That doesn’t sound like a you being a girl problem, it sounds like a terrible team problem. Coach not fulfilling his part by making sure everyone gets the opportunity to learn and experience and a team who doesn’t look out for there own. I’ve seen many guys fall into the same scenario
40 people! Jeez! How many bots are there?
12 this season. We have small teams at my school, only 3 or 4 people at the most. I actually just did the math, and we have about 50 in our high school program and I have no clue how many in our middle school EDR program. It’s a pretty big program because our school doesn’t have sports.
I am confused as to why your coach tells you what to do. In my opinion, that takes away the learning experience of students. Please correct me if I am wrong, as I have not ever had a “coach” per se, but the students on the team should be making decisions, not the coach, right? Also, if you are having a hard time being on the team, you can consider looking for other teams in your area, in which you will get a better engineering experience.
This thread is incredibly relevant to another thread a couple of weeks ago:
Now, situations can differ based upon groups and location. I understand the different situations going on, but there are times where I feel “left out” or “not as important” due to the emphasis of “needing more girls in STEM.” A bit of a controversial statement as well, but almost every meet up after school while I was a part of a school robotics program I was continuously told that I was only competitive because I was white. It was said to me over and over and over again. In addition, during 6th grade while I was in a school in Illinois, I was denied from the robotics program because I had autism until I moved to Texas. But, like always, once everyone starts building and working on their robots it’s no longer about who is what race, what gender, or have a mental or physical abnormality, but just people who are interested in STEM that wish to pursue a STEM future.
VEX robotics has allowed many genders,race,ethic, and other cultural beliefs to come together and do one thing that every loves… Robots. Just with todays world, many people are racist, sexist, or just plain idiots. I am a boy but i believe that gender should not matter for anything. Girls are getting paid less and that is stupid, while on the other hand, crazy feminists are not being supports in females, just being annoying. But in VEX, it is like a home. A home where everybody just wants to have fun and go to worlds. In our schools program, we have a bunch of girls and they do better than most boys. This generation has been introduced to sooooo many problems in/on the internet and all of these sexist/racist jokes. But then on the other hand, NOBODY KNOWS HOW TO TAKE A JOKE!!. This is where a void is. We should all treat people with respect no matter what. It just annoys me when people complain and complain about somebody or something when it was meant to be a joke. Like South Park, That show is Funny but some people think that it is rude but that is the point of the show, to explain and show what is happening in the world in a funny way. So yeah, That is my speech
I thought at the time of that thread (and still think) that this is one of the all-time best gender-related quotes for Vex I’ve heard:
I seriously think that THIS should be their focus, and that it makes for a far better speech on gender equality than any I’ve heard them make officially. I feel like the girl powered push often marginalizes boys (and I say this as the female coach/mentor of my son’s team for 5 years).
As far as being a girl in Vex - if you like to build robots, build robots! There is little stopping anyone interested from using the resources available online to learn everything from design to CAD to coding and on. If possible, get with like-minded people that you are comfortable being around, regardless of gender, and build robots. If options are limited, just be who you are and let others be who they are and build robots (it will happen a lot in life that you just need to do the best you can with what you have). Males and females are all just people - some will be rowdy, some will be calm, some will be snippy, some will be kind… I guarantee that there are just as many females as males in the general population that I’d have trouble connecting with. You already have a connection with everyone there that you can build on, since you all (I assume) like to build robots…
For me, its never been a thought. Girls talk about it being different, but for me it never has been. My dad is our robotics coach, and started VEX when i was in 2nd grade. Id always loved tagging along to competitions and playing with robots, so joining vex for real in 6th grade never really was a question. Most of the guys have always accepted me, and I’ve had guys from other teams or just guys in general say that they find it attractive that i love vex and that i work so hard at it and do so well. (not that i do vex for that, its not the case at all. I do find that a small plus though) Now, there are times that i have gotten underestimated at tournaments or something, because for our region, girls have a bad rep of not being serious about robotics and just kind of goofing off. I usually shut that down pretty quickly though. 
To be honestly I’ve never had a single girl in any of my robotics classes at school. I think girls would certainly think about competition differently then boys (and the boys are constantly getting of topic [see the Vex team quotes for more info])
There’s really no major difference, I’m as competitive as the males in my region.
The guy on my team became my boyfriend eventually, he’s the one constructing the robot while I’m the one cading. Most of the time I explain my idea to him and he test it out, it’s working well so far. I don’t speak a lot while we are working (unless we are discussing the robot) so we seldom get off topic.
I could very well relate to such experience.
It is your first season. All those things like the gear ratios, friction, and c++ functions are foreign to you and everything is very confusing. You work for several months learning how to build and program. Your robot is sketchy but you are trying to do the right thing and score game objects.
At the same time, second year all boys team spends most of their time on the phones playing generals and reading jokes online. A week before the competition they build 8 motor push bot and practice drifting in the hallway, while you struggle to do a simple autonomous.
At the competition you play against them in quarterfinals. They relentlessly pin and push you around and you could not score anything. Your alliance loses.
Then, the next week in school, every time they know you can hear them, they talk among themselves how girls suck at driving. Your friend, who was the driver, breaks down in tears and tells you she is not going to do vex anymore.
