2016. 4. 1

Japan Society of Civil Engineers
International Activities Center

IAC News No.４２
Diversity Committee of JSCE
JSCE holds 37,284 members (as of March, 2015), one of the largest
academic societies in Japan. Female members account for 4.3%, 1,592
members, which tripled compared to the figure of 20 years ago. The
women share in student members is now 11.9%.
The Diversity Committee of JSCE was first inaugurated upon the visit ofMs. Patricia Galloway in 2004, when she became the very first femalepresident of ASCE. She asked JSCE to have a meeting with female
engineers. Some attendants of the meeting decided to start a special

Reiko Kuwano, Ph.D.
Chairperson, Diversity Committee
Professor, the University of Tokyo

research committee on gender issues in civil engineering. Later thecommittee became a subcommittee of the education and human relation committee as “man-woman equalparticipation committee” and then became “diversity committee”in 2014. Throughout these years, thecommittee has been the sole body that tackles with gender, women and now diversity & inclusion issues. We
have about 20 committee members from various sectors of civil engineering in Japan, half of them are women,
and they belong to bodies as JGS (The Japanese Geotechnical Society) and SWCE (The Society of Woman
Civil Engineers) with which we are working very closely.
We would like to introduce three outstanding achievements by the Diversity Committee.
(1) Providing information on issues
Since 2010, the committee has been collecting and providing information on
diversity issues in civil engineering, such as women, foreigners, work-lifebalance and others. The sources of the information include books, academic
articles, news and TV programs. In 2015, we collected more than 200 articles
and all the bibliographies are provided to the public on our webpage.
(2) Publishing a role model bookOne of the major concerns that female civil engineers confront the lack ofrole models and understanding by their male colleagues. The book “ACarrier Guide for Women Civil Engineers” (Fig.1) was edited by thecommittee and published by JSCE as the very first publication forcelebrating the centennial of JSCE. Ten role models along with thereferences of women in civil engineering are introduced in the book.
1Fig.1 Career Guide for WomenCivil Engineers(3) Diversity and Inclusion Action StatementIn 2015, the committee developed an action plan for JSCE (Fig.2). In theplan, the purpose of actions is described as contributing the society withuseful infrastructures. Three key words “acceptance”, “enhancement”, and“development”, are set as the actions that each sector of civil engineering inJapan shall take. It will be the committee’s principle for these coming years.
The Japanese society finally has started welcoming female civil engineers,
and we are now heading to Diversity & Inclusion in order for us to serve thesociety with better infrastructures.

Fig.2 JSCE Diversity & InclusionAction Statement

Women in Civil Engineering at WECC 2015
Diversity Committee of JSCE took part in organizing a panel discussion session at the 5th World Engineering
Conference and Convention (WECC 2015) in Kyoto on December 1st, 2015. WECC is held by the World
Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) in purpose of sharing various topics engineers in a wide
range of fields.
The session was a part of Track 9 “Women in Engineering” that included a keynote lecture by Ms. Yukako
Uchinaga a former manager in Japan IBM, an oral session “Promoting Female Leaders in Engineering” withseven presentations, and two panel discussions on “Promoting Young Women in Engineering”, one on ICT andthe other on civil engineering. We took part in the last panel discussion as a member of the organizing team with
the Institute of Professional Engineers, Japan and the Society of Women Civil Engineers (SWCE) as well as oneof the panelists.
The organizing team was lead by Ms. Maki Iwakuma (P.E.), facilitated by Prof. Osamu Kusakabe (Photo 1)
with four panelists (Photo 2): Dr. Reiko Abe (India / Japan), Dr. Lee Ji-Hyung (Korea), Dr. Satoshi Imamura(Japan) and me (Photo 2). My presentation wasentitled as “History of Women Civil Engineers inJapan - Roles of SWCE and JSCE” to look back these
30 years, when a few women entered the industry,formed SWCE and has been the pool of role models
while JSCE worked as a connecting hub of
stakeholders and information. We found that India,
Korea and Japan shared many of the barriers for
women to continue work as engineers. Questions fromthe floor included whether construction companies inJapan welcomed women engineers or not, and if so, in
what way they did (Photo 3). The ICT session held(Photo1) Prof. Osamu Kusakabe, the facilitator
before our session let us realize that it was no longer a
special case that young women publicly declared their willingness to take management positions.
For this occasion, the SWCE established a scholarship funded by donations and invited 12 recipients from2

various countries to attend the conference and to participate in the discussion. SWCE’s report is available at :http://www.womencivilengineers.com/archives/1464(Photo2)
Panelists from left, Drs. Abe, Lee, Imamura and Yamada-Kawai.

(Photo3) Participants from various countries.

【Report by Kiko Yamada-Kawai, Dr. Eng.
Secretary-general, Diversity Committee / Researcher, Tokyo Institute of Technology】

Activity Report of ACECC TC-16 Workshop in ITS World Congress Bordeaux 2015
The Asian Civil Engineering Coordinating Council (ACECC) TC-16 is a technical committee working on thetheme: “ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) based Solutions for Urban Traffic Problems in Asia PacificCountries.” It was established based on a proposal by the Practical ITS Research Committee of JSCE at themeeting of the ACECC Technical Coordinating Committee held in Tokyo on March 1, 2012. The TC-16 aims tocompile ITS-based solutions for urban traffic problems such as traffic congestion, accidents and environmental
deterioration caused by rapid urbanization associated with economic growth and the widespread use ofautomobiles, and to discuss the methods of implementing the ITS in accordance with the stages of economic
growth and national land development in each country.
At the ITS World Congress Bordeaux 2015 held in October 2015, Mr. Hiroshi MAKINO the head of ITS
Division of the National Institute for Land and Infrastructure Management and the chairman of the TC-16, Assc.
Prof. Shunsuke KAMIJYO of the University of Tokyo and the vice chairman of the TC-16, Prof. Edward
CHUNG of Queensland University of Technology, and Mr. Takahiro TSUKIJI hosted the TC-16 Workshop.
Document policies for the preparation of the "ITS Introduction Guide", which describes the ITS-based solutions
for urban traffic problems and ITS deployment processes to government representatives and engineers from
Asian countries, were discussed in the workshop. As a result of the discussion, it was agreed that application
examples should be collected from the TC-16 member countries (Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, Malaysia,Philippines, etc.) for the ITS applications, which is described in the ITS Introduction Guide, including ETCs,
car park payment, information collection, information provision and traffic management. The ITS Introduction
Guide will be finalized and released by the summer of 2016, and the result will be announced at the 7th Civil
Engineering Conference in the Asian Region (CECAR), which is scheduled for between the end of August andSeptember 2016.

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ITS World Congress site

TC-16 Workshop【Report by Takahiro TSUKIJI, Secretary of ACECC TC-16
Researcher, ITS Division of National Institute for Land and Infrastructure Management】

What’s Happening●2016/4/8・・・the 2nd Construction Industry Global Vision Lecture Series, “A Global Strategy for
the M&A of the Construction Industry (Case of AECOM)”.
http://committees.jsce.or.jp/kokusai/node/98 (JSCE HQ, Tokyo)

Updates◆The summary of feature articles in the JSCE Magazine is available on the JSCE website.
http://www.jsce-int.org/pub/magazine◆Concrete Committee International Newsletter No. 44
http://www.jsce.or.jp/committee/concrete/e/newsletter/Newsletter.htm◆Journal of JSCE

The Journal of JSCE is the collection of research papers which can be viewed on the JSCE website.
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