I am a female mentor for FRC 4561 the TerrorBytes. I am very passionate about encouraging girls and women in STEM, but I receive a lot of resistance from current students and male mentors. What do other women do on their teams to a)Encourage female students to join their team and b)Keep boys and men associated with the team from shutting down targeted recruiting efforts?
Team 8 doesn’t do any targeted recruiting, but I think something that is really helpful is having female role models for younger students to look up to.
We are lucky enough to have had a number of girls on our leadership team for the past few years. This encourages girls to stick around, as they can see themselves in those positions in two, three years.
Just my two cents. I am sure CD will have plenty to say about this.
Thanks for posting your experience!
I think shared goals are a vital component of any organization. Rather than pulling in multiple directions, teams thrive when they set goals for the entire group to strive for. In this case, to answer part B, have a sit down with the other mentors first to talk more frankly about the team’s overall goals, and how recruiting more women to the team can be a huge value-added to your team. I can’t say this enough, teams thrive when they work together, so finding a middle ground with the rest of the mentors on the team will be a huge asset moving forward.
For part A, I really believe we need to inspire young women as early as possible to pursue STEM. Many social pressure/norms can push young women out of STEM before they are given a fair chance to explore the field. I recommend investing time into your local Vex IQ/FLL programs, or starting new teams/summer camps to widen your sphere of influence in pre-High School STEM programs. Starting more 4-8th grade teams can catch more young women earlier in their educational development. Consider starting a local summer camp, and maybe even host a “Girls Camp” week to focus your efforts even further. VEX/RECF have this great initiative called “Girl Powered” that you might be interested in as well: http://www.roboticseducation.org/competition-teams/girlpowered/
We haven’t done as much focused high school recruiting, so I apologize for not having more to offer in that sphere.
Once you have caught team members in the fold (male, female, other, etc), it is important that your team culture maintains a level of professionalism that allows team members from all backgrounds to participate and belong. I’ve witnessed many teams devolve into something that can be unwelcoming to young women, particularly if students are left on their own to set the culture.
I hope this helps.
-Mike
The first question is… why do you experience that resistance? If you can articulate those reasons, you can come up with a counter-argument. My guess would be something along the lines of “girls aren’t as good at this as boys”, “girls don’t know what they’re doing in the shop”, “girls belong on business”.
Those types of arguments aren’t really directed at girls. They’re directed at what I would call differences in experience based confidence. Let me explain. As a boy growing up, I had a very different experience from my sister. She got dolls for Christmas, I got Lego’s. She did arts and crafts with my grandparents, I put together model planes. When my dad did work around the house, I helped him. I learned early on how to replace light fixtures, build a work bench, and snake coax cable through walls to different rooms in the house. My sister learned none of that. In Boy Scouts, there were other hands-on building type of activities. By the time we reached High School, our futures were actually pretty much set - I had started programming in 5th grade, and my sister had become enamored with a middle school program that had her working with autistic kids (Today I’m a Software Engineer and she just finished her post-doc in developmental psychology, focusing on autism).
So if you take the two of us back when we were each entering high school and attempted to recruit us for a robotics team (my school didn’t have on at the time), I would be a natural fit. I would have no problem coming in being confident that, while I would have a lot to learn, I could handle it and have fun with it. She, on the other hand, would have said “I don’t know anything about that stuff”. She wouldn’t have had any confidence in her ability to do what was needed from a team member, or to have fun trying. She would have seen it as signing up for frustration and humiliation.
And if we were both convinced to join, those preconceptions we had going in would play out within the team. I would have become a valuable member, she would have drifted to the outside, gone over to her comfort zone in business or quit entirely.
This is not because she’s a girl and I’m a guy. It’s because we would have come into the program with different backgrounds and different levels of confidence in our involvement with the team. This can easily happen between any two people, and often does.
The reason people tend to make this a gender issue is because societal expectations tend to drive an individual’s background along (among other things) gender lines. Girls are expected to play with dolls, boys are expected to play with Lego’s. Some buck those expectations, and that’s great. But if you have 10 boys join the team and 1 doesn’t work out, that’s still a 90% success rate. Have 10 girls join the team and 9 don’t work out, that’s only a 10% success rate. Until we can change societal expectations (which may take generations to do) those numbers will continue to skew towards boys in robotics. We need more boys playing with dolls, more girls building with Lego’s.
