Girls in FIRST

Everybody: What percent of your team is comprised of females?

Girls: What do you do on your team?

In my experience, most girls at FIRST competitions are just cheerleaders or button-distributors for their teams, a slightly smaller percent do only marketing, accounting, or the like, and the smallest percent actually do robot work.

I am very interested to know, because our high school is all-female and we want to promote not only the presence but also the roles of females in FIRST.

My team has 4 girls on it out of 10. (we’re trying to recruit more team members right now for next year)

Pretty much every girl is very actively involved in everything including RCU. One girl is almost all wiring. Another works on the robot and team spirit as well as scouting and paperwork. Another scouts and does some robot work. I take care of whatever isn’t covered such as web work, additional scouting, some team spirit, RUR, RCU, and Lego league. We all try to recruit as well.

20 out of 34 students at the beginning it was 24 out of 38 but 4 girls left before the season began for various reasons.

Our young ladies cotribute to all facects of the X-Cats.
Drives
Laini
Jackie
Brittany

Robot arms
Rainia
Jen
Naomi (also co-spirit leader)

frame design
Lori (also human player)
Alda
Lizzie
Maggie
Ashley
Portia

Sparkies
Shannon(also in charge of designing Woddie Flowers submission)
Erica
Noy
Sakath (also in charge of co-orinating scouting)

Chairman’s award
Alice

Animation
Lakyn

Website
Leetha
Vy

And that’s not including the women adult mentors,two who are on the leadership team (and my wife who is unofficailly there, or at least hangs out with them all the time ).

Yes, we know you all have girls on your teams…but what do they DO? And please…team spirit doesn’t count as working on the robot.

Oh, and since both of you have mentioned it…what do you mean when you say they “work on the RCU”? I thought the RCU was just like a club-thing…

*Originally posted by bethMonster *
**Everybody: What percent of your team is comprised of females?

Girls: What do you do on your team?

In my experience, most girls at FIRST competitions are just cheerleaders or button-distributors for their teams, a slightly smaller percent do only marketing, accounting, or the like, and the smallest percent actually do robot work.

I am very interested to know, because our high school is all-female and we want to promote not only the presence but also the roles of females in FIRST. **

Most (unsure exactly) of our team is girls. 1 human player, 1 special actions, 3-4 various tasks people.

I’m the offical button-passer-outter-dude [hint: I’m a guy, so yea]

Heeeeeeeeyyyyyyyy,
FEMBOTS is an all girls team…go team 692!!!
wahooo!
and we do EVERYTHING
we have 29 girls on our team, and we do everything…we come up with our design, build the whole robot, and even do all of our PR stuff and cheering of course.
I was quite surprise with how much stuff our team recieved. Such as:
“oh, ur an all girls team, so where are ur engineers”… hello!!! we did everything, we had no engineers
oh, and i guess someone thought that our cheering section where cheerleaders…nope! we are the ones who built the robot, we just happen to be very spirited as well.

sry, just fuming over all this, u’d think in a FIRST competition it would be different, however there are still people out there with their mindsets. So that’s enough ranting for one day. :smiley:
hermione

6 girls including myself, that totals to 7 out of 17 on our team. chief delphi is usually a BIG group, but this year it kinda of decreased. i hope we do recruit more girls/boys.

the girls on our teams: we usually cheer, take photos of other robots, and more. i think they’re kinda of secret. lOLS. =P

2002 team- 1 girl on team of 20
2003 team- 4 girls on a team of about 28 people

Lena and Shannon take pictures and notes
Jill is mechanical
and i’m electrical.

We have about 30 members on our team and 7 are girls/women.
Tiff-scouting
Me- Crate Artist, spirit team captain, Human player, RCU co-president for the west coast, and i scout and take care of the social aspect of things.
Angela- Team president/captain, actually works on the robot, helps our mentored teams with anything they need.
MaryGrace- (angela’s kid sister) welded the robot frame, and is on the spirit team
Becky- team photographer
Veronica- Scouting, button passer outer
Cheryl (RedHead Jokes)- our team mom who pretty much runs the team and does PR and is our co-webmaster.(angela’s mom)

I think we’re a pretty well rounded team considering us girls do more than a lot of the boys on our team…ehem…you know who you are!!:wink:

My team has about 11 students, 4 of which are actually productive members. I am the only girl, and one of the 4 productive members. This year was my first, so I’m not an expert at anything, but I definitely helped.

In the pit I made sure the sprockets (sp?) on the wheels were bolted in tightly, and answered questions for scouters. If there was nothing to do I prepared the little baggies we handed out.

I’ll probably organize some type of recruiting for next year, but I already have one more female member recruited for next year.

At Nationals two female judges came to our pit and were talking to us. They asked “So where are the rest of the girls on your team?” So I responded, “I’m the only one.” They totally flipped out. They were so excited to hear I was the only one. They had to take a picture with me. :smiley:

yeah, the reason i asked is we’re an all girls school too. some of our osu mentors are men, but we do most everything. last year it was crazy, the disrespect we got at the chicago regional. we won an entrepreneurship award, and were actually groped in the hi-five line that was formed impromptu at the beginning of the awards ceremony. although what was more insulting was all of the people asking, “you’re all girls? how did you build a robot?” we politely reminded them that there are no bolts in the small parts catalog that require a penis in order tighten them.

however, this year was much better. i think we proved ourselves in chicago last year as a respectable team. now our reputation is for educated and capable students, good robot design, and a down-to-earth attitude. thank you to all the guys who stuck up for us during our run-in with sexual harrassment, and thanks to all the girls who are strong and sensible enough to wire, code, weld, machine, etc. instead of allowing themselves to be relegated to the role of cheerleader or head of the party favor department. we don’t just need more women in robotics and engineering, we need more capable women.

*Originally posted by bethMonster *
** although what was more insulting was all of the people asking, “you’re all girls? how did you build a robot?” we politely reminded them that there are no bolts in the small parts catalog that require a penis in order tighten them.
**

Hah, that’s pretty funny…The not requiring a penis thing… I think that’s more than awesome that there are all-girl teams our there.

Out of I think it’s 60 “active” members we have 15 or so girls which is about average for my team. The girls on my team are in software, fabrication/machining, animation, and PR. In the past not many girls have worked on the robot itself, but we were really pushed this year. Hey…they even let me help wire some. :smiley:

Which is why we didn’t work just right :stuck_out_tongue:

I think we’re a pretty well rounded team considering us girls do more than a lot of the boys on our team…ehem…you know who you are!!:wink:

Umm…no 'ffense, but in your post I only noticed two girls that actually did WORK on the robot…I wouldn’t really call that being well-rounded…

And Beth…as Kiracofe said at D&B, “If you’re holding a screwdriver in one hand and a drill in the other and you wanna pick up that quarter inch drill bit…” =P

i meant that everyone does everything (boys scout and girls work on the bot)… sorry not all of the girls on my team are mechanically inclined. you don’t all have to work on the robot to be a well rounded team.

*Originally posted by Kaelia *
**Umm…no 'ffense, but in your post I only noticed two girls that actually did WORK on the robot…I wouldn’t really call that being well-rounded… **

If everyone worked on the robot, that certainly wouldn’t be well rounded either. :slight_smile:

Thank you.

in defense for RobotChickBree…

When I was on my team, I was the president…I ran the team…but i didn’t build the robot at all…but i did everything else…

but there were girls that drove and built the robot this year…actually all the drivers for the team this year were girls :slight_smile: