Women engineers’ lack of precedence : the ‘virgin territory’ of robotics

In recent history, information and communications technologies (ICTs) have been radically advanced and largely infiltrated daily routine. Additionally, modern educational methods encourage the use of ICTs in the learning processes. Especially in the education of hard sciences like Physics, the use of ICTs is favored because the students can more easily understand the natural laws and observe in real time the results of the experimental process. Women engineers approach this kind of educational process better as they combine a variety of traits due to their feminine nature that gives them precedence. It is widely accepted that females outperform males in verbal ability, are raised to be more sensitive, have maternal instincts, and can be extremely supportive not only to same sex peers but also to both genders. These inherent genetic traits result in women’s ability to be naturally tuned into the world around them. In a man’s world - more importantly when ICTs are concerned - women are often discouraged and need to work a lot harder than men to achieve a favorable situation. This pressure makes women more active and persistent. According to the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research report for 2010 to 2011, only 3.7% of the entrepreneurs between 18 and 64 years old are women (Ioannidis and Chatzichristou http://www.iobe.gr/index.asp?a_id=853 webcite, 2012). In the last two decades, the field of robotics has been advancing more radically than ever. Many distinctive robotic mechanisms have been implemented due to the innovative ideas and the outburst of technology. During author MT’s PhD research, she noticed that few women participate actively in state-of-the-art educational methods including ICTs. More distinctively, women involved in robotics seem to have been excluded from the productive or research process. The absence of contributions by women engineers in robotics and in the assistive educational tools it provides has led to a more masculine approach in the field that may result in more stiff, plain design, or even less imaginative functionalities. Generally, the stereotypes and biases that exist with regard to gender have hatched and produced the behavior of women and the way they are encountered and treated by the society.