Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?

[xitaqua]

I am a Girl Scout Mentor and last year we were the first all Girls FTC team, this year we have 2 Girls Scouts team, and another all girls from an all girls school in St. Louis.

I am also a member of SWE, and yes I am the only male member.

and I have to say it is a different perspective.

Do we have other male mentors mentoring all girls team ?

Cheers,
Marcos.

[karomata]

I feel that the push to get women into STEM is a great cause, however the methodology being used is wrong.

By excluding males from teams or team activities, you are only creating a split within the entirety of the team. While it is great to get women involved in STEM, pushing out the guys is not fair nor gracious professional.

Another issue I personally have faced, being a high school senior this year and applying for WPI FIRST scholarships, I have found that they are female preferred. As a 9 year FIRST student who has put much time and effort into contributing to FIRST, learning about science and technology, and embodying the values of gracious professionalism, it really grinds my gears at times to know that I am disadvantaged because of who I am.

We as FIRST participants often speak of rising above the opponent instead of dragging them down, however in a competative setting for scholarships, isn't having a bias towards women dragging down the guys in FIRST? Is it gracious and professional to distribute these scholarships with a preferance?

I'm not saying I only got into FIRST for the scholarships, but for how often FIRST speakers talk about having 16+ million dollars in scholarships, I don't think it reflects well on FIRST that some of these scholarships are bias. FIRST preaches gracious professionalism, a belief in the FIRST culture that has allowed all of us to thrive, but I believe these preferences on the scholarships to not embody the FIRST spirit. Even if the colleges are determining the criteria, as FIRST students we are entering a world where not everyone is always gracious and professional, and at times having some influence from a higher power (FIRST) even the odds would be very helpful.

[Jon Stratis]

For those who don't want to read 14 pages of a several year-old thread, the general consensus isn't that we should form all-girls teams by excluding boys... but rather that there is room for all-girls teams in appropriate situations. If the team comes from a girl scout troop, they aren't excluding boys to have it. If they come from an all-girls school, they aren't excluding boys to have it. If their school has two teams, one of which is all-girls, then they aren't excluding boys to have it.

So when you hear about an all-girls team or talk about it, please don't think it's about exclusion. I have yet to hear about a single instance where an all-girls FRC team was formed by excluding otherwise available boys.

A side note from my team... Yesterday we did a presentation at another local high school to help their team. At the end of it, we had recruited 2 new female students for them. That's just a small example of how an all-girls team can help other FIRST teams!

karomata - Your experience with scholarships is unfortunate, but it's not something FIRST can solve. Colleges try to create a balanced class, since including even numbers of males and females, and including minorities is perceived as a "good thing" (whether it is or not is a whole other topic for another thread). Unfortunately, that means that some under-represented portions of our society need extra encouragement to enter certain fields. Going to school, majoring in engineering, and looking around at your lecture hall of 100 students only to see 2 girls (true story!) is pretty discouraging, and something colleges are trying to change through targeted recruitment and, unfortunately, preferential scholarships. I'm sorry to say, but it's something everyone has to get used to, as our society has decided that diversity needs to be encouraged. If you look at the group I work in, out of 4 people (including me) on my current project, one is female, two are Indian, one is Chinese, and then there's me, a white male. If there wasn't a push in our society for diversity in the workplace (and in colleges), how diverse do you think this group really would be? (Please don't take this as dismissing any of my coworkers, they're all great at what they do and I wouldn't trade them for anyone)

[Kims Robot]

Originally Posted by karomata

We as FIRST participants often speak of rising above the opponent instead of dragging them down, however in a competative setting for scholarships, isn't having a bias towards women dragging down the guys in FIRST? Is it gracious and professional to distribute these scholarships with a preferance?

I'm not saying I only got into FIRST for the scholarships, but for how often FIRST speakers talk about having 16+ million dollars in scholarships, I don't think it reflects well on FIRST that some of these scholarships are bias. FIRST preaches gracious professionalism, a belief in the FIRST culture that has allowed all of us to thrive, but I believe these preferences on the scholarships to not embody the FIRST spirit. Even if the colleges are determining the criteria, as FIRST students we are entering a world where not everyone is always gracious and professional, and at times having some influence from a higher power (FIRST) even the odds would be very helpful.