So, what do we, as teams, do about it? We have to recognize the problem at hand: Everyone comes in with different levels of experience. Some teams likely let “the best” (aka those with the most applicable experience) rise to the top, and let other struggle to join them, losing those that “aren’t good” (have little or no applicable experience) drift off to other things. This isn’t the way to do it. We need to ensure everyone has opportunities tailored to their own needs. We need training programs that can bring students with no knowledge along quickly and efficiently. We need to welcome everyone into the shop, regardless of skill level, and work to make them the best. We need to address the issue on the individual level, as it really is a difference in individuals.
So, set up your program to pair the strongest with the weakest to work together. Have the best of your team work to train the worst in a one on one environment. Emphasize the 4-step process I first heard 11 years ago when I started:
Mentor does, Student watches.
Mentor does, Student helps.
Student does, Mentor helps.
Student does, Mentor watches.
This is applicable to two students as well, if one is more experienced than the other. You have to first show the student what to do. You then get them involved in the process. Then you gradually let them take over as you step back, until they’re doing it all. It may take years to get to truly get to the last stage. But those students who are on the receiving end of this process are going to be so much more eager to be on the giving end when they’re older and more experienced.
So, the TL/DR version is… it’s not about strategies to get women involved, it’s not about male vs female. It’s about structuring your team appropriately so that anyone, with any skill or knowledge level, can come in, learn what they need to, and be the best.
Edit: I should add… my team is all female, from an all female school. There are about 80 students in each grade. Our big recruitment tool is our summer camp, which ended a few weeks ago. We had 15 incoming rookies at that camp, 13 of whom were incoming freshmen. We may drop a couple or gain a couple as the fall and build season start up, but we’ll still have 1/8 or more of the freshmen class involved with the team this year.
Your biggest recruitment tool are the students already involved in the program. It’s how they talk about that involvement when around other people, passing in the halls, etc. Your team culture will create an impression within the school community that will either drive or inhibit recruitment efforts. So fix that culture first (part b of your question), and then target the recruitment (part a)
1 Like
dardeshna We have trouble even getting girl involved and invested enough to make it to the point where they are leaders. Last year we had 47 students and 7 girls, 6 of whom were rookies. The one girl who was not a rookie was in a leadership role, but it doesn’t seem to have made in this year’s recruiting efforts.
Michael Corsetto When the female mentors express the interest of raising the percentage of girls to other mentors or to student leadership, the answer we come up with is “yes, we should recruit more girls,” but as people start suggesting ideas, certain people strongly oppose them. That is where the argument starts. Basically, everyone agrees with the goals, but no one agrees on the execution.
- 3946 has actively recruited girls from the beginning. We have had the greatest success recruiting girls with a one-on-one (or two-on-one) approach, whether it was a teacher or mentor or a fellow student doing the recruiting. As you’ve likely noticed, freshmen orientation, club fairs, and other public events bring in far more boys than girls; even events aimed recruiting girls don’t seem to be very effective for us. Most of our successes from public events were really due to follow-up, so that would be my main bit of advice there - especially for girls, if they’re even a little bit interested, you [or one of of your girls or female mentors] should ask for contact info* and follow up in a smaller setting.
- We haven’t noticed any intentional attempts to shut down recruitment or discourage girls, though we have shut down/corrected a few unintentional ones at our public events. The only one I was present for was a [male] team member remarking that “all the girls on the team are on business or programming,” which was true at that time, but the statement could have been interpreted as policy. Fortunately, a [female] team member noted that while we do not have any girls on the mechanical team at this time, we’re hoping to recruit a few this year. We now try to be more intentional about how we say things especially during recruiting. Do you have intentional attempts to shut down targeted recruiting, or things like this that mostly need proper education?
- In a school environment, this may be as simple as asking about her teachers, then following up contact through a teacher.
Jon Stratis You verbalized some of our issues very well. Girls are rarely selected for roles because they aren’t “the best,” but they do tend to come to us with a little less experience.
However, a big part of our problem is getting them through the door in the first place. 
Although I appreciate everyone’s input, I am interested in hearing from some women.
Girls and women mentors, how did you get involved in STEM? Did someone encourage you to do so? How did you get involved in FIRST? Have you met with any issues working in a male-dominated field?
