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

[Tristan Lall]

With regard to the original question, "allowed" implies a regulatory solution. I think there's a broader question: should gender-specific teams be encouraged within FIRST?

The regulatory angle is one way to discourage them (or eliminate them entirely), but it shouldn't be the only thing we consider.

From a formal point of view, I'd need strong evidence that they were almost always a bad thing to ban them, but would be satisfied with moderate evidence that they were usually bad as a reason for discouraging them, and would interpret ambiguous evidence as a reason for not actively encouraging them. Those represent several degrees of "no", but I think they better express the continuum of options.

[Jon Stratis]

As a male mentor working with an all girls team for the past 5 years (the Robettes, I think we've been mentioned a few times in this thread already ), I wanted to share my perspective on this subject.

First, lets talk about the pits. I challenge everyone here to walk around the pits at their next regional a few times and count the numbers of males and females actually working on the robot. You'll find a huge gender bias, and the reasons for that have already been outlined in this thread: Boys have more experience growing up, and naturally tend to take over, pushing girls out of the way. It can be a real eye opener to see a pit that has all girls working on the robot.

Next, lets talk about the Robettes. Every year we have close to 25 students. We currently have 3 male mentors from Boston Scientific and two female teachers working with the team. While we've had female mentors from Boston Scientific with the team in the past, when the team was first formed the students made a conscious decision to encourage female mentors to work with other teams instead - that way, those females could provide direct inspiration in male-dominated teams.

Our team structure has evolved over the years, but one thing is certain - our students come with practically no experience, and leave being able to design and build a robot. When I say no experience, I mean none. Some of them have never even used a drill before. How do you compare a student, regardless of gender, with that level of experience with one who grew up building tool boxes and bird houses in Boy Scouts? With one that learned first hand some basic engineering principles in designing and building a PineWood Derby car? There really is no comparison. Those students coming in with experience quite simply will take over.

Finally, I wanted to share some stories the team has been collecting. These stories show exactly what sort of impact an all-girls team can have, not only on its members, but on the wider community.

This first one comes from a Second grader who saw our team compete last year.

I like the Robettes and I think what they are doing is cool. I go to their website a lot. I like looking at the pictures of what they are building. Last year my dad, he is a medical engineer at HCMC, took me and my sister to see the Robettes compete. I really liked the soccer game and the area where they did the building. I like building things. I build a lot of things at my house. When I was little, like five or six, I thought building things was boyish. When I saw the Robettes I just changed my mind.

This next one comes from one of the founding students of the team, and really highlights what this experience provides for the students.

Being a part of The Robettes opened my eyes to my future. I always knew that my passion was with math and science, but I had no outlets for it at my high school, until we started the Robettes. There are many parts of my experiences as a part of the Robettes that I value greatly and I can say with confidence that would not be where I am today without them. The Robettes gave me the tools I needed to understand where I wanted to go in life. I was inspired by my fellow teammates, the other students I met at competition, but most importantly my mentors. I had never known any engineers before my involvement with the Robettes and my mentors gave me so much insight and guidance in deciding where to go to college and what major to pursue. However, I feel that the most important thing our mentors did for my team was to make us, an all-girls team, feel empowered and more than capable to enter a competition that was mostly male-dominated. I never felt intimidated, inferior, or less intelligent. This is something that has transpired into my college career in classes heavily dominated by males. I can see that my experiences with the Robettes have really put me ahead of the game in this sense--I see other girls in my class who lose sight of themselves or don't speak up because the classes are predominately male and taught by male professors. I have never felt overshadowed or afraid to ask a question or give an answer in class. I don't think I would have felt this way if it wasn't for my time with The Robettes. I cannot express how much the Robettes and FIRST have inspired me--I have so much love and respect for the program and I am so proud to say that I was once a part of it.

This final one is from a current member's grandmother, and really helps to highlight the type of gender bias the team is working against.

My granddaughter is a member of the Robettes. I grew up in the era (1950’s) where women who attended college could be teachers or nurses. These were the only career paths offered to women. I choose business administration and to major in finance and accounting. I was the only woman in most of my classes for 4 years and I actually had professors ask why I was taking classes in those majors. I am thrilled to see a program that offers girls a chance to compete in a science and technological fields, to make it possible for them to aspire to careers in math, science and engineering, something unheard of in my day Our country cannot realize it’s true potential when 50% of the students (women) are left out of the most promising fields of advancement. The rallying cry of “you go, girl” needs to be shouted the loudest for these girls to compete at the highest level . I am thrilled that my granddaughter is one of them.

If your at the North Star regional later this week, stop by our pits to read all of the stories we've collected so far!

[DonRotolo]

Accidentally clicked "no", since the question posed by the poll is opposite that posed by the thread title.

