WIE Japan

Panel discussion "Global Career Development for Women in the Scientific and Engineering Field - Learn from APEC economies -"
in the 15th APEC Women Leaders Network Meeting Side Event (22 September, 2010)

On September 22nd 2010, the panel discussion “Global Career Development for Women in the Scientific and Engineering Field - Learn from APEC economies -” co organized by IEEE JC WIE, was held at the "Center for the Advancement of Working Women" as a side event of 2010 APEC women leader's network. Six panelists from Japan, China, Australia and Chili along with around 200 active　participants in the fields of academia and industry were engaged in discussing the problems of women’s career advancement.

Dr. Hideko S. Kunii, Vice Chairperson of 2010 APEC WLN Steering Committee and Chairperson of Ricoh IT Solutions Co. Ltd. first gave a speech on "current situation and measures taken for the gender bias in Japanese industries." She described the following 4 points. 1) The necessity and emergency of diverse talents in Japanese industry, 2) the current situation, problems and reasons for the problems of gender bias in Japanese industry, and the difficulty for women to advance their career, 3) measures taken to improve the problems in Japanese IT industry, and 4) Ricoh’s achievements and her own career.

After the lecture by Dr. Kunii, Dr. Shinobu Yume Yamagichi’s, Professor, Tokyo Institute of Technology, conducted the panel discussion. Dr. Irena Atov (Chair, IEEE Women in Engineering，Technical Manager, Network Architecture Reliability Group, Telstra Corporation, Australia)，Dr. Shao Fengjing (Vice President, Qingdao University, Vice Board Chairman, Qingdao Haier Qingdao Software Co., Ltd.)，Dr. Elisabeth von Brand (Associate Professor, Universidad Catolica del Norte), the panelists for APEC Women Leader’s Network Meeting, in addition to Ms. Yumiko Matsuura (Senior Research Engineer, Supervisor, NTT Service Integration Lab, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation)， Dr. Shinako Matsuyama (Senior Researcher, System Technologies Lab, Sony Corporation) were invited as panelists.

At the panel discussion, each panelist introduced their career, important experiences in career development, worst experience in career, balance of work and personal life, network construction for widening view, ways to switch and cheer up when the career path faces blockage. The panel was quite live with the active participation of the audience.

IEEE JC WIE: reported by Jien Kato (Nagoya University), translated by Basabi Chakraborty (Iwate Prefectural University)