Getting them in the door doesn’t seem to be that big of a problem. 47 students would imply close to 12 students per grade (assuming an even distribution). 6 of the rookies last year were female. If you can recruit 6 females every year, and create a culture that makes them want to stick around, then after 4 years you’ll have 24 females involved… and you’ll have increased the size of your team significantly along the way, most likely. Obviously we don’t know the history of your team… were the 6 rookies last year a fluke? Or do you have females dropping out every year so you don’t have many returning females?
There may be hidden scar tissue causing the apprehension that you’re seeing. Everyone should have a frank and constructive discussion about the subject. This can be uncomfortable or difficult to facilitate, but it’s worth the effort.
(I see Mike has posted as I’m writing this, beat me to it)
95 has never done targeted female recruiting, yet we have had a female population ranging from 25-55% over the last several years I’ve been a coach. I credit this to a team culture that we worked hard to create in which gender is unimportant. Natural leaders always percolated to the top, and about half the time they were girls. We then have our leaders do the recruiting. When younger girls see older girls who earned leadership roles the younger ones are naturally drawn in to join.
This is a slow but organic and sustainable method that worked well for us. It does require a steady hand at the wheel steering the team to a consistent level of professionalism where all are welcome. However, after a few short years the culture becomes nearly self-sustaining.
I realize I rehashed mostly what Mike said, but I think it’s the right way to go.
Edit: I see that you’re primarily interested in hearing from women, so it’s worth noting that my observations are derived from conversations I have with my female students, future, current, and graduated.
The culture of a team and the perceived indifference young woman experience or hear about a team can greatly affect recruiting them. The biggest advocates of your team for new members isn’t the mentors its the students. If the overall attitude of those on your team reflects the lack of respecting and working with women then that is going to come out in their interactions in the rest of their school time.
I would focus on emphasizing to the students that all are welcome and that diversification with in the team will only make them stronger.
The team has to change its attitude before targeted recruiting can be effective.
You should make a point of saying that there is no experience required to join the robotics team, and that this is a great place to learn about these things. When I joined FTC back in 2015, my mother was concerned about me not having any engineering experience, but we were quickly assured that I would learn. When talking to someone who we think would be great on the team, my fellow students and I have run into the problem of hearing “oh, but I know nothing about robotics.” What I have learned is that anyone who wants to recruit needs to emphasize that this is an ideal space to learn about mechanical engineering, electronics, programming, CAD, etc. while being guided by mentors.
However, in order to have maximum retention, you need to take it one step further. In my view, there have always been new students who don’t exactly know how to take initiative and ask for something to do, and are therefore left just sitting around looking. I sort of had this problem in my rookie year, but I then mustered up the courage to ask someone more experienced than I if I could help. Not all people are like that, though, and we’ve had people quit because they don’t know what to do and are somewhat intimidated. Therefore, a mentor or a more experienced student will likely need to approach said student who is sitting around and ask if they’d like to help them with something that they’re doing. That will most likely make them more comfortable taking initiative on their own.
I don’t know much about targeted recruitment for girls, unfortunately. A thought I had is recruiters (yourself included) putting emphasis on the opportunities for women and girls in FIRST and STEM as a whole. If someone more knowledgeable than I on this subject is able to help, please do! (My team is also interested in this)
Well we have 3 of the 6 returning. Each dropped off for different reasons, but we usually see this kind of drop-off. The majority of our girls are rookies. So far we have only had 2 new girls show up for this new year. We are scrambling trying to come up with some ideas for bring more in.
If you managed to recruit 6 rookie girls last year, that seems pretty good IMO. The key is to give them reason and motivation to stick around, and I think a lot of that lies in identifying with a role model. I’ll ask a few of the girls on our team what they think.
Well we got 6 out of about 30. And unfortunately 3 of them left the team this year, for various reasons, not necessarily because of disinterest in the team. We have only had 2 show up so far this year so we are scrambling!
Thanks! We try to do this already, although maybe we should focus a little more on including girls. We do have a large team and sometimes that means that people get overlooked.
I know you can’t retain 100% every year… but a 50% retention rate after one year is pretty low. What reasons did those three girls give for leaving the team? On the surface many excuses can sound unrelated… but if you dig, you might be able to find a commonality. One person saying “I don’t have time for robotics” and another saying “I want to focus on X (Soccer, Theater, Dance, whatever)” may sound like different reasons, but they boil down to the same thing. The team failed to capture that individuals passion and attention. Maybe they didn’t feel welcome. Maybe they didn’t get to do what they wanted to do. There could be any number of real reasons behind what they tell you because, lets be honest here, many people leaving a team (especially when they’re young) are going to try to sugarcoat it. Short of sitting them down and grilling them on why they left (don’t do this!), there’s really only one thing you can do to try to figure it out.
