IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2021 - 165

organizing roles and give them to
women. " They remembered that " some,
a very tiny number of people, brought
up the opinion that we ought to be
mirroring what we think all conferences
should be doing ... that it should be
balanced. So not all women, but 50-50
women and men. " Over time, they
found the idea more " intriguing " as an
opportunity to train more women in
conference organization roles, and Lee
transferred the leadership positions to
them in 2012.
Leading up to the 2015 ICRA, the
general climate for women in robotics
was not outright hostile but could be
isolative and unfriendly. Parker and
Amato recounted times when they were
the only women in organization committee
meetings and instances at panel
events where " certain questions were
asked pointedly to the only woman on
the panel. " They also spoke of an " old
boys' network, " or " old roboticists' network, "
that was almost exclusively male,
and noted that " when it comes to conference
organizing activities, frequently,
people invite their friends, they invite
people they've worked with in the past. "
Lee has been in the field since the late
1970s and admitted that most of the
people he knew and worked with in his
early days were men.
Parker conjectured that the lack of
gender diversity wasn't because of
intentional decisions to exclude women
but that the fact that more women were
needed in organizational positions just
wasn't on the minds of those in the " old
roboticists' network. " An anecdote
from Lee supports this; he " personally
did not pay much attention " to gender
diversity until 2005 when he started
working for the National Science Foundation
(NSF). Being there and learning
about the NSF's diversity inclusion
efforts made him stop, look, and see
how few female colleagues were participating
in the same top-level groups.
Amato further speculated that more
women likely would have accepted
organization and leadership positions
in that past but that they just weren't
being asked. Prior to the 2015 ICRA,
when organizing teams for different
conferences were asked, " Why did you
not include more women in your
team?, " the most frequent response was,
" Well, we just don't know any more
women that have experience. "
The goals for the 2015 ICRA were
set entirely by the all-women organizing
team; Lee stepped out of the way after
transferring the general chair position
to Parker. The primary organizational
goal was to address the perceived shortage
of experienced women by training a
large number of women in conference
organizing roles and broadening the
pool of women who could be tapped in
the future. The second goal was to help
build a network between women in
robotics for support and ideas since " in
many cases, the women [in robotics]
don't know each other because we're so
few and far between and have not had a
chance to work with each other. " The
final goal was simply to raise awareness
and visibility of
the many great
women in robotics
and give them
a chance to propel
their careers
through leadership.
Parker noted
that " if somehow
the conference
had flopped, it
might not have
achieved its purpose.
But because
the conference was
so overwhelmingly
successful,
it helped give a
lot of credence to the fact that women
can organize events just as well as men. "
In addition to the organizing board, she
and Amato made sure to have strong
representation of women in speaking
roles, with half the keynote speaker
positions and two-thirds of the plenary
speaker positions awarded to women.
Amato remembered that " it ended
All signs point
to the idea that
simply starting
conversations
about this
diversity problem
led to increased
awareness and
spurred people
to action.
up that we basically were a team, we
pretty much did everything together.
We did not have the traditional general
Parker delivers opening remarks.
Ruzena Bajcsy honorary chair, delivers remarks.
SEPTEMBER 2021 * IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE *
165

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2021

Contents
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2021 - Cover1
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2021 - Cover2
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2021 - Contents
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IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2021 - Cover3
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