Gender [Im]Balance: Perspectives, Issues, and Opportunities

A large discrepancy between males and females involved in the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and Intelligent Vehicles (IV) fields has been a trend for the last four years at every annual IEEE IV symposium. Significantly fewer females are involved in this field, and causes for this uneven distribution may arise from lack of exposure to intelligent systems, associating engineering as a difficult subject which detracts women from studying it, or perhaps current salary level. Young, successful, and motivated female engineers at the 2010 IEEE IV symposium, as well as renowned professors of engineering gave us their opinions about the perspectives, issues, and opportunities for females in the intelligent vehicles field. Raising the level of females in the field and possibly equating it with that of the males in the future will not only increase diversity for engineering areas, but also increase creativity-something that is essential in engineering and IV/ITS fields [1]. This paper seeks to bring to awareness this issue by analyzing the perspectives of three female students and professors and identifying opportunities for women involvement.