[pianogrrl71]

I'm currently on an all girls rookie team called the Girls of Steel. We come from eleven different schools, and we're not from any organization like Girl Scouts or anything like that. We're simply a bunch of girls from a 400 square mile area around Pittsburgh that wanted to get involved in science and technology, and none of our schools had FIRST FRC teams. Most of us really didn’t know each other before we started the team in October, but now we are cohesive team, all friends. We also now know how to work all of the machine shop tools, design and build new parts, and how to use CAD to pre-prototype the parts we want.

So far this year, we've made it into the Pittsburgh Regional elimination rounds, won Rookie All Star in Pittsburgh, and then went on to win Rookie All-Star in D.C. as well. We're going to St. Louis in April (can't wait to see all the awesome teams there!)

We've also received some flack because we don't allow guys on our team. People have told us that by being an all girls team, we're discriminating against guys. But within a 10 minute radius of where our team meets, there are about 3 others teams that accept guys -- and one that only accepts guys (all-guy catholic high school). So it's not like because we don't have guys on our team, there aren't any options for guys to become involved in FIRST.

We've also been told that we're not getting "real world" experiences. And I wholeheartedly agree—we're not getting “real world” experiences. And that’s the way we want it to be!

We don't want to follow the "real" world model, where women make 77 cents to every dollar a guy earns. We don't want to mimic a world where the science and technology fields are populated by a large majority of male workers and women have to fight to be heard. We want to create a new "real world" and we want to change how the world views females in science in technology.

We also want to support and encourage more girls to get interested in these fields through opportunities like FRC, FTC, FLL, and other programs. By giving anyone (guy or girl!) the chance to feel valued in these groups, all FIRST participants will be more likely to be more interested in science and technology. Because there are so many all guy or mostly guy teams already, we want to create an environment where the girls can explore science and technology without competing with the guys to be heard so that when we get to college and our careers we will have the confidence to succeed and level the playing field.

Most of our mentors are guys, and we work with a lot of other co-ed and guy teams as well. We are proud to provide a different opportunity for high school girls in the Pittsburgh area and look forward to the opportunity to share our team’s story and the principles of FIRST to inspire many others—both girls and boys of all ages.

[Andy Baker]

Wow - what a thread! This is an excellent discussion. It is impressive to see the passion and conviction of opinions, along with the thoughtfulness of making clear points while also being open to others' opinions.

This topic resonates well with me, as I have seriously considered starting an all-girls FRC team in the Kokomo area during the past year. We have discussed this with many people, receiving many opinions from many friends, including influential women in FIRST. To my amazement, we received opinions from women which were both supportive AND non-supportive to an all-girls team.

Before I describe who was most influential to me during this process, I will give you some background:

My wife and I have three daughters, and the oldest will be a freshman next year at a high school which does not have an FRC team. Graciously, the TechnoKats (45) have invited her to be a member of the team. At the same time, we have also met with the Superintendent and Principal of her school (Northwestern High School in Indiana), and they have agreed to start a new FRC team. As a family, we have decided that the best thing for us to do is start this new team at NHS. I will still have close ties to team 45, but next year my focus will be as a mentor on this Rookie FRC team. This team will be a girls and boys team, with much emphasis on making sure that the team's culture allows for girls to have equal chances that guys have within the team.

So, back to the idea of starting an all-girls team: as I mentioned, we talked to many women in FIRST about this. However, there was one person who influenced me the most in making sure that girls should be welcomed and supported equally on a mixed gender team instead of purposely segregated from the boys. This person is one of the "rock stars" in FIRST: Kate Pilotte. Kate grew up with a house full of boys, and was successful as an engineering graduate of WPI. She even got to yell at guys at WPI as a coxswain (I think that's the term) on the rowing team. Now, she is in charge of the FRC Kit of Parts as a FIRST engineer. She serves as an FTA for many events, and has seen many all-girl teams in FIRST. If you can get her to talk about this, she definitely has some opinions. Her point is that girls should be supported and integrated with boys so that they can learn to work together, productively, at an early age.

Kate's opinion further opened my eyes to this issue, and I am pledging to continue to support a culture within FIRST that supports female involvement.

Thank you, Kate.

Sincerely,
Andy Baker

[Lledargo]

Exclusive teams should not be allowed in anything, let alone FIRST, it is counter productive to society. Everyday people must work with others that are different genders, races and so on. Creating exclusive groups makes it harder for the people included in the groups to work in a diverse group. on top of that you are promoting the belief that different groups of humans should be separated from each other.

lastly you have the issue of double standards. If a team that was exclusively for boys was created, it would be called gender discrimination. Where as an exclusively girls team is called inspirational for doing the same thing.

