IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2021 - 129

35
30
25
20
15
10
5
General Chair
Program Chair
Plenary Speaker
General Chair
Program Chair
Plenary Speaker
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Year
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Figure 3. The percentage of women in leadership roles by year across all conferences.
correlated)]. It is striking that, in three
of the four years when there were no
female plenary speakers in any of the
studied conferences, there were also no
female program chairs. More positively,
in four of the five years when more than
10% of program chairs were women,
women held more than 10% of plenary
speaker roles. It is also interesting to
note that 2015 was the year that the
entire ICRA organizing committee was
composed of women.
The positive correspondences
between gender diversity in different
leading roles leads us to hypothesize
that, for the gender diversity of program
chairs to improve, representation
in the general chair role first needed to
increase above a minimum threshold.
After a few years, this started to influence
program chair gender diversity,
which in turn immediately affects the
composition of plenary speakers. We
see that change does not necessarily
have to happen slowly. Under favorable
circumstances, it can accelerate rapidly.
This is all the more reason to pay
attention to all aspects of representation
in leadership roles.
Recommendations
The improvements in gender diversity
are encouraging, but there is more work
to do. To make further progress, RAS
WIE has made the following recommendations
to the RAS Administrative Committee
with support from several other
RAS subcommittees on several points.
To reach these recommendations,
we asked ourselves two questions
when considering what we need to do
as a community. We hope they are useful
and inspire you to think about even
more ways to improve representation.
Opportunities
How can we support and promote the
brilliant, qualified women who are
already part of our community?
●
Utilize resource lists such as Prof.
Maja J. Matarić's " Women in Robotics, "
RoboHubs' " Women in Robotics
You Need to Know About, " and other
such resources to expand the pool of
candidates considered when filling a
leadership role.
●
We also recommend this approach
for other aspects of representation,
for example, by utilizing lists such as
" Black in Robotics. "
●
Consider how many times someone
has held a role across all conferences
when filling a role.
Deadline for RAS Local Chapter Initiative Grants
The RAS Member Activities Board (MAB) awards a limited
number of Chapter Initiative Grants to local RAS Chapters for
professional development, educational outreach, and other
programs. Grant proposals will be reviewed by the MAB at its
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2021.3072015
meeting in late September 2021 and funds up to US$2,000 will
be awarded on a competitive basis. The deadline for proposals
is 15 August 2021. For submission details, please visit: https://
www.ieee-ras.org/chapters/support-for-chapters.
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129
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IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2021

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