Get more women to SWITCH!

[Mikell Taylor]

A lot of threads have been popping up about getting girls and women involved with the FIRST team, and questions of how to deal with potential recruits who say, "But I don't know anything about engineering!" I just ran across a new Do-It-Yourself show called "Switch" (that's also a blog, it looks like), that might help out a bit.

It's engineering, but it's targeted toward girls. The projects are engineering and involve soldering, wiring, and so on, but also include parts on the list like "clear nail polish". Videos are available for download (including iPod video format! ) These projects might also be good generic, non-gender-specific beginners' projects for team newbies in the fall.

Website is at http://www.iheartswitch.com/. I'd be interested to hear if people have success with this. I plan to hand out the URL to the girls on my team to have them recruit friends.

[Mikell Taylor]

Also note that it's very beta right now. Send them an email to see if they can get more up soon!

[Chris Marra]

Our team currently has three active girls on it, and of them, only one really gets anywhere near engineering, and the other two were drawing and sewing all season long. We had several other girls at the beginning of the season, but they gradually dropped out from losing interest in what they were doing or finding that they didn't have a specific place on the team. Also, I know there are other girls in our school that have said they find robotics interesting and fun, but they feel that as a girl, they wouldn't fit in, and a lot find the shop intimidating.

It seems as though the main problem is that most girls who would join a team are either intimidated by the shop and hardcore engineering, or simply feel they'll be out of place and not fit in well enough. And even the ones who are interested in it aren't necessarily joining or taking technology classes because they are lower level classes and hurt their GPA's, or they feel its too stereotypically "shop-kid". Vex will be helpful to recruit girls into the team since they don't need to be in a shop to do it, and its much less intense 'engineering'. It still prepares people and acclimates them to the ideas of engineering and eventually does get them to be comfortable with machining things, but it works as a good step between Legos, and a CNC machine.

The other problem with girls joining FIRST teams is that a lot end up falling into the head of the spirit team, the promotions team, the t-shirt team, or something thats part of the team, but isn't really engineering. I'm not discrediting these things, but a lot of teams end up just sticking girls into them and thats how they get onto the teams. Either that, or they'll get stuck with other kids who are very motivated and getting into more hardcore things much sooner. We lost one girl this year because instead of letting her do Vex, she kind of drifted into the programming team along with two very intense freshmen coders, and by Kick-off, she had quit because she didn't feel like she had a place on the team. Girls on teams need to be offered a chance to get into things, but they can't be forced into something, nor allowed to just wander towards something, since I've seen both be very unsuccessful.

[Libby K]

note to any girls reading this:

tell all your friends to join the team!

we need more lady engineers.

and FIRST is so much fun.

common phrases they say:

"well, i don't know anything about robots"
YOU'LL LEARN. and even if you don't there are other things that can be done on a team.

"that's nerdy."
yeah, and it's really fun. you learn a lot, not just about making a robot, but teamwork & [here comes the most over[and sometimes mis-]used phrase] GRACIOUS PROFESSIONALISM.

there's no excuse to NOT be on robotics.
'nuff said.

[Stuart]

IMO the best way to get new members (of any sex) is to get them to bring a friend . . its less intimidating when you have some one you know next to you.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

I think one of the best techniques I've seen for this is to let girls start where they want. So what if they want to spend a season working on spirit and promotions? Let them, but be sure to sprinkle lessons of technical stuff they can learn to help the team throughout.

While I like the idea of giving young women an online venue to learn skills, I don't think that matches the positive reinforcement that happens when any individual learns a new skill and they are congratulated with it face to face, and the news is shared. Encouragement is key.

[Mikell Taylor]

I just think it offers really good ideas for things you can do as a group, at recruitment events or something. Even sending someone the URL, saying, "Look! Cool! You can do this! Come to our meeting next Friday!" is a good idea, I think.

[Meredith Rice]

Originally Posted by Eugenia Gabrielov

I think one of the best techniques I've seen for this is to let girls start where they want. So what if they want to spend a season working on spirit and promotions? Let them, but be sure to sprinkle lessons of technical stuff they can learn to help the team throughout.

It is important for every team, regardless if you are recruiting guys or girls, to allow everyone to find their role on the team. Structure to the team will help aid this; creating clear definitions of the jobs that must be accomplished and allowing people to volunteer to do them will get people involved in what interests them. However, I think as Eugenia suggested, it is important to bring the focus back to what FIRST is trying to accomplish, an interest and appreciation of science and technology. If certain roles are fulfilled without much interaction with the technical aspects of the team, than this goal is not really accomplished. The team as a whole should have a working understanding of the robot's functionality and the design concepts that went into the machine. While participating in the engineering is not for everyone, the hard work and thought that went into building the robot should be appreciated by everyone on the team, that is of course why we are here.

But to bring the focus of this thread back to iheartswitch.com, I think interesting approaches to bridging the gap of what is nerdy and typically masculine to more feminine things, more readily embraced by high school girls. These workshops sound like great ideas for building confidence in the shop of rookie members, particularly girls. It has the appeal of an arts and crafts activity that could easily be used for both technical skills as well as team bonding early in the year.

[Maura]

on my team, there's about 7 or 8 girls. only 6 attended the so cal regional with the team. 4 of those 6 girls have worked on the robot either prior to the regional or at the regional. 2 of the four are the main buildings, one of those two is the driver of the shooter. we may not have a lot of girls are our team but they hold the high positions. Me being president. one is the building head. another is driver and pr head. and another works on pr when the previous one is driving. hope that wasn't confusing.