The IEEE Women in Engineering Committee (WIEC) is a committee of the IEEE Member and Geographic Activities (MGA) Board, reporting through the MGA Member Engagement and Life Cycle Committee (MELCC), as defined in the IEEE MGA Operations Manual. The structure of the WIEC, and its responsibilities, may be found in the MGA Operations Manual Section 4.20.
WIE Nominations & Appointments
The IEEE WIE Nominations and Appointments (N&A) Committee helps to identify nominees to stand for election to the IEEE Women in Engineering Committee (WIEC) as Chair-Elect. The WIE N&A Committee also reviews the qualifications of those nominated for, or appointed to, Treasurer of the WIEC.
Top Five Best Practices
IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) has created a Top Five List of pragmatic tasks for volunteer leaders in Regions, Sections, Societies, Councils, Affinity Groups – any Organizational Unit (OU) in IEEE – to make tangible change in the gender space. These suggested best practices have been created through WIE’s engagement with best practices for promoting diversity and inclusion within Societies and Councils compiled by the Technical Activities Board (TAB) Committee on Diversity and Inclusion and the IEEE Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity, Inclusion, and Professional Ethics.
- Create and support a permanent oversight committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion or Globalization, which would report annually to the OU’s AdCom/Board of Governors (BoG).
- Appoint a diversity and inclusion chair for each conference within an OU’s portfolio that may review speaker composition, data collection, accommodation requests, unconscious bias, etc.
- Organize special events at flagship conferences that target underrepresented audiences; for example: industry workshop, Young Professional mixer, women’s forum, pride events, ally growth events; ensure these events are not in direct conflict with major conference events; invite the General Chair of the conference and OU leadership to attend the event and address the group; and ensure all events are inclusive; for example, invite men to a special event about women in engineering, to create an active group of male advocates.
- Create and regularly maintain a database of interested members/volunteers from underrepresented groups. Use this list as a pool of diverse potential candidates for AdCom/BoG positions as well as for Nominations Committees; Encourage a diverse and inclusive pool of candidates for all governance positions; Require the committee nominating such candidates to include documentation that an earnest effort was made to identify a diverse set of qualified candidates in terms of gender, Region, and professional sector; enforce gender balance within the composition of the Nominations Committee for Governance positions.
- Adopt the WIE Pledge: “IEEE WIE pledges to work towards gender-diversified panels at all IEEE meetings, conferences, and events, including our own.” IEEE Women in Engineering supports the inclusion of a diverse set of speakers, which will lead to more creative, interesting and representative panels across IEEE.