It takes parents a lot of comforting to talk her into finishing the first season before dropping out of vex.
I believe more girls will be doing vex if aggressive driving was not very rewarding.
Very little difference. At least in most of MD. people care more about experience level than anything else. I lead my team (all guys), I drive, we work together, we do decently, we improve and that’s that. No real bias. No real problems.
Dang that’s tough. There really has to be something wrong with location. I know places like cali r really good abt including women among other regions. I’ve never really seen a crazy amount of sexism. However, there have been cases in Cali where our coach thought that a group of people (girls and guys) was being sexist towards someone (female) who they were trying to help. Because wage went to the coach, we ended up getting a half hour lecture on sexism (which wasn’t an issue).
So yeah, it’s because of these experiences and others that I haven’t rly seen much sexism I think it may be more of a region based ordeal.
Also, that one thing abt how defensive driving shouldn’t be rewarding, I don’t think there’s a way around that. Strong defense (in any game) is always gonna be a good strategy but it’s always harder and more rewarding to be a good attacker.
That’s my 2 cents. Idk how much this actually applies considering I’m a guy (I’ve felt that in these sorts of issues a woman’s opinion is more valuable seen as the issue is regarding them) but I’m happy to see that at least not everybody is having a bad experience with vex.
Your school/organization must be mean.
In all honesty, guys and girls are equal and a decent amt of the time, girls are more intelligent. However, boys indulge in activities that are more stereotypical of them, so they think they are all good at something bc it related with one point of evidence, but they’re not. I wish everyone in the world was treated equally…
I am not saying that all boys are mean to all girls. I have friends who act as real gentlemen all the time.
My parents always tell me not to pay attention to kids like that team, because bullies must have a lot of insecurities and issues themselves, to pick on someone as vulnerable as my friend.
I am only trying to explain why some of the girls I know, who are good at science, are not doing vex.
They just don’t want to be around those few boys who act like jerks.
Our club actually has girls only teams, but I still hear similar complaints about how their team will not allow them to contribute anything, and honestly, I feel like Vex is just tougher on first timers and people who don’t pretend to know everything. Last year was my first year and I had a hard time contributing anything since the team would just shutdown anything I suggested for design (maybe for the best since I don’t know much about design). So, I figured that I could just take over programming for the team since no one was doing that and now all of a sudden I’m a respected programmer. The same people that said no to my ideas were asking me to implement their ideas in code. Personally I feel like you really need to force your presence on the team- regardless of race, gender, and experience- and then you’ll be able to succeed in this program. Mistakes give experience and experience prevents mistakes.
Amen!
Honestly I think that a main problem is the fact that there are already such a small percentage of girls in STEM that people just assume that guys are better at that kind of stuff. My IT magnet at my school accepts 24 students/year, and I am one of 18 guys in my grade. Being a guy, I can’t really speak from experience about it, but I can confirm that in VEX, my team was the literal definition of “boys will be boys.” For the first three seasons, we had the same three guys on the team, making it to worlds together twice, making the difficult transition from IQ to EDR, and generally building chemistry and getting to know each other really well. Then, this year, we grow to a team of four, that fourth member being a girl. At first, I will admit, I was a bit nervous about how this would affect our team, but it only got better from there. All four of us build, notebook, and design equally, and the gender difference (at least in my eyes) has been totally unnoticeable.
Guy here. The majority of official members of the vex club are male at my school (2 girls, 7 guys). But there really isn’t a gender stigma in the club, the focus ends up being on personal skills.
One of the girls naturally fell into a leadership position for one of the teams and the other girl handles public relations with other teams at competitions/ scouting out the enemy.
In the end, gender and race don’t matter in the club, all that matters is the person’s capacity for accomplishment and overall motivation.
How does this relate to my quote???
I have my own all girl team, and I love it. But initially my first year it was very hard. Although my team made it to worlds and won excellence at States, we were still picked on by the guys in our organization. They would tell us to our faces that we did not deserve the award and that the judges were biased. That hit us hard that people in my own Vex group were putting us down instead of congratulating us. Even so, I continued to create an all girls team the next year and the year after that too. By my second and third year, the guys had settled down and were not judging us anymore, and there were a lot of very nice boys in my organization that had joined. The reason that I continued to make my own all girls team year after year, was to bring in girls that were afraid to be put down and afraid that they would join but be pushed to journal. I have nothing against boys, don’t get me wrong. I actually love teams with both genders on it. Honestly it isn’t the gender that matters at all. Even though my first team had a bad experience our first year, we did not let that pull us down, Instead we kinda used that to motivate us and to prove the boys wrong. I now enjoy being a girl in vex, because my team has been competing for the longest, so now all the other teams look up to us. To summarize: Initially I felt left out, and competing was hard, but after powering through, I love it.
My first year in robotics there were two other girls. My second year had 4 other girls. My third year I became the captain for the girls team with 6 girls, and now this year I’m club president with a girls team of 12ish girls. Being a girl in VEX varies on the team in my opinion. There are many times where I have been doubted by alliances and they ask if we’re capable. Sometimes we may not be the best but we work hard together to figure out our own problems and our designs. I feel that girls in VEX have come a long way than from what it used to be.