Since we are an all-girls team, we have lately been interested in the roles of girls on co-ed teams. Some members of my team were doing a survey of the number of girls on teams and their jobs at the Buckeye Regional. We were very disappointed to discover that on some teams, girls were given only the job of cheerleader, or publicist. Continuing that, just please give the number of girls on your team, along w/ the number of students on your team, and what the girls usually do. Thanks a lot!
This query should probably be in the General forum, since only moderators may reply in this Q&A forum. (Although, now that I’ve responded, someone else may choose to “Begin [an] additional discussion regarding this question”.)
We’ve got 2 college girls that do PR, fundraising, & spend their spare time in the machine shop. Our team captain from St. Louis was a girl. She’s also strategist & did a lot of assembly. Our team captain for the upcoming Peachtree regional is a girl. She does a lot of videotaping & did our chairman’s award stuff the previous year. Neither of the team captains spent much time in the shop. We’ve got 2 more girls (one high school & one college) that are there maybe 2/3 of the time that do a lot of machining & assembly & whatever else needs to be done. I’m a girl & I do a bunch of machining & whatever nobody else wants to do or can’t be trusted to do. I think that’s all of the girls on our team. There are hardly ever high school boys in the machine shop. I think I heard one of the college students (who did a lot of machining & designing too) say something about not wanting them where they’ll get in the way or hurt themselves. Hehe. The high school boys are usually doing driver, human player, or assembly stuff. I think we’ve got about 11 guys (including the 3 college) on our team. I’m no good with numbers so those might be wrong. But I tried.
6 of 25 students on our team are girls.
Generally speaking, on our team, most of them dont do anything.
But 2 of the cool ones do quite a bit of machining and handiwork.
The problem is, none of them take real initiative to do any of the design work, or fundraising or chairmans stuff. One of the parents on the team blame it on intimidation, most of us guys are pretty scary I guess.
I am trying to make them do more work and get involved, but its hard, Im not quite sure that they have the desire to learn, and if they dont, they are on the team for the wrong reasons.
4 out of 10 students are girls on our team. One does all of the web work, organizes team parties, one does most of the electrical stuff, wiring, etc., one does all of the writing, typing, and cheering for the team, and the last one represents our team by being the team mascot, and does a variety of stuff.
Meanwhile, I did some animation, some work on the crate for the robot, some wiring, some programming, and quite a bit of construction.
I guess you could say that everyone on our whole team did something constructive throughout build period, and outside of build period.
We have about 9 people listed as female members on the list of almost 40 team members. I am the only one you will ever find in the shop, I work on Intelliegence, and I am the operator. The others who are ‘involved’ with the team are business/PR members.
We have a good amount of girls on my team (actually I think more than the number of boys) and all our girls work out in the shop either doing machining, welding, or such.
*Originally posted by soezgg *
**The problem is, none of them take real initiative to do any of the design work, or fundraising or chairmans stuff. One of the parents on the team blame it on intimidation, most of us guys are pretty scary I guess.I am trying to make them do more work and get involved, but its hard, I’m not quite sure that they have the desire to learn, and if they don’t, they are on the team for the wrong reasons. **
This seems to be the most common problem. We only have 2 girls on our team, and they both chose to mainly work on PR and such, even though one of them decided to help out where she could on the robot. In her situation she didn’t think she was smart enough to do the stuff that was going on. I tried to get to understand that you don’t have to understand all of it to be a great member. I don’t know if my message got through, but I tried.
I think recruiting women is an important part of the program. And I do mean recruit. You may be lucky enough to have some girls filter into the team by word of mouth, but many times the best female members will come because they are asked. If you ask them to come and they want to, they are more likely to be productive members for the sheer fact that someone felt them valuable enough to ask them to come.
It’s important for team members to follow through and invite them to work on different things if they become seemingly unmotivated to be aggressive. This something that not only mentors should do. Team members should encourage other team members to get their say in if they are quiet. Have the older members mentor the younger mentors.
I think the key to having women on a team is to show them that they can do this and it’s not a “guy thing.” If you tell someone they are stupid and can’t do certain things, eventually they will think that (and women are still often told that in respects to engineering). Break that mentality!
In FIRST as in the rest of the world, apathy is our enemy.
The problem is, none of them take real initiative to do any of the design work, or fundraising or chairmans stuff. One of the parents on the team blame it on intimidation, most of us guys are pretty scary I guess.
I am trying to make them do more work and get involved, but its hard, I’m not quite sure that they have the desire to learn, and if they don’t, they are on the team for the wrong reasons.