EVERY scholarship has some sort of bias... Are people whining that the ASME scholarship is only for mechanical engineers? Are people whining about the fact that WPI is only providing scholarships to kids that want to go to WPI? Are people whining that Penn State's scholarship only goes to those in Engineering, not business or nursing?? Or how about the Society of Women Engineers, are you upset that their scholarship only goes to women?

As an FRC High School senior, you have the option of over 158 scholarships conveniently located on a single page with details, information, and application links laid out for you. Other students at your school do NOT have that option... are they complaining that they can't get those 158 scholarships because they didn't join the FIRST team? I get that many of these things are things you can "choose" - you can "choose" your major, you can "choose" to join an FRC team or not, but you cannot choose your gender.

However, use your own "rise above" statement and rise above these challenges. Have you applied for every single one of those 158 scholarships that you are eligible for? Have you scoured the internet looking for other scholarship opportunities, read up on how to write a killer essay, used spell check 3x over, practiced college interviews with college graduates, reviewed your applications with your guidance counselors and teachers?

Only 6 of the 158 indicate a "preference for women", however only ONE is exclusive to women, and it is NOT the WPI scholarship. Make your resume and your essay and your interview far more attractive than any of the female candidates offered, and you still stand a shot at getting that scholarship. You are not excluded from it. When you have done absolutely everything you can to "rise above" your "disadvantage", then lets talk.

Welcome to the real world where you have to work for it, it won't be handed to you. Don't use the word "preference" to justify your lack of trying.

[xitaqua]

Right on !.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by karomata

By excluding males from teams or team activities, you are only creating a split within the entirety of the team. While it is great to get women involved in STEM, pushing out the guys is not fair nor gracious professional.

It must feel pretty unfair to be excluded from something based on your gender. It would certainly be really painful if that happened to you on a systemic and regular basis, throughout your attempted career in a STEM field. That's what happens to women in STEM all the time and continuously. A common term used to discuss this phenomena specifically in academia is the "leaky pipeline", where systemic discrimination against women gradually and continuously pushes them away from advancement.

This happens on FIRST teams as well, all the time. It's rarely the product of someone actively deciding that women shouldn't be doing STEM work. It's in the little decisions and actions of team members and leaders. Gradual and subtle (or not-so-subtle) nudges away from mechanical and software into communications are far too common. A mentor grabs a handful of freshmen that they pick at random to build a prototype; the coding team works together to recruit a few new programmers; the CAD team leads find "buddies" for teaching. All of these examples are simple opportunities for women to be subconsciously excluded or shunned by not being selected into a program.

On many teams, confident and headstrong women fight for their position as a mechanical leader, drive coach, or software captain. Yet, the women who join the team whom are curious about (but not totally sold on) a STEM career - the people FIRST teams should do everything to inspire - are going to have a harder time breaking into these groups. Lots of people on teams join and show up with neither the requisite skill set nor the understanding of where to go to learn. In these situations, it's harder for women to break into a new job or role, especially when they're surrounded by a dozen of their male peers with more understanding and experience. It's certainly intimidating.

Another issue I personally have faced, being a high school senior this year and applying for WPI FIRST scholarships, I have found that they are female preferred. As a 9 year FIRST student who has put much time and effort into contributing to FIRST, learning about science and technology, and embodying the values of gracious professionalism, it really grinds my gears at times to know that I am disadvantaged because of who I am.

A recent study that I will find and link to after my classes indicated that 97% of scholarships do not prohibit white male applicants (the study was also addressing similar objections to race based affirmative action scholarships, but the point stands as "white male" is a subset of "male). You're complaining about a tiny minority of scholarships that aim to help counteract the many barriers to entry that disadvantaged minority groups face in their attempts at STEM careers.

While few to no scholarships actively state that women are less likely to receive them, in practice that's what has happened, especially in STEM. Not to mention all of the accumulating discrimination and social pressure from before and after this point in their careers. Do those people not get to be upset for being disadvantaged because of who they are? In what ways can we counteract and mitigate this disadvantage without producing opportunities that apply to the disadvantaged groups?

We as FIRST participants often speak of rising above the opponent instead of dragging them down, however in a competative setting for scholarships, isn't having a bias towards women dragging down the guys in FIRST?