[mwtidd]

Originally Posted by Lledargo

Exclusive teams should not be allowed in anything, let alone FIRST, it is counter productive to society. Everyday people must work with others that are different genders, races and so on. Creating exclusive groups makes it harder for the people included in the groups to work in a diverse group. on top of that you are promoting the belief that different groups of humans should be separated from each other.

lastly you have the issue of double standards. If a team that was exclusively for boys was created, it would be called gender discrimination. Where as an exclusively girls team is called inspirational for doing the same thing.

What you say is definitely true, but I don't think it is something FIRST should try to govern. Once FIRST begins to govern teams it is a very slippery path. "The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

I would prefer FIRST to remain separate from the politics of individual teams. Once a few bylaws are created, more are certain to come. The beautiful thing about FIRST is that it can be whatever you want it to be. Introduce bylaws for teams, and this will change very quickly.

[Lledargo]

Originally Posted by lineskier

What you say is definitely true, but I don't think it is something FIRST should try to govern. Once FIRST begins to govern teams it is a very slippery path. "The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

I would prefer FIRST to remain separate from the politics of individual teams. Once a few bylaws are created, more are certain to come. The beautiful thing about FIRST is that it can be whatever you want it to be. Introduce bylaws for teams, and this will change very quickly.

I cannot disagree with you, FIRST teams have a lot of liberty and that is a wonderful thing, however an exclusive team is counterproductive, and should be discouraged.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Lledargo

I cannot disagree with you, FIRST teams have a lot of liberty and that is a wonderful thing, however an exclusive team is counterproductive, and should be discouraged.

...based on what evidence?

[Lledargo]

Originally Posted by Madison

...based on what evidence?

The goal of FIRST is to inspire innovation, and teach students how to work in todays rapidly growing society. Exclusive teams only let people work with others of the same demographic, meaning they will not have to try as hard to learn to work with others that they may disagree with. which is not only counterproductive to the FIRST philosophy but to society in general.

Also Lineskier, you have a very good point. Many people do follow the FIRST guidelines as if they were law. I suppose I would like to see FIRST support social integration, but I can also see such a stance from FIRST causing many exclusive teams to disband which would be in itself counterproductive to the FIRST philosophy. I suppose that it is one of those lose-lose options.

Over all, as much as I support social integration, I support learning and intelligence more. I could not bare to see teams break up if FIRST started discouraging exclusive teams.

[Mikell Taylor]

You know, I really don't think it's FIRST's responsibility to make FRC teams look just like "the real world." Think about your co-ed team. It is made up of people in a specific school district, right? Chances are most of you are the same ethnicity, or the same socio-economic demographic, or all immigrants from the same country, or the same in any other number of characteristics. That's not always the case, true, but because schools are built around neighborhoods and neighborhoods tend to attract similar types of people, there's a really good chance your team doesn't look at all like "the real world."

FIRST as a program is designed to encourage and inspire students in a controlled environment. The problem they set out for you to tackle is achievable -- challenging, but achievable. Everyone is working with your best interest in mind. Everyone is trying hard to help you succeed and learn as much as you can. I can assure you that does not in any way resemble the real world of engineering. FIRST is structured to make it comfortable and easy for you to learn what you need to learn so that you are inspired to go tackle it in the unstructured, un-cushioned, much more intimidating "real world."

So while I appreciate the concern in this thread from all the men who are worried that women on all-girls teams will enter the engineering world as wilting flowers unable to suddenly deal with a co-ed environment, I don't think they have any more problem than you do going into college coursework with people richer than you who have had way more opportunities (and possibly more education), people poorer than you who haven't had the privileges and opportunities you have, people from different ethnic backgrounds and even different countries -- the list goes on. All an all-girls team does is offer female students who might otherwise be intimidated enough to be discouraged from STEM fields a chance to try something out in what feels like a safer, more supportive environment, to have a chance to build their confidence and emerge from the program willing and able to handle anything the "real world" can throw at them.

There are plenty of women in this thread who've said their co-ed team experiences made them the successful engineers they are today. There are plenty who have said the same thing about their all-girls team experience. There is no single answer. But I think it is clear that all-girls teams do play an important role in helping FIRST achieve their goals.

[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.

[Wildcats1378]

I think it shouldn't matter. If you're a girl and interested you should have the opportunity to do so. Same goes for boys. There should not be any differences between the two. I think that it is important to move past gender stereotypes and associations. No all girl teams, no all boy teams, no stigma towards other genders.

[VioletElizabeth]

There's something to be said for simply ignoring gender and treating it like it does not matter, but the problem is, we do not live or work in a vacuum. People come (or more importantly, don't come) to FIRST with gender awareness already and the field of engineering in particular has a gender imbalance issue.

[E Dawg]

Boys and girls are different from each other. Those differences are good, it's what helps make each one of us unique. However, that does not make one gender inferior to the other.

I guess what I am saying is that gender-exclusive teams can lack something present in co-ed teams.