Sit down and think about each of the individuals, one at a time. Think about every time they attended a team meeting. What did they do? Who did they interact with? How engaged were they with the “official” activities of the team?
Once you’ve thought about that, think about what others on the team (both student and mentor) did to get them more engaged. What did you do to draw them in if they were just hovering on the perimeter? What did you do to make their contributions feel meaningful and valued?
If they had little experience coming in and little confidence during the meetings, then they wouldn’t be ones to jump in to offer ideas or volunteer for work. They may need to be invited or asked. You may need to actively draw them out, focus on getting them involved.
One of the recruitment problems it sounds like you’re facing is a revolving door of female involvement. Girls come in, stick around for a year or two, and then leave. Other students in the school see this. They talk with those girls and come away with a sour impression.
I’ll leave you with a small story I heard from one of the parents of a student on my team (and I’m sure to get an earful when this student reads this…). This young women was deciding where to go to high school. She had two options, and both had a FIRST team. One school was all girls, the other was mixed. She had some positive experiences with the all girls team already, and wanted to check out the other team. She visited one of their meetings and observed. Afterwards, she realized that the girls on the team sat around and talked while the boys worked. She saw that being on that team would require her to push her way in, to buck the norm and prove herself every minute of ever meeting. On the all-girls team, she would be able to participate in a supportive environment without any of the gender expectations that she saw/felt when visiting the other team. Fortunately for us, she ended up with my team and has been an absolute rock star.
One student graduated (she joined the team as a senior), one moved to a new school, and one didn’t really give a reason. She is the one we might be able to approach and get some feedback.
Get some feedback from the other two anyways, if you can. There might be something that would give hints as to whether, for example, the team culture is welcoming (as in, would they have left anyways). (And make sure you ask them to be–brutally, if necessary–honest.)
Hi! I joined FRC as a freshman in high school 10 years ago and now mentor a team as a Software Engineer!
I’m going to preface that I am speaking broadly - I am 100% aware that my experiences are not the same as others and obviously not all girls are the same.
I joined the team because my siblings did it and I stuck around because an older girl on the team took me under her wing. As some teams notice, the best way to get and keep girls is by having girls on your team already.
I’ve noticed there are two big reasons girls don’t join robotics: 1) They haven’t been given LEGOs as kids (grossly simplified) and 2) They don’t see themselves fitting in with the team. There is a little bit we can do to combat 1 and more we can do to combat 2.
-
Host 1-off workshops on some entry level robotics-related activities: soldering LEDs, building a picture frame, writing some code, driving a robot through a maze, etc. Find a project you think is cool and can be done in an hour or two and offer it after school (assuming you are tied to a school). These are especially great for younger kids but might work for high schoolers too. Don’t make it too focused on learning or robotics, just make it interesting (eg don’t explain resistor networks - just solder the LEDs). The goal is at least a few girls decide that was interesting enough and try the team. Marketing this event properly is crucial. Making it open to boys is fine, there are plenty of boys who need the confidence boost too. The low risk and low commitment lowers the barrier of entry - if they don’t like it, they only lost an hour - not a semester.
-
Sell the team, then the robots. Girls are far more likely to sign up for a STEM camp if it’s described as a leadership camp. Look at how you are marketing your team - are you advertising “We drink mountain dew and have LAN parties” or “We build our teamwork skills and become young professionals.” Think critically about the messages you send during recruitment.
Hammer home that you don’t need to know anything and that there are a variety of roles - not to mention the benefits of college apps, networking, and scholarships. I joined the team to make the animation and write - because I was honestly interested in that. Once my foot was in the door, I tried all the things and worked on the robot. I think it’s okay to bait and switch with “here you can do a thing you know” and then later get them to try new things. To reiterate, play up the aspects of the team that aren’t the robot - because a lot of girls just weren’t given the opportunity to get excited about robots yet.
Supporting girls on your team is also important - my biggest cheerleader on my team in high school was an older girl. She didn’t let me say no to trying new things and helped me gain my confidence to try more daunting tasks. I see that with my students too - I try to do an annual “girls night” to get the girls together. It’s great at the beginning of the year to help the new girls feel like a part of the team and I love when I see the older girls taking the younger ones under their wings.
Feel free to PM me, I’m also very passionate about this topic.