We are FIRST Ladies, an international community for FIRST teams who support and promote inclusion in STEM and FIRST robotics. We would love to have your team join our community and become a FIRST Ladies regional partner! Our regional partners run events in their communities specifically for the purpose of increasing gender inclusion in STEM, and we support and encourage our partners along their journeys. We also have an award opportunity, the 2023-2024 FIRST Ladies Certificate of Recognition, that you can present at competitions. More info on how to sign up to be a partner can be found here: @ladiesinfirst | Linktree
Thank you for reading this and for considering! We look forward to partnering with you if you do decide to join us! Please reach out with questions.
Hello! This initiative seems interesting, but I have a few questions about your organization. First, does FIRST Ladies believe that trans women are women? On a completely related note, does FIRST ladies in addition to women, believe that non-male people (eg nonbinary) people fall under the the genders that FIRST ladies aims to support? That is all.
Given some of the blog posts on their site, I think it’s a rather inclusive organization.
I think FIRST Ladies is really focused on one group that is typically under represented on teams, at events, and especially in the pits. For a group more focused on the populations your questions focus on, you may be better served by LGBTQ+ of FIRST:
Both are great organizations!
Disclaimer: My team has been a FIRST Ladies partner for many, many years.
Both of those blog posts are now over 7 years old, so a newly shared affirmation might go a long way toward making newer students feel comfortable. A lot has changed since 2016.
Thank you for doing more digging than I did. I simply read the first and second blog posts, saw the word biological women, and that raised red flags, and so I thought it good to ask. i’m glad I have been proven wrong, and I’m already aware of LGBTQ+ of First, and their work is wonderful. Thank you for such a good answer to my question.
Hello!! Thank you for your question. FIRST Ladies fully supports all minorities and strives for gender inclusion of all varieties in FIRST! Yes, those blog posts that Jon_Stratis found are quite old, thank you TheTigersComeAtNight for the suggestion to reaffirm the inclusivity of our mission!! Look out for a post on our Instagram about that soon :))