WIE Japan

Message from the Chair

Greetings to all and best wishes for the New Year!!

It is my pleasure to become the third Chair of IEEE JC Women in Engineering Affinity Group. I feel very much honored to assume the duties from my predecessor, Dr. Hideko Kunii, an enthusiastic entrepreneur and a leading professional in her field.

I hope to make good use of the wisdom and experience I inherited from her during past years. WIE Japan has been able to make its presence quite visible in and outside Japan due to her hard work and visionary leadership for the past two years. I am also grateful to all the board members for their sincere efforts to enhance the activities of WIE Japan and for organizing various successful events to nurture and improve the status of female engineers and researchers.

We are happy to find that this year women's status in Japan has been improved according to the ranking of Gender Gap Index by the World Economic Forum. But it is still poor compared to other industrialized nations. We need to extend our current activities to increase participation and involvement of women in work pool, particularly in scientific and technical areas, which is an extremely urgent need for the nation’s economic development amidst declining population.

In this era of globalization, in order to fulfill an international obligation, it is very important to establish cooperation with other WIE Affinity groups in Region 10 member countries by organizing joint activities to achieve empowerment of women in society.

It is my great pleasure to welcome our new members. I sincerely hope that for the coming two years I will receive your positive involvement, constructive opinion and continued support and with our collective effort we will be able to make major contributions in improving women’s status and participation in Scienfic and Engineering field world wide.

My warmest regards and sincere thanks to all IEEE JC members for their full-hearted support.

Basabi Chakraborty
Associate Professor,
Dept. of Software and Information Science,
Iwate Prefectural University, Iwate

Old Message
2008-2009 Chair: Hideko S. Kunii
2005-2007 Chair: Michiko Kuroda