Computer Vision News - January 2018

Computer Vision News 27 Raquel Urtasun I’ve had in the past. I think you have to be active and also try to ask around. Try to use every opportunity you have. If you go to a conference, meet people. Seek advice from people. You gave three tips. One is networking, one is going to conferences, and one is seeking for advice. In seeking for advice, if you have mentors, that’s the best way. Now these days in conferences, for example, there is a nice setup. There are things like the Doctoral Consortium where you can ask for some feedback from somebody that you’d like to work with or if you value their opinion. People are very approachable. I have to say that I’m giving this advice, but I was not very good at doing this when I was younger. I was just very shy. What is it like to be a female in a male dominated field? Do you think females deserve a better chance? To start with, everyone deserves a better chance, in the sense that everybody should have chances, the same chances. Now, it’s not the case, right? It depends on your upbringing, where you were born, how rich your parents were, all sorts of things. As a female, it has not been easy, and it’s still not easy. Unfortunately, we see a lot of examples of discrimination throughout our lives, and it’s much more common than people think. What I always say is that we shouldn’t give up. If we give up, we will never change this. It’s really about example. We should show the world that women are actually as valuable as men. Did you ever feel discriminated against? Absolutely! Many times… Can you give us examples? An interesting one is discrimination from the press. When an article is written on some topic, and both males and females are interviewed, typically only the males get to the final edition. If the females gets there, it’s never with the proper titles nor at the beginning of the article. There are many ways to impose a bias. It’s subconscious most of the time. It’s not necessarily on purpose. Then the immediate reaction is that there are not enough women that can appear on this topic, but that’s simply not true. That’s one example. What do you do when this happens? Do you fight back? Sometimes. I think these days, we’re seeing the power of social media where if something really bad happens, and you want people to know about it, you can actually share it. People are actually going to share that experience. Suddenly, the public is aware of what it means to be a woman. I have seen many, many cases out there. That happens to men too! Let me give you one more example: photo: Johnny Guatto Guest