Not at all, not even slightly. Listen to yourself. You're saying that not giving men eligibility for 100% of the available free college money is "dragging them down". Giving scholarships to women sounds exactly like bringing the bottom up / rising above circumstance to me.

[Dumper FTW 435]

After graduating, I started mentoring my old FRC team. I have always enjoyed teaching, and mentoring was no different. Around a year after I started mentoring, a friend of mine sent out an email asking first graduates to come mentor a girl scouts team. The team is very new (I think), and very in need of mentors.

What made me angry was that she specifically asked for girl mentors and said "If you are a guy and REALLY want to mentor the Girl Scout FRC team specifically it would probably be okay for you to come too...". Now I'm not throwing her under the bus, since she was probably relaying this info from the team, or her interpretation of the team's policies, but this makes me very angry.

Why are boy mentors not wanted? Especially when the team is so in need of mentors. I understand that girl scouts is specifically focused on girls, but that doesn't mean that they can't get help from guys! I was in boy scouts for years, and we had plenty of female leaders despite the fact that the children in the troop were male.

Maybe they want girls because they want the kids to have strong female role models? But I hate that idea. Why do they assume that a kids role model has to be the same gender as them? I have both male and female role models that I aspire to be more like. It seems sexist to show a girl a strong female role model for the purpose of saying "even girls can be good at this!" instead of showing them any strong role model to say "this is the type of person you can become if you work hard!".

In summary, boys can learn from girls, so why can't girls learn from boys?

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by karomata

By excluding males from teams or team activities, you are only creating a split within the entirety of the team. While it is great to get women involved in STEM, pushing out the guys is not fair nor gracious professional.

Do you have any examples of this happening? As far as I know, all of the all-female teams in FIRST are sponsored by all-female organizations, like the Girl Scouts or all-female schools, that aren't open to boys in the first place.

[Phcullen]

Originally Posted by Dumper FTW 435

Maybe they want girls because they want the kids to have strong female role models? But I hate that idea. Why do they assume that a kids role model has to be the same gender as them? I have both male and female role models that I aspire to be more like. It seems sexist to show a girl a strong female role model for the purpose of saying "even girls can be good at this!" instead of showing them any strong role model to say "this is the type of person you can become if you work hard!".

role models that you can relate to are incredibly important and usually the first thing we know about somebody is their sex. put a adolescent male in a new school at lunch there is a table of boys and a table of girls. I don't know about you, but i would only put money on one option.

to look at it the other way. I don't know the actual figures but i would say based on public perception that fashion design is made up of primarily woman and camp gay men. now if a fashion design club were to start in a high school how many strait men do you think will join/ stay with it (that are not of the mind set of "$@#$@#$@#$@# stereotypes ill do what i want and prove i can be just as good" etc.) but instead think that maybe its kinda cool it cant hurt to try it out as a possible career option? if the club had strong male role models in the fashion industry do you think those numbers would be different?

[Phcullen]

Originally Posted by bduddy

Do you have any examples of this happening? As far as I know, all of the all-female teams in FIRST are sponsored by all-female organizations, like the Girl Scouts or all-female schools, that aren't open to boys in the first place.

i dont have the numbers but some teams were mentioned earlier in the thread as being started for the purpos of all girl teams. i believe there was one started by CMU. there were also cases mentioned of teams funded by SWE that would have to find all new funding if they chose to be co-ed. there were also cases mentioned more recently of public schools that have both a co-ed and a all girl team.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Dumper FTW 435

Maybe they want girls because they want the kids to have strong female role models? But I hate that idea. Why do they assume that a kids role model has to be the same gender as them? I have both male and female role models that I aspire to be more like. It seems sexist to show a girl a strong female role model for the purpose of saying "even girls can be good at this!" instead of showing them any strong role model to say "this is the type of person you can become if you work hard!".

I'm not at all advocating turning male mentors away from female teams, but yes, in my experience, it is incredibly for women entering male-dominated fields to have female role models (as well as male). In fact, part of the reason is exactly what you said, to show that "even girls can be good at this". Why? Because many girls, including me at that age, really are asking that question ...because yes, the situation at large really is sexist. So it is a very big, very real, often painful and sometimes humiliating question. It needs answering, preferably from a mentor who can prove it. (In fact, many girls I've known aren't/weren't asking that question because they already knew the answer was no, we can't be. That's not going to be displaced in most cases without examples.)