Don’t sound so superior. The girls joined your team for some reason. They had some goal in mind. Be a LEADER. Maybe it is NOT you job to “make them do work”… Maybe it is your job to “HELP THEM TO ACHIEVE THEIR OWN GOALS”.
13 of the 20 members of our team are girls. The girls on our team are OUTSTANDING. Were have 4 team leaders on our team… 3 (two sophomores and a senior) are girls. They do everything on the team. Marketing, fund raising, public speaking, Lego League, machining, presentations, organizing the team appearance, team hand outs, spirit, community outreach, organizing the team banquet, scouting, recruiting new members, and everything else we might do. We have about 14 very, very, involved members and most of them are girls. The best machinist on our team is a sophomore girl. One of the best public speakers on the team is a sophomore girl.
Shawn
Team 60
we only have one girl on our team this year, but she is always helpful in public speakings and such. she’s also our student mentor this year and her dad is a great help for our team. i know she does what she can, and learns how everything works
*Originally posted by batbotcrewfrosh *
**Since we are an all-girls team, we have lately been interested in the roles of girls on co-ed teams. Some members of my team were doing a survey of the number of girls on teams and their jobs at the Buckeye Regional. We were very disappointed to discover that on some teams, girls were given only the job of cheerleader, or publicist. Continuing that, just please give the number of girls on your team, along w/ the number of students on your team, and what the girls usually do. Thanks a lot! **
31 students, 9 girls.
15yo Marygrace TIG Welder
18yo Angela Barron Captain, co-driver
18yo Becky accepted into engineering college, co-driver
18yo Tiffany public relations
17yo Breanne painting, spirit, human player
15yo Chelsea machines, working on robot
15yo Veronica painting, spirit
15yo Adriana brand new, has taken auto mechanics
18yo Michelle, working on robot and control board
female captains for the past 3 years, a girl up on the drive team every time.
I think the impact of females is being underestimated. The machinst girls are good at what they do. The PR girls are good at what they do. Same as with the guys.
Whether they are electricians, machinists, number crunchers, or “just do PR” (as has been said) there is still strong impact.
I wouldn’t be on my current team if it wasn’t for one of the PR girls, and I don’t think we could have won Engineering Inspiration at GLR if it weren’t for the many projects she and the other girls that did PR did.
There are a lot of jobs that need done and it doesn’t really matter what gender fills the job. It just happens that more guys than girls want to do the “dirty work” but it’s always accepted when they want to jump in.
One girl on our team moved from PR to working on the mill. Another went from PR to helping me with pnuematics. Another from PR to working on the electronics box and control box.
Just because a girl is doing PR or something not “robot building” doesn’t really matter. They are just as important. If nobody knows who you are, what you won’t be important to anyone else.
We have 23 members, 7 of whom are girls. Two of our captains, three of our best build team members, and two of our drive team members are girls. Not all our girls are very active, but most are, and the ones who are are crucial to our team.
*Originally posted by Gadget470 *
**I think the impact of females is being underestimated. The machinst girls are good at what they do. The PR girls are good at what they do. Same as with the guys.
Whether they are electricians, machinists, number crunchers, or “just do PR” (as has been said) there is still strong impact.
I wouldn’t be on my current team if it wasn’t for one of the PR girls, and I don’t think we could have won Engineering Inspiration at GLR if it weren’t for the many projects she and the other girls that did PR did.
**
I agree.
Our TIG welder is responsible for getting the most girls to the team. They don’t know they’d be interested. After the fact we find that some of the them have a knack for the “dirty work” they didn’t know they had.
We won Engineering Inspiration Award in Phoenix because we have a weekly open house that’s been featured in AOL Digital City as #3 pick for Kids and Family in LA. When the public drops in they see the 2003 Animation of the game, the 2001 video of our national championship, our storyboards, our straw and cardboard drive train prototype, our 2001 championship robot, the kids ride on the goal the robot can grab, kids and adults drive the robot. People from as far as an hour away came. I can still hear the father, “This trip was SO worth it!”
Tiffany, public relations, is in particular excellent at PR, talking at all our exhibitions. I remember Veronica surprising all of us talking easily to the public at the TRW Open House (@1000 employees and their families) touring a room about our program.
Our painter, Breanne, is in particular undervalued. Some on the team say, “why spend all that time”. She’s not undervalued to me. She painted our facilities cupboards , her designs are on our tool cupboards , all sides and top of our crate .
Everytime her painting brightens my spirit, teaches others, current, and new team members who we are (surfing was introduced to US in Redondo, 2 rival teams on one robotics’ team).
The girls on our team ROCK! (And i’m not just saying that to win brownie points…)
Lemme think. Our PR coordinator is a college student and her team is made up of 2 college females and one high school male.
