A Review of the Engagement of Girls in Robotics

As Women’s History Month comes to an end, we want to share our observations and reflections on the topic of girls in robotics. Historically, there are more males than females in the field of robotics, and most of the kids on robotics competition teams are boys, but recently it has begun to change - noticeably more girls at elementary school ages join us to learn robotics and participate in robotics competitions.

In 2018, Rolling Robots had two teams qualified and participated in the VEX IQ Robotics World Championship. Only one of the team members (11%) was a girl. However, in 2021, four teams were qualified for the World Championship and 43% of team members are girls!

This increase in girl participation is partially attributed to girl-only robotics competition events (before pandemic) that make them feel more comfortable and equal. These events are also good at exposing younger female students to the wonders of STEM and robotics and demonstrating how much potential they possess.

While working with girls in the robotics competition teams, we found that girls approach their work comparably differently to that of their boy peers. When starting out, the girls tend to be a bit more reserved and stay behind to observe their peers and learn from what they are doing, and gathering knowledge before stepping in and adding to the conversation. The girls like to take a longer time to assess the robot designs and weigh the pros and cons before jumping into the hands-on work. The girls act as they are unsure of themselves on how to build the robot, comparing to boys who often start putting parts together fairly quickly. As time goes on, the girls many times become the team leader or the main contributors in building and coding.

Knowing that girls generally need a bit more time than boys to build confidence in themselves for designing, building, and coding robots, we carefully built a nurturing learning environment at Rolling Robots with kind and patient coaches. Our programs provide ample time, space, and care to our students. This allows for each student’s unique learning experience and growth - discovering the tech genius in each of them.

Despite the challenge of the pandemic, each of our four VEX IQ teams (7700P, 7700V, 7700G, and 7700H) won an award including the highest award - Excellence Award - at the 2021 VEX IQ California State Championships. Every team has at least one girl. This goes to show that both our boy and girl students are equally capable to excel in robotics and STEM!

With these observations within our own organization and the many statistics data and stories shared by media, it is clear that as long as we welcome more girls in STEM and robotics fields and give them time to learn at their pace, we will see more equal gender representation in robotics workforce in the near future.

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