IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2013 - 14

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Gender
M

Age and Gender Distribution at the
Workshops (2012 and 2013)

Age
Figure 3. The proportion of gender by age
of the 1,755 participants in the workshops
of the last two editions of the festival,
illustrating the increasing proportion of
males in respect to their age. The width of
the bars is proportional to the number of
individuals in each category.

national Bug and Play contest reached
30% females among the 259 participants. This contest revolves around
technology but mainly promotes its
artistic and creative side.
With our festival, our aim was to
promote related activities in a nondiscriminatory manner (Figure 2). In
2013, we had an average of 27%
female participation among the 2,300
participants in workshops. Some
activities even reached a proportion of
67% girls. Several surveys conducted
during the festival helped us understand where these participation differences come from.
The first clear aspect we could
observe is that the proportion of girls
and boys differs by their age group
(Figure 3). Both in 2012 and 2013, the
mean age of boys taking part in the
workshop was significantly higher than
that of girls. Concretely, we observed
that, at a young age, the number of girls
and boys is comparable, but for older
children, the proportion of boys
increases. These observations are coherent with some sociological assumptions
stating that interest in scientific fields
or professions at the age of the construction of sexual identity is driven by
the image that these fields or professions diffuse [3]. For instance, boys
would turn to sciences and technology
because many men are already involved
in this field, whereas girls would show
interest in humanities because in that
field women outnumber men.
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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

In the robotics festival, differences
in motivations between genders were
discovered through two surveys carried out among more than 1,300 participants over two years. Whereas most
men and boys stated that they joined
the event because they are interested in
technology (65%), only 40% of women
and girls attended because of their
interest in technology, 25% joined out
of interest in the social event and 22%
because of the interest in technology of
the men in their family. Despite a less
personal initial reason to attend the
festival, girls and women participated
in the workshops and events and
appreciated them, showing that they
are not reluctant to participate in these
types of activities (Figure 4).
The angle from which activities are
advertised could be a determinant, as
hinted at by the success of the Bug and
Play contest, which promotes its creative side. However, we could not make
a clear link between the workshop topics and their female attendance. What
we did observe is that some workshop
descriptions that were written by men
and included masculine terminology
[3] attracted very few girls. We also
noted that the workshops with the
highest female attendance were often
organized by women.
In 2012, we sought to highlight the
effect of activity advertisement by distributing 1,500 free robotics kits associated with a choice. The basic kit, which
comprised a set of parts to build a robot
figurine, was the same for everyone,
but two possible activities were suggested: a collaborative, creative one or a
competitive, game-oriented one. The
participants would choose one activity
and then receive the corresponding
accessories. We recorded the gender
and the choice of activity of 1,428 participants. This choice does not seem to
be influenced by gender, as the proportion of females was similar in both categories (38 and 35%). However, even for
males, collaboration is the preferred
option, as two thirds of all participants
opted for this one.
In conclusion, the image of robotics
competitions seems to be attractive
only to a specific segment of the pub-

september 2013

Figure 4. In one of the 2,250 festival
workshops, participants could assemble,
solder, or program robots.

lic, leaving aside an important part of
the audience. This is especially obvious
with women and girls. Thus, although
competitions are a precious tool to
educate people, they are not sufficient.
Our experience shows that having a
variety of activities and promoting
their different aspects, be it creative,
fun, or social, gives a wider impact to
the venture, reaching not only more
girls but also boys who appreciate the
noncompetitive side of robotics. We
should also keep in mind that the older
the girls are, the more difficult it is to
reach them. Finally, the communication of the event is primordial: involving females in the organization and the
advertisement of the event is likely to
broaden its scope and give a more
open image to the audience.
The festival organization and the
survey have been supported by the
Swiss National Center of Competence
in Research "Robotics."
References
[1] TNS Opinion & Social. (2012, Sept.). Public
attitudes towards robots: Special Eurobarometer
382 [Online]. Available: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_382_en.pdf
[2] A. W. Woolley, C. F. Chabris, A. Pentland, N.
Hashmi, and T. W. Malone, "Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of
human groups," Science, vol. 330, no. 6004, pp.
686-688, 2010.
[3] Françoise Vouillot, "L'orientation aux prises
avec le genre," Travail, genre et sociétés, vol. 2, no.
15, pp. 87-108, Nov. 2007.
[4] A. Herdağdelen and M. Baroni, "Stereotypical
gender actions can be extracted from Web text," J.
Amer. Soc. Inform. Sci. Technol., vol. 62, no. 9, pp.
1741-1749, Sept. 2011.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2013