And now the important aspect of this problem: Girls in engineering are hot. There are very few girls in engineering. Jim needs a girlfriend. Supply and demand is working against Jim. Jim is angred and saddened by the situation.
-wise phil sees deeply into the fellow roboteers mind
So I have an… interesting question. I have a position open and two people are interested. Is it OK to give a position to one of two equally qualified people because that person is a girl. I mean yes its sexism but I know that this situation happens in the business world as well as with the government so is it OK? I want to try and pull as many girls as possible into technical areas but I have this itch thats making me wonder if its right. Its not that I’m letting sex compensate for anything like lack of skill or knowledge, its just it’s the deciding factor. I would like to hear feedback from both men and women.
Two words: affirmative action. If you want to get more girls involved, go for it. But if you don’t care, flip a coin. 1351 also has voting. There’s people in place to evaluate the candidates and ultimately make a selection. But, they like to see the votes to make sure they didn’t make some gross error in their choice, and possibly use it as a tie breaker.
By the way, this reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. The doctor had two patients with the same affiliction and an equal chance of survival. He only had time to save one of them though, so he saved his friend. Because of this, he went crazy. He had problems trying to justify choosing his friend rather than the other patient.
If you really want to attract as many girls as possible, then don’t let on about that itch.
:o
Yeah… thanks Sciguy but the truth is it wouldn’t matter. I’m not all quite their as it is. So yeah thanks this was helpful and that itch isn’t so bad now.
Our Team’s President is a girl, and she’s the one who does all the main electrical stuff. We also had a girl as a president last year. We have 3 girls in our Structure Division (including myself), and possibly two more joining for this year. Hoping to recruit more, but many get scared away because of all the time, weekends and vacations robotics takes up.
We also have a girl in the website division, and our PR and Fundraising are lead by girls.
Our team has always run about 40% female for the past 7 years. Our success can be attributed to several factors.
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Provide Strong female role models: We have a female coaches, student leaders and college age mentors for girls to look up to.
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Provide a safe environment: Girls on our team know that that won’t be subjected to the stereotypical comments that sometimes surface when guys work with girls. (zero tolerance)
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Provide a challenge for ALL members. We have high expectations for everyone involved.
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Provide Opportunity: Girls on our team know that the potential exists to EARN any job on the team. Last year we had one all-female drive team, a female co-captain, and lots of folks on the build team, pit crew, and just about any other area of responsibility.
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We Make it FUN!!!: This is universal for all members, male or female. We get a good female turn out every year simply because they hear how fun FIRST and Team 341 truly are.
Hope that gives everyone some things to think about. 
Why?? **thats the question! ** Well, just because we’re girls doesn’t mean we can do things like boys do. And, just because boy’s are boy’s doesn’t mean they can do things girls do. Thats true. =D
im on a california all girls team. we are all girls and im very proud of that fact. i personally am what you might call the cheerleader of the team. i run spirit and most people assume im a huge ditz and cant actually do anything involving the robot. well fyi im not just head of spirit. i also head programming and strategy so im well rounded. our team is full of well rounded girls who represent first on many levels.
OMGosh yes!!us GIRLS are the best…lol i love this atmosphere…i was the mascot/ cheerleader for our team…i want to be driver this year soo badly!..oh and i was the only girl but this year there are lots more…once u get one girl to join, others will follow…lol thats how it was/is for our team…
then again it will be lucky if we even get to do it this year…stupid funding issues…
Ive heard of a couple all girls teams. Is it that they won’t let guys join?
I doubt it. I’d bet that it’s because they’re all girls schools.
Ok yeah that makes sense… (looks sheepish)
I really havent noticed more girls joining the teams. Even though this is my first year I used to watch my brothers compititions and i havent noticed! Well, Im not complaining!
Whats wrong with girls joining team? They do just as much if not more work than guys.
i said i didnt mind. NOT complaining. I personaly like the idea. im sorry if i worded it wrong. 
my bad
Considering that our team is an all-girls team, we DO have more girls than boys. Boys = our mentors and our mascot. Hmm…
Awsome i love quagmire where did you get him
anyway i’d wish more girls would participate in the building of the robot all the girls we have just do the arts and crafts.
The men versus women, black versus white versus asain versus etc debates have been going on forever, and unless something changes dramitically in soceity probably will continue to exist. The biggest reason that soceity can’t escape them are the paradoxes presented by their supporters, women’s rights activists demand complete equality for women, but you still can’t hit a girl, that’d be wrong. People who want equality are (for the most part) hypocrites; they only want the positive parts of “equality”. Another prime example is affirmative action, it’s ridiculous. It is in no way anything but pure racism, however, since it is racism against the majority, it’s allowed. The only way to ever eliminate sexism, racism, whatever-else-ism is to ignore it completely, but the average person is not capable of doing that, and it’s an unfortunate statement about society.
I apologize if I offend anyone, or even if some of what I say sounds a little extreme, but I’m tired of getting the shaft because I’m a middle-class, caucasian, male. I’m tired of “Women’s engineering day” and “Girls 'n Gears”, what if I’m interested in engineering? Does no one care about presenting workshops for guys interested in engineering? I took the PSAT last weekend, and I couldn’t check the checkbox that said, “Check here if you are of African or Native American descent and you would like the PSAT to send you name and information to more scholarship oppurtunities”. How is that fair to me? How can people demand equal rights as long as those checkboxes are still there?
One of my favorite agruments is that we’re “making up for mistreatment in the past”. Does that mean that if I find out that my father was killed by your father, but by now both are already dead, that you should have to go to jail to make up for your father’s creulty to me?
Our team is somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 female, and they are more than just PR. Yet despite my best efforts even our team is not free of this problem, we’ve even won an award for it. Last year in OCCRA (a small, fall robotics competition, hunt around CD, it’s well known), we recieved a judges award, and the judge told us, “It was really down to you and another team, but the deciding factor was when someone mentioned that you were the only team with two girls on your drive team”. Is is fair that we won a judges award because our regular human player wasn’t there and we happened to grab a female team member to fill in? I don’t think so.
The only way that the assorted -isms will ever go away is if people stop paying attention to them. Even if it “has nothing to do with the selection process and is only used for research purposes”, why should it matter? Until people begin to completely ignore physically defining charcteristics, people will always be judged by them.
I apologize for using this thread to vent, as well as going out of the scope of the topic a bit, but it is something that really gets to me.
I haven’t even thought of this as an issue until I saw this topic =/
If someone tells me theres a girl on our team I’ll just probably be like “Ya? and?”
EDIT:
Holy…major bump sorry just noticed lol.