‘I won’t be alone’: Rockford-area young women help each other thrive in male-dominated robotics field

By Mary Sisk
Rock River Current
Get our newsletter

ROCKFORD — When Hannah Jacobson joined her high school robotics team four years ago, only a fraction of her teammates were women.

Now, after graduating from Winnebago High School in spring, the team has increased its female ranks. About 40% of her Winnovation robotics team members — 10 of its 25 members — are females.

“My freshman year, there were four girls on the team out of 30 people,” Jacobson, 18, said. “We want everyone to be able to do this, and it’s … in our mission statement that we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to do this.”

Women make up a little over a quarter of all jobs in science, math, engineering and technology, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, leaving women out of some of the highest-paying jobs of the future. That rate of women in the workplace falls to just 15% in engineering.

More inspirational women: Vibrant Rockford Peaches mural in Midtown is complete

There has been a recent push to change that statistic, including Winnovation’s efforts to get more young women involved in the team. Getting involved in a STEM extracurricular such as robotics can help introduce young women to a career in that field.

“Almost every team that I know tries to make a focus of getting female students involved,” said Brian Brown, a recently retired Hononegah High School teacher. “There’s so few women, and most companies are really, really interested in finding more women engineers.”

Brown has two daughters and a son who started on the Winnovation robotics team while they were in high school, and two out of his three children are now engineers.

“This starts to get them confident,” Brown said. “It gets them developing skills that are going to apply even before they get to high school.”

Related: ‘More than robots’: Robotics competition in Rockford puts engineering and tech skills on display

His daughter Emma is an electrical engineer at Woodward, and his son, Scott, is a mechanical engineer. His oldest daughter, Abby, is an accountant for Disney, and she still flies back to town to help with robotics competitions.

“You’re starting to see more and more female students in those key, leadership positions on teams,” Brown said. “This starts to get them confident and gets them developing skills that are going to apply.”

Jacobson holds one of those leadership positions for Winnovation as student manager of business operations. She also helps with recruitment events for the team, often having women present information on the team to encourage other young women.

That female representation in STEM helps young women feel like they belong, incoming Winnebago sophomore Jordyn Roscoe said. That’s part of how she got inspired to get involved.

“In eighth grade, right before we hit high school, we do recruitment. So when I saw the women standing up there presenting to us, I was like ‘OK, I won’t be alone,” Roscoe said. “That kind of helped push me to want to do it more.”

More: ‘Ways to bring hope’: New flower bed in Rockford highlights suicide prevention line

Jacobson’s hope is that through recruitment, more young women interested in STEM feel confident enough to join a male-dominated field and thrive.

“You see it in academia, you see it here, but it’s kind of like taking that norm and changing it,” Jacobson said. “It should be 50/50, but it’s finding a way to make sure that everyone knows that it’s not a bunch of bros.”

If you go | Robotics competition

What: The Rock River Robotics Off-Season Competition features 32 teams from across the Midwest, including the Winnovation team members interviewed in this story.

Where: Rock Valley College PE Center, 3301 N. Mulford Road, Rockford

When: 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday, July 23

Admissions: Free

More information: For more information visit r2oc.org

[wpbg-gallery id=188309 title=”yes” description=”no” view=”slier”]

Kevin Haas contributed to this report.

This article is by Mary Sisk. Email her at msisk@rockrivercurrent.com or follow her on Instagram at @maryrrcurrent