IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) is committed to taking on the path to position the Society as a leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Therefore, IEEE ComSoc values the membership and participation of its female members and the next generation of diverse engineers in IEEE ComSoc activities. Women in Communications Engineering (WICE) is an IEEE ComSoc Standing Committee under the Member & Global Activities Council (MGA-C), and its mission is to promote the visibility and roles of women communications engineers and to provide a venue for their professional growth. In this President’s Page, I am pleased to introduce Prof. Toktam Mahmoodi, the Chair of Women in Communications Engineering for 2024–2025, to share with us the status of WICE and related activities.

Toktam Mahmoodi [S’99, M’09, SM’16] is WICE chair 2024–2025. She is a Professor communication Engineering, and Director of the Centre for Telecommunications Research (CTR) at King’s College London. Previously, she was a visiting research scientist at F5 Networks, a research associate at Imperial College London, a Mobile VCE researcher, and a telecom R&D engineer. She is chair of IEEE WICE and vice-chair of the IEEE ComSoc Aerial Communication Emerging Tech initiative. Her research focuses on the areas of mobile and cloud networking and includes network intelligence, edge learning and networking, ultra-low latency networking, and network modeling and optimization. She has contributed to the ETSI, IETF and 3GPP standards, and has played an active role within 5GPPP in defining 5G vision for vertical industries. She has also served on a number of editorial boards including the executive editor of ETT, guest editor of the JSAC series on network softwarization, area editor of IEEE Communications Standard Magazine on management & orchestration, and editor of IEEE communication letters. She served as technical committee chair and member of various IEEE ComSoc conferences, including ICC, GLOBECOM, PIMRC, WCNC, and ICT.

Female Membership Status in ComSoc

Although there has been a significant increase in female membership in the past two years, there is still a wide gender gap in IEEE ComSoc Membership. As of 27 December 2024, 20% of IEEE ComSoc members identify as women, which is an increase of 7% from 2022. While part of this could be as a result of the changing World, ComSoc gender diversity activities such as WICE, have played a pivotal role in such improvement. The increase in membership is mostly in professional membership, though the representation of women becomes smaller in higher ranks. Among the IEEE ComSoc Student and Graduate Student Members, 27.5% are women, which is an increase of 2% since 2022. Only 10% of IEEE ComSoc members are women with the rank of Member, Senior Member, Fellow, Life Member, Life Senior, and Life Fellow. This number, though, has an increase of 4.5% since 2022. There are 12 times more men than women who are Fellows and Life Fellows, 9 times more men who are Senior and Life Senior members, and 41 times more men who are Life members.

IEEE ComSoc can benefit from retaining women Student Members transitioning to professional members, and encouraging elevations of women to Senior Members and Fellows. WICE aims at addressing the very issues of retention and promotion of women ComSoc members.

Membership

Any IEEE ComSoc woman member is automatically a member of WICE. This does not prevent others from joining WICE. Anyone supporting gender diversity, equity, and inclusion is welcome to join WICE. We strive to ensure diversified panels at all meetings including the WICE committee itself. This is not limited to gender diversity but also geographical and regional diversity as well as a balance between academia and industry. The central strength of the WICE committee is the collegial and passionate team working, together toward our mission. The current WICE committee roster is shown in Table 1.

WICE Benefits

WICE offers a number of benefits to its members, including childcare support and grants, career support, four awards in different categories, and travel grants.

Childcare

WICE has identified a lack of childcare support in ComSoc conferences as one of the major barriers young families face in attending conferences. As of 2024, WICE rolled out a childcare program in the flagship ComSoc conferences of ICC and GLOBECOM, offering an on-site childcare facility, and helping parents in finding local childcare providers. The program so far has been in place in ICC 2024 in Denver and in Globecom 2024 in Cape Town. Parents who benefited from the service told us: “Discovering that the ICC conference offered onsite childcare was a delightful surprise. This was our first experience with such a service, and it exceeded all expectations.” and “We hope this program will continue at ICC and expand to other conferences. I believe many families will benefit from it in the long term.”

While Childcare support is seen more as a support to female ComSoc members, we acknowledge this is a family matter and also relevant for our male members. For example, parents who used the service in ICC 2024, wrote, “As a family of two academic researchers, attending conferences with our child has always been a complicated process. This time at ICC 2024, it has been exceptionally easy thanks to the on-site childcare service provided by WICE.” The childcare space also created a networking and peer-support opportunity for parents attending the conference: “The childcare service not only provided my son with a safe and engaging environment where he made new friends, but it also allowed me to connect with and become friends with other parents.”

WICE continues offering childcare grants at ICC and GLOBECOM and has the provision to support other ComSoc conferences with childcare grants, upon request. Childcare grants could be used towards expenses occurring from on-site childcare or extra childcare needed at home. Our statistics from 2024 show that more than half of the grant applicants are male members.

WICE plans to expand the childcare program and grant, to be able to support more attendees in ICC and GLOBECOM and also to support more ComSoc conferences.

Awards

We recognize the achievements of women ComSoc members and promote their visibility through awards. The award categories are:

• Outstanding Achievement Award
• Early Achievement Award
• Outstanding Service Award
• Mentorship Award

Career Support

WICE programs in ComSoc conferences include mentoring sessions, which are organized in collaboration with the ComSoc Young Professionals, and offer the possibility to build a long-term mentoring relationship. The program also offers career coaching sessions targeted for mid or mid-senior level members. Finally, the program includes a networking reception, co-sponsored and supported by attending industries. Please see the activities section for more examples of the program.

Fellowship Support

Acknowledging the low number of female fellow members in ComSoc, WICE aims to support ComSoc female members’ elevation to IEEE Fellow. While we appreciate the newly established Fellow search committee by ComSoc, as a way to identify and promote potential members, we also recognise additional guidance and support is needed for female members. WICE has organized a session in ICC 2024, on “Becoming a Fellow” and plans to organize online events through 2025, helping and encouraging female ComSoc members with their fellowship nomination.

Student Travel Grants

WICE offers a number of student travel grants to its members, consistently at ICC and GLOBECOM and in other ComSoc conferences upon request. For example, in 2024, WICE offered a student travel grant for MeditCom and, in 2025, it will offer a student travel grant for Infocom.

ComSoc WICE Activities in 2024

In 2024, WICE organized and supported activities in a wide range of ComSoc conferences, with the aim to organize events in different geographical regions. Table 2 shows a range of WICE events offered at different conferences in 2024. A major highlight of WICE activities in 2024 was the effort to sync and co-organize events with initiatives having a similar mission to WICE. Those identified by WICE so far include IEEE WIE, ACM-W, and N2Women.

While WICE will continue with similar activities and member support in 2025, there will be additional focus on the fellowship support, and childcare program, as the most recent initiatives.