All Girls Teams?

[Liz Smith]

Originally Posted by Xchuck14X

When the teams were combined a person who didn't know how to do something didn't always learn how, it was no ones fault but that was just the way it was, this year there are more chances for girls and the boys to learn because there is more work.

Was it a smaller team that made the difference?...Or the fact that it was an all girls team?

From what you said, not a lot of the girls had prior experience in robotics. Do you think you would have learned more if it was a smaller team with a few experienced people who learned a lot in past year and a few people ready to learn new things rather than the gender split?

[CinnamonHopes]

As a female, I think all girls teams from Co-ed schools are a very, very, bad idea. While I agree that more girls could become involved in FIRST, I don't believe sexual segregation is the way to go. I am speaking from the point of view of a girl on a co-ed team. I initially joined because my Chem. teacher mentioned the idea of a robotics team to my class. As time has gone on, I am one of 3 girls who have stayed constant on a team of appr. 20-25 members. I'm not on the team for dating, and I find the thought that I would've joined the team as some sort of dating service offensive. I have yet to date a guy from the team, and I prefer it that way, I wouldn't want to spend that much time with ANY one person!
Anyway, I believe that co-ed is the best way to go if possible. There is so much everyone can bring to the table... I'm not so good at the mathematics or physics of our 'bots, but I'll be jiggered if my ideas aren't almost always the ones the team ends up adopting and modding to the benefit of our season!

[Total Tomboy]

Originally Posted by CinnamonHopes

As a female, I think all girls teams from Co-ed schools are a very, very, bad idea. While I agree that more girls could become involved in FIRST, I don't believe sexual segregation is the way to go. I am speaking from the point of view of a girl on a co-ed team. I initially joined because my Chem. teacher mentioned the idea of a robotics team to my class. As time has gone on, I am one of 3 girls who have stayed constant on a team of appr. 20-25 members. I'm not on the team for dating, and I find the thought that I would've joined the team as some sort of dating service offensive. I have yet to date a guy from the team, and I prefer it that way, I wouldn't want to spend that much time with ANY one person!
Anyway, I believe that co-ed is the best way to go if possible. There is so much everyone can bring to the table... I'm not so good at the mathematics or physics of our 'bots, but I'll be jiggered if my ideas aren't almost always the ones the team ends up adopting and modding to the benefit of our season!

i totally agree w/ u. i think more girls should be in Robotics. i am 1 of 2 girls on the team of 1323.

Robyn

[SugaRaXie]

Originally Posted by Total Tomboy

i totally agree w/ u. i think more girls should be in Robotics. i am 1 of 2 girls on the team of 1323.

Robyn

Same here...it's just myself and another girl who're like...ALWAYS there. There's another girl who's there from time to time but she hardly does anything when she comes. BUT...I've apparently been dubbed as 'one of the guys'...and I'm not sure if I should take it as a compliment or an insult...

However, our marketing team is all girls.

But yeah...other than that, I'm the only other girl on the Build team.

2 years ago we had two teams. One was a guys team, one was girls. But, we decided to let our girls team go and just form one big team again because we just couldn't afford it.

[Katy]

Give the kid a break! Soccerguy868 said he was sorry. What more do you want out of him? Look there are two possibilities as to how it was said
1) He was kidding
2) He was serious and isn't going to believe different until he sees a girl's team beat his.

Either scenario does not include any form of improvement by having people yell at him after he says sorry. I don't believe anybody understands FIRST anyway until they have seen a competition...

I find this question really interesting. I mentor an all girls team that is suppose to be city-wide. Every school in the city except for two already have a team. I mentor 1725 not because of it is all girls but because I asked for a team to mentor and I was told this team needed a mentor. I however come from a co-ed highschool team so I have seen a little bit of both perspectives.

From a logistics perspective it is much easier to mentor teams that are not co-ed. (Between FRC and FLL I've done both) It is far less socially awkward and it keeps parents calmer. On my highschool team sometimes the boys would take a part home and sleep in shifts so somebody was working all night on it. Explaining to my parents that I was going to a boy's house, that I would be the only girl, and that I was staying over just did not fly. I am very sure if I had been going to a girl's house with no boys there my parents would have permitted me.

Perhaps if more girls had been going to work on the electronics board overnight my parents would have permitted me. The problem was they did not doubt that I was going to really work on an electronics board all night, they just thought it wasn't the proper thing for me to do. I have not heard of parents telling their son that. I do think there is a correlation between parents with rules about what their daughter should or should not do (in the "properness" context of things) and daughters who are more use to a stereotypical definition of female roles in society. Those girls are the ones who will gain the most out of a FIRST experience. Those particular girls will gain a great deal from an all-girls team.

However I'm fully willing to admit: the idea is a sexist from the perspective of a girl ready to work with the boys who has parents who will let her. It also is a terrible approximation of life in the work force.

Also for the record

Originally Posted by lukevanoort
I think that there are also more women in engineering schools, although I might be wrong on that.

No way. Not within the engineering programs themselves. This shows the number of girls at WPI in various majors along with national averages data. http://www.wpi.edu/Admin/Women/Students/

Only a few schools can sport 50/50 numbers and places like MIT have to fiddle with some numbers to pull it off (8% of men who apply get accepted to MIT. That number is closer to 19% for women).

[kjhobin]

Originally Posted by SugaRaXie

2 years ago we had two teams. One was a guys team, one was girls. But, we decided to let our girls team go and just form one big team again because we just couldn't afford it.

Although i TOTALY suport 1929, 555's Female Companions, i do think that it would be better of we were one team. Its really hard to split our resources and build two bots. I will halve to admit that there are more girls on 1929 then there have ever been on 555. So yes the team has succeded in getting more girls to join FIRST.