Retrospective on a Watershed Moment for IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Gender Diversity [Women in Engineering]

The 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 conference leadership and speaking positions increased at a rate of only 1% per year, with women now holding about 20% of those roles. However, the surprising and somewhat hopeful takeaway was that this increase was primarily achieved from 2013 to 2018. That led us to ask, What happened in that timeframe to promote this?