit and PR and such - in fact, I'm chair of Events Planning [PR, Outreach, Fundraising], one of the others is chair of Media, and the third the chair of Spirit. We earned our positions. But we do plenty more for the team as well, and we'd do even more if people didn't prevent us from doing it.

They criticize us for 'not knowing enough' yet won't teach us. So all of a sudden it's our fault that we weren't raised with a background in engineering? That we became interested in it along the way and wanted to learn? Well excuse us, we should've known better than to think girls had a place in technology. I've gotten (and still get) tons of other comments about this, year-round.. It's pretty frustrating. Now, I know that many of the comments that are made are in jest, which is fine.. I can take a joke just fine. But when it comes down to saying things that are downright cruel and crossing the line, it's not fun and games anymore. I also know that not all teams are like this. I mean, I do love my team. I just wish that they would understand that I'm not here just to look cute, that I want to learn, and though I do contribute to everything else, I want to have my hands on the robot too.

I don't want to just write chairman's, and plan events, and make cheers, wave posters. Sure, that's all fun. But I'm interested in the robot and it's mechanics, too. But I can't learn, and I never will know very much, unless someone teaches me. If i get blown off every time I ask, I make no progress. And that's not gracious professionalism. It's not a real team. I don't care what the result is, if everyone can't work together and help each other out, it's not as valuable as if the team unites. Excuse the long post, guys. Just had a lot to say on the topic =p. Ask for clarification if you need it, please don't be offended by anything, have a good day =). And please treat your teammates with respect.

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by C.Roberts 1089

...
They criticize us for 'not knowing enough' yet won't teach us. ...

...But I can't learn, and I never will know very much, unless someone teaches me. If i get blown off every time I ask, I make no progress.

I hope this has been your experience with other students, and none of this has come from mentors!

I assume your team is broken up along functional lines. Is there any reason why you cant be on the drive train, or electrical, or other mechanical design part of the team this year?

From my experience as a mentor, very few students really knew what they were doing when they jumped to a new subteam at the start of the build season. It was mostly up to the mentors to show them what needed to be done, show them how, get them started, and then stand back and let the students run with it.

[C.Roberts 1089]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I hope this has been your experience with other students, and none of this has come from mentors!

I assume your team is broken up along functional lines. Is there any reason why you cant be on the drive train, or electrical, or other mechanical design part of the team this year?

The mentors have not been biased, though occasionally one of them has some rude and sexist comments. He's always joking though, and we know that though it's sometimes offensive anyway. However, if I ask him to explain something to me, he always does, if he can. The problem is, sometimes anyway, that the mentors are willing to help but simply don't have the time. They're juggling their own jobs outside of FIRST, or the student mentors are trying to deal with the pressures of college, and when they're there they just don't have as much time for that kind of stuff. As far as I'm concerned, it's more the job of the upperclassmen to teach younger students what they don't know. But I'm a junior now - my third year on the team - and I still haven't learned very much about the actual building and such. There really isn't a reason why I can't be on the drive train, or electrical, or mechanical design 'part' of the team... except that I'm just not qualified. That's my goal for this year, is to be involved in all of that. And be able to do it myself. Without other people telling me, "Okay, now connect the red here to the red there, and then this black to that black." I want to understand what I'm doing, not just do it. And that requires knowing some things in advance.

Originally Posted by Karthik

Here's the problem. In general, less girls take tech courses in high school.

Problem at my highschool is that we don't really offer any tech courses for anyone. We used to have a metal shop, but it got cut from the budget long ago. The only courses I really found that were at all similar to robotics were programming courses, which I considered but wasn't sure I was ready to take on this year with the rest of my (pretty heavy) workload.

Originally Posted by Cory

While everything you've said is dead on with respect to girls, it also often holds true with freshmen/first year members.

I noticed that while I was posting the first time. Most freshmen don't get quite as much verbal abuse though. But that's what it's like for a lot of the girls - being like freshmen interminably.

And to comment on what Genia said, don't get me wrong, I do thoroughly enjoy doing writing and PR and organizing for the team, and I'm good at it... I'd just like to do more. I'm not saying every girl does, but if they do, they should be encouraged.

And finally, to Oz, that's an awesome policy you guys have. That's exactly the type of attitude that's perfect for FIRST. Congratulations =).

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by C.Roberts 1089

... But I'm a junior now - my third year on the team - and I still haven't learned very much about the actual building and such. There really isn't a reason why I can't be on the drive train, or electrical, or mechanical design 'part' of the team... except that I'm just not qualified. ....

Im wondering how many engineers you have on your team, because you seem to be focused on the building and tool/wrench stuff.

Nobody at your HS is qualified to be an engineer, unless they went to college for 4 years and then decided they wanna do HS again?

Many people have the mistaken impression that engineering is building stuff. Engineering happens between your ears. Engineering is:

1. you are presented with a problem that needs to be solved
2. you clearly define what the problem is (why the task needs to be done, and what the task is)
3. then you figure out how to best solve the problem - the most effecient and elegant way to provide a solution

the rest is all nuts and bolts stuff, trivial really compaired to 1-3 above.

