Let's face it, there are not that many women in the AI Lab and LCS. But why? Are we doing something wrong? Is it a hopeless cause? Is changing this a duty that falls upon the current members? I don't know, do you? And additionally, is this even a problem at all? What's wrong with the way things are right now?
In this talk I will focus on two main issues related to the lack of women of all ages in the field of computer science: women graduate students and women faculty, staff, and postdocs. I will cover the basic statistics as well as current programs in our labs, MIT, and outside of MIT, that are trying (sometimes successfully) to change things.
I don't claim to have any answers to how to resolve this issue but I will offer suggestions and and hopefully provoke a feisty argument on the topic. After all, the best Dangerous Ideas seminars (in my opinion) are the ones where we talk about issues that are directly related to our everyday lives in the lab and where people argue.
More than anything I want to open a forum for this topic to be discussed honestly and publicly and to bring it to peoples attention.