Underrepresentation of Women in Robotics Research [Women in Engineering]

Computer science (CS) and engineering research both have large and well-documented gender diversity gaps
[1]
,
[2]
,
[3]
. In fact, previous studies have reported that the overall CS female author ratio (FAR) is only in the range of 16%–26%
[1]
,
[3]
,
[4]
. As shown in
Table 1
, recent evidence shows that this number varies significantly among CS subfields, ranging from as high as 42% in CS education to as low as 8% in theory and algorithms
[1]
,
[4]
. Furthermore, while recent work has shown that the diversity in conference leadership has increased substantially over recent years
[5]
and that the state of gender diversity in marine robotics ranges from 7% to 44% across various countries in Europe
[6]
, there has not been a comprehensive study analyzing the current state of gender diversity across the broader overall field of robotics.