For example, my daughter was on a FIRST team for 3 years, and for a technology class she participated in something they called the 'sumo car competition'. Each team had two students, they were given motors and gears and some basic parts, and they had to build a small car like vehicle.

the competiton took place on a 5' diameter round table. Two teams played against each other for 60 seconds. The team that was closest to the center at the end won. Kind of a king of the hill (table) pushing contest.

Every other team at her school, and in this part of the state immediately latched onto the 'pushing contest' aspect, and designed cars with drive trains that were geared way down, big high traction tires or tank treads, and a plow or bush-wacker on the front.

My daughter did not have all these preconceived notions, had taken advanced physics, and looked at how much energy the little motor and batteries they had to use could produce? Not much it turns out. If you are head to head with someone else, all the energy you have is what you can draw from the motor/battery

but she knew about kinetic energy and momentum. Her team designed a car that was fast, geared up, and the front was shaped like a wedge.

At the HS competition all the other matches consisted of two opponents starting at opposite sides of the table, slowly going after each other, pushing and shoving for 60 seconds, and the one with the best traction usually held the center of the table. The first match she played, she hit the switches at T=0, her car flew across the table in about 2 seconds, smacked the other car and sent it flying to the floor. All the other students had a jaw-dropping experience.

Her team won at the HS competition, and they won at the upstate competition. Every match she played lasted about 2 seconds.

The point is, engineering is all about the concept. If you grab the kit of parts right after the kickoff and start building something, you are doomed.

And being creative and thinking out of the box very often comes from girls, because all of this is new to them, and they dont have any preconceived notions about how a robot should function.

[tiffany34990]

there is always going to be this problem. we try so hard to get other girls involved but it is up to them. you can push someone so much but it depends on them to be active and do something.. we started the RCU to help inspire girls to be in science, math and technology related fields but we support them in any direction they take while being in FIRST and in life...

some like me love to work on the machines and build the robot...others like Beth and Genia said like working on the paperwork, public relations things. it is up to the indivual.

but yes machining and engineering are not the same.
the issue with girls not knowing the tools is an issue i know, that's why my mother developed Girls Camp. It is a program just for girls to learn how to use the tools and some machines. There aren't any guys to be there as "pressure". i was the lead machinest for the past 2 years. my mentor actually told me at times he rather have some girls because of the fine details we pay attention to. girls and guys can do the same thing. the guys might be stronger for example but i always found a way to solve that problem w/ making sure things were tight on the machine. now i had to stand on a chair all the time when switching out the chucks on the Bridgeport back in S.P.A.M.'s pit but that's okay.

i sit in class everyday with not many girls because yes i'm studying engineering. mechanical engineering to be exact. my engineering chemistry lab has only 2 girls in there and the rest are 20 guys. the ratio is small. but the ratio is changing.

but i just have to say do what you want to do..if it's something related to engineering and working in the pit go for it. i know at times girls can be shy about it all. at first i will say was intimidate by all the guys but at the time S.P.A.M. was a very small team when i first started and the mentors were really nice and upperclassman and showed me things. last year i tried to get girls on our team to be on the machines they didn't want to..i didn't pressure them because i know at times pressuring becomes discouraging..they will learn when/if they want to.

each team will face this problem. how they overcome it is different. there will always be those people that think girls should be at home taking care of the kids. some families have the mom working and the dad at home. it's is the way our society is. things are changing slowly but it takes time. older generations still influence us a bit. it is also how we have grown up and what we are exposed to. as my old math teacher once said it's the sterotype...girls generally get dolls to play and the guys get truck and blocks. as a young child as studies shown these affect us...our motor skills, what we like and what we dislike... some have the insight to the way things works other just perhaps know what it looks like or not....

but all and all... girls can do anything...and so can guys. if guys want to be in fashion design and sew well by all means go for it...if a girl wants to build a car..go for it too...

everyone just do what you want to do and believe in yourself...good luck to everyone in life...

i hope more girls do end up in engineering and working in the pits but if they don't want to do that..it's all good to me...

[Kims Robot]

I first want to say this is a great thread, and some really great comments on it.

Wow, its a lot to digest too. We did come to the hypothesis that it is too late to interest girls in science & technology in high school (at least in terms of recruiting). That it must be done in that pre-teen phase discussed earlier, where girls are influenced by what other girls are doing. So we started an all girls lego league team.

I also do know of a girl who was told by her teacher that he wanted her to "help with the spirit and organizing the team" and to not work on the robot. That completely disgusted me. I tell everyone on our team that they can work on or try anything they want. We havent come far enough to enforce that EVERYONE try everything, but last year, every other team meeting was a sort of seminar on either, electrical, mechanical, CAD, programming, etc... so everyone got a little exposure to a lot of it.

The cool thing on our team is that last year, the ENTIRE leadership team of mentors was female. I was the team leader, our teacher was a female and past industrial engineer, our second in command was a female electrical engineer like myself. So I think we formed some pretty good role models

However, I will take the other side of the fence for a minute, and say that most females are more creative and more organized than the guys. (Im NOT saying guys arent creative or organized, its just both a genetic & environmentally induced thing). And in the real world of engineering/business most top executives are male... this is generally from the motherly instinct. Society & nature has deamed the mothers the caregivers and the fathers the breadwinners. Its the same in many animals as well.