It's the myth that's sexist. As for the solution, I don't see one that wouldn't include gender identity.

Originally Posted by Phcullen

for the past 2 (possible 3) years my former team had an all girl drive team despite not being a all girl team and i would be very interested to hear from them on weather they experienced this as well.

Not really. We're usually a co-ed drive team, though more often majority or all female than majority male, and the person leading the interaction is almost always female (usually me). We haven't faced gender discrimination between drive teams and years, but I do remember some as a student. There were a few 'wow, you're all girls' moments 2-3 years ago, but not detectable discrimination. Then again, most of our interactions are within districts now, which means we both know each other in the majority of coach-coach interactions in a given season+off-season.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by bduddy

Do you have any examples of this happening? As far as I know, all of the all-female teams in FIRST are sponsored by all-female organizations, like the Girl Scouts or all-female schools, that aren't open to boys in the first place.

Emery C.I. in Toronto. Of course, there was a boys' team too.

[Kims Robot]

Originally Posted by Dumper FTW 435

Maybe they want girls because they want the kids to have strong female role models? But I hate that idea. Why do they assume that a kids role model has to be the same gender as them? I have both male and female role models that I aspire to be more like. It seems sexist to show a girl a strong female role model for the purpose of saying "even girls can be good at this!" instead of showing them any strong role model to say "this is the type of person you can become if you work hard!".

In summary, boys can learn from girls, so why can't girls learn from boys

I agreed with you 100% (and I AM a female engineer), just going off my own experience. I was on a team in high school, with only male engineers, and I felt like I learned a ton... though I did push my way in... but they were always accepting and often even turned to me for a lot of things on the team. I originally thought I felt, like you, that it didn't matter the gender of a role model. As long as the role model was equally open to teaching males or females, I felt it was fine. One thing I did eventually realize is that from a young age, two of my biggest role models were my aunts - one of whom was a Geology professor, and the other was a programmer at financial company. From a very early age, I knew that women could do Science & Technology.

So, as I thought more about it, I decided to ask several of the females that I had mentored (and were now in college), and asked them if it had made a difference to them, since they had both male & female mentors... and while they were close to me, they were also close with several of the male mentors. The overwhelming response came back that it had made a huge difference to them (much more than I had realized). Many of them were a bit more "timid" than I was, and to see a Female in engineering running the team from an engineering perspective (not just administratively), it had given them a lot more confidence that they could succeed in engineering roles on the team. It did help that I had great support from male mentors - there was a male programmer on our team who did an amazing job mentoring 2 of them (and all of the students) when they were on the programming team (he is now a WFA winner). I never directly pushed to have these girls included any more than any other student on the team, but I guess just having me there, pushing for everyone to have a role, gave them a lot more confidence. One is off at NASA on an amazing internship, another is traveling the west coast for Toyota, and another is now pursuing Nursing!

So while I don't know that it is anyone's intention to exclude male mentors, I do think it may be more important than we realize to have female role models and females in leadership positions. And as others have mentioned, girls/women tend to take "whatever role is needed" and often on teams that is leading a chairman's group, or designing the spirit items, or whatever... Not that other roles aren't important, but there is a huge gender difference in our field, and its reflective of the pipeline... the pipeline needs to be fixed, and one way people are focusing on fixing this is to have more female role models in engineering mentorship roles.

[Jon Stratis]

You know Kim, your reply there seems to go along quite well with something my students said way back in the beginning... the specifically asked for male mentors, in order to allow female mentors to work with other teams. They felt that girls in mixed-gender teams could benefit more (ie get inspired more) by having strong female mentors, while our all-girls team wouldn't necessarily need that sort of example in front of them - the seniors on the team would always be there as the inspiration for the Freshmen, and just the nature of being an all-girls team meant that it was easier for girls to be involved with all aspects of the team than on a mixed-gender team.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

If their school has two teams, one of which is all-girls, then they aren't excluding boys to have it.

My personal opinion is that this is just as bad as excluding the boys. It is draining resources from both teams. Plus, what if Team Boys has a crazy awesome mentor but Team Girls doesn't? Wouldn't it be better to have one team and let all the students learn from them? Why double the cost of this program, instead maybe build a great team instead of a pair of mediocre ones?

Course, as a male I CLEARLY can't understand this problem.