IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2021 - 163

WOMEN IN ENGINEERING
Retrospective on a Watershed Moment
for IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
Gender Diversity
By Elena Delgado and Lydia Tapia
T
he last " Women in Engineering "
( " WIE " ) column presented the
results of a multiyear study
into gender diversity in IEEE
Robotics and Automation Society
(RAS) conference leadership and top
speaking positions from 2002 to 2018.
The findings were stark: during
that period, gender diversity in RAS
co nfer en ce
leadership and
speaking posi -
tions increased
at a rate of only
1% per year, with
women now
hold ing about
20% of those
roles. However,
the surprising
and somewhat
hopeful take -
away was that
this increase was
primarily achi -
eved from 2013
Gender diversity
in RAS conference
leadership and
speaking positions
increased at a rate
of only 1% per year,
with women now
holding about 20%
of those roles.
Lynne Parker, current director of the
National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office,
assistant director of Artificial Intelligence,
and general chair of the 2015 ICRA.
to 2018. That led us to ask, What
happened in that timeframe to pro -
mote this?
Pinpointing what social changes
occurred in robotics five years ago is
difficult. However, at the time, more
women were becoming involved, and
there was an event that may have driven
the change: the 2015 IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and Automation
(ICRA). That ICRA was unlike any
other robotics conference before in that
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2021.3099220
Date of current version: 10 September 2021
it was entirely led by women. The numbers
in the WIE diversity report tell us
this was revolutionary: the number of
women in leadership and speaking
positions in 2015 more than doubled
compared to any RAS-supported conference
in any previous year. The data
also showed that a small pool of primarily
male individuals had previously held
leadership and speaking positions
multiple times.
To provide perspective on this
watershed moment in gender diversity,
we interviewed the organizers of the
2015 ICRA, Lynne Parker and Nancy
Amato, and the originator of the idea
for an all-women-led conference, C.S.
George Lee. We wanted to understand
why they agreed to such a radical idea,
how challenging it was to implement,
what impact they hoped for, and what
they thought the future held. We
learned that prior to the organization of
the 2015 conference, the environment
C.S. George Lee, professor of Electrical
and Computer Engineering at Purdue
University.
for women was definitely not inclusive
but not as hostile as the 11% average
rate of women in robotics leadership
roles worldwide would indicate. Those
in leadership positions were not prioritizing
finding new people, especially not
SEPTEMBER 2021 * IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE *
163
Nancy Amato, head of Computer Science
at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign
and program chair of the
2015 ICRA.
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2021

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