The other thing that females have to deal with is that once out of high school it is much easier to get into college & to get a job as female engineers. However, once they start taking classes or working, its often the reverse that happens. Many people will think they either "just got in because they are girls" or "don't belong in the profession." Ive dealt with both situations. Both are incredibly discouraging.

Even with me, while I love engineering, getting hands on and knowing the technical, I also tend to be better at organizing things than many guys in my department. That is why they asked me to be key recruiter (not because HR is a girl thing, but because my boss called me "the most organized person he had ever met" *if he could only see my office right now! lol*).

I guess in the end, my thought would be that we should ALWAYS encourage the girls (and new students) to try everything. Even if they dont like it, at least they tried it. I wont ever physically drag a girl away from the spirit team because girls should "do more than spirit," though. Because in the end, the FIRST experience isnt just about the robot. Inspiration can be in many areas, it can be in engineering, but it can also be in leadership, organization, finance, business, etc! FIRST builds "the leaders of tomorrow" not just the "engineers of tomorrow."

So every girl should have the same opportunities and encouragement as every guy does.

[KenWittlief]

Ive usually been on the electical team as a mentor, but Ive always been close friends with the mechanical engineers on the team, and theres a couple things we have observed over the years.

Guys are more likely to have mechanical experience. They are more likely to take their bicycles apart when they are kids, tinker with lawn mower engines, help dad change the oil in the car, and get all that black grease and oil all over them. Thats just the way things are in our culture.

But heres the thing: guys learn a lot of bad habits this way, they are more likely to use brute force on something, they are more likely to grab a hand drill when they should be using a drill press, more likely to wack a bearing with a hammer when they should be using an arbor press

but girls on FIRST teams, who work on the mechanical subteams, have to learn most things from scratch, and as a result, they learn from the mentors how to do things right. Metal fabrication in a shop is done with power tools, powerfull machines that have motors up to 10HP. You dont force a professional machine tool, you need a light touch on the controls. If a bit is dull a guy is more likely to pull on the handle with both hands (and bugger up the work), while a girl is more likely to take the bit and get it sharpened.

There is absolutely no doubt that girls can do excellent machine shop work. We tend to forget what happend from 1940 to 1945, when most of the men in the US went off to war, and the women stepped up to the plate, and built the tanks and jeeps and aircraft that won the war.

So ironically, if girls on the team are willing to overcome the fear of trying something new, the fear of messing things up, they often end up being better machinists than the guys, because they are learning to do things the right way, and they dont have the attitude of "I all ready know how to use powertools..."

and BTW, when you work on old cars and bikes and motors you get all dirty and greasy, but when you fabricate new machine parts in a shop, everything is shiney and clean and new. I love the smell of machine oil in the morning :^)

[C.Roberts 1089]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

Im wondering how many engineers you have on your team, because you seem to be focused on the building and tool/wrench stuff.

None, as a matter of fact. We've got a team parent who is a tile guy, but quite handy, and we've got a machinist that volunteers to help us out as well. Personally, I love it this way. The kids get far more input from what I can tell - I've heard many stories about how engineers, especially when provided by sponsors, will take over a robot and make it their own, instead of belonging to the kids on the team. I like that my team becomes more innovative and thrifty with random parts because we don't have engineers to help us make things perfect and such. We learn the hard way, but I'd say overall we learn a whole lot more. The problem to me is, that when I say 'we,' I mean those who are actually participating in building the robot. Which unfortunately, at the moment, does not include myself. Or any girls, really.

[Pat Chen]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

Guys are more likely to have mechanical experience. They are more likely to take their bicycles apart when they are kids, tinker with lawn mower engines, help dad change the oil in the car, and get all that black grease and oil all over them. Thats just the way things are in our culture.

Yes...it is the way in our culture but it doesn't have to be. When I was young...I took everything apart. It was years later when I told my parents what I did with their electrical equipment. The difference was....when I took it apart....I put the pieces on the floor the way I dismantled things...thus...I was able to put things back together and no one knew. I am sure that I was not the only girl who was doing the same thing.

Again...yes it is our culture....as educated adults...do we have to permeate this? It is up to us to change things. Viva la revolucion!

Originally Posted by tiffany34990

girls generally get dolls to play and the guys get truck and blocks. as a young child as studies shown these affect us...our motor skills, what we like and what we dislike... some have the insight to the way things works other just perhaps know what it looks like or not....

What Tiffany wrote is correct....there is a Harry Chapin song...."boys are taught to reach for the sky....girls are taught to reach as high as the cupboard...." these lyrics has been very influential when I was raising my kids....Barbie dolls and dance classes were banned from Tiffany's wish list and extra-curricular activities...now LEGO's, Brio's and truck..oh my..oh yeah were accepted....she did not get her first doll house until first grade...yes I know...bad mom....depriving her of the influence of the gender stereotyping.