One of our Technical Co-Coordinators is a lady, she was the person who ran the team but wanted to have more hands on control so she took that position this year.
On the technical team we have another girl.
We have 1 girl on our IT team who worked extensively on the animation this year. I think she was doing modeling and making textures, and considering she came in like a week before build season she picked up on everything really fast!
On the technical team we have 4 girls. 1 is on the electrical/pneumatics/controls/programming team and she is our trainy this year so that when we graduate she can take over for us. We have 1 girl on our team who has extensivly worked on our robot for the last 3 year and is a master on the lathe. And we have another girl on the tech team that does alot of work all over the robot. And the last technical girl is also our human player and a member of our scouting team, she has been on the team for 3 years also and does alot of work, i know she did some work doing angle brackets this year:) All of the technical girls did extensive work on Inventor and are all fluent in CAD.
Our girls do just as much as the boys and alot more then some of them.
My team has 3 girls out of i think 15 members (we’re kinda small). One only joined for spirit purposes, wasn’t forced to do spirit. Another one brought Sobes for everyone and played HP one round at comp ( don’t remind me ), and also came in on most saturdays, when some guys never came. the third was the only returning girl we had the previous year, she was a veteran leader, CAD drawer, historian, and actually helped “swiss cheese” sprockets which impressed the male mentors. the girls on are team are more helpful than some of the guys, and they were great to have around when i get tired of hearing the guys talk about their computers, i’m more of a sports person myself. I hope next year more girls will join, cuz we view everyone equal ( though the freshmen don’t feel that way )
My school, University of Central Florida, recently had an artical in the school newspaper where they talked about women in male dominated science fields. (somebody brought up something about intimidation above) One former female engineering student actually said that the reason she quit was because she felt intimidated by the fact that there were so many men around. I wonder why this doesn’t happen in the college of education where the ration of men to women is 1 to 5?! I still havn’t heard of a man being intimidated by too many women around. Anyways, I think that does an injustice to some of the women I know in engineering who are much smarter than the guys and put in a lot of work to earn the place they’ve gotten to. I seriously doubt there is any intimidation by having a lot of guys around and it’s a cop out to blame quiting engineering on us men rather than themselves for not trying hard enough in this very challanging field.
From what I think, and what I did see on my former robotics team, is that there are just as many women in RATIO that put in the same amount of work in a project as a guy does. What I’m trying to say is, on a team with 50 guys and 10 girls about 25 guys do work and 5 girls do work. The same ratio 1/2 puts in work on the robot and the rest seem to be tag alongs. (just my personaly observation from my old team but I’m sure this can be disproven case by case). It just seems like the guys are doing more work on the team because obviously there are more of us to go around.
Well, I am the only girl on a team of three. And lets just say, I am probably the most active member of the team, even though it is my first year and one of the guys second. At the beginning of the comp, I did recording of the kickoff, even though I wasn’t in town, did the check list, and all that fun jazz, helped design the robot, come up with quick fixes, build it, sanded, drilled, did invetory, am a cheerleader, Mentor to University, team socialist (ask Suike on 312, haha) electrics, helped with programming, did driving, operating the lift, Human Player. I basically do anything you can do. I did the wiring, crimping, pricings, designing, web site (thoguht my teach hasn’t put it up yet), wriote the Award essays we went for, and all the fun stuff…needless to say the girl on this team does everything, hee, they have called it my robot at times…odd, neh?
We have 13 girls, 9 guys… students that is - and teachers we have 4 female, and like 6 male. Of the 13 girls, 9 are primarily on PR, although we do see most of them from time to time while we’re working on the robot… the other 4 girls are on both PR and Engineering, – im lucky enough to be in this group, it’s insane when you spend that many hours working on the robot and then any remote spare hours you may have are spent with PR, and then there’s always the meetings that cause scheduling conflicts… I love it that way! And 8 of our guys are solely on engineering, we have 1 who helped PR with the chairmans award 
It works out well, everyone on our team is somehow involved in every committee a little, and the girls on our team are definately just as big of a part of the team as any of the others - so when people claim PR doesnt do anything, we just show them our chairmans award trophy the neatest thing is that everyone on our team is somewhat involved in every part, and we all know how hard each faction works so there’s a huge respect shared between all our team members, guys and girls, students and mentors…gender isnt a qualification for anything on our team, and i think thats how it should be~!
- jacqui, team 388
When I was on a FIRST team the coaches made it very very clear that the girls on the team may help out in every area and aspect of the team. Whether it was building the robot, doing scouting, cheerleading, designing the robot, team logo design etc.
When students join a FIRST team they should not be limited to what they’re abilites are but to expand and improve on them !!