Status of Women Committee on April 23rd, 2015

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Good morning, and welcome to the 55th meeting of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. Today, we are continuing our study on women in skilled trades and science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

We are also continuing our “paperless committees” pilot project. As you can see, the chair is not leading by example, since she is still using paper documents. But some members of the committee like Mr. Barlow are ready to be part of that new initiative right now. Good for you!

Today, we are pleased to welcome members of the

Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology, Ms. Danniele Livengood and Ms. Sandra Eix. From the Centre for Education and Work, we have Ms. Suzanne Winterflood and Ms. Marjorie Marchinko.

We also welcome Kate McInturff, representing the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and from the

and from Women in Science and Engineering from Carleton University, Ms. Natalie Linklater and Ms. Rim Khazall.

Welcome to you all.

Each group will have 10 minutes for their presentation, followed by questions from members.

We will start with the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology. You have 10 minutes.

[Danniele Livengood, Secretary, Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My name is Danniele Livengood, and with me is Sandra Eix. We are here representing the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology, fondly known as SCWIST.

For more than 30 years SCWIST has been supporting and advocating for women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Over this time we have seen many positive changes in the representation of women in these traditionally male-dominated fields. Women now account for 39% of students enrolled in STEM programs, and just this year the University of British Columbia achieved record numbers for enrolling women in their engineering programs. At the faculty level, women are 35% of life sciences researchers and 15% in physical sciences, computer sciences, engineering, and mathematics.

It would be tempting to congratulate ourselves and to say that even if women haven't completely achieved equitable representation in STEM fields, we have at least implemented a key part of the solution: encouraging and supporting young women entering STEM programs. However, a closer look indicates that there is still work to be done. For example, Statistics Canada reports that in comparison with men with STEM degrees, women with STEM degrees are more likely to be unemployed or employed in fