Can Robots in Classrooms Attract More Women to Engineering? [Women in Engineering]

This is a worldwide concern in our community: there are too few women involved in engineering and even fewer in robotics. Each country is trying to tackle this issue with a variety of programs to attract and retain women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Many programs target university students and young professionals to help them design their career and seek a good life balance. Indeed, if we look at global figures, more than 85% of women in the work force manage small teams or are part of a team, and only 15% hold managerial positions, compared with 30% of men. In universities too, less than 18% of women hold professor-level positions, while 40% of assistant professors are women. The programs that do exist try to support the few women already involved in STEM. However, the imbalance in the proportion of men and women is already striking in first-year university students, so how can we recruit more women before then? Several studies have shown that the decision to study STEM occurs in a very early stage of education, and being aware of that, there are some programs that promote STEM in high schools and junior high schools. These programs are often organized by universities (see, for example, the “Women in Engineering” column from September 2013 titled “Attracting and Retaining Young Japanese Women in Robotics”). However, even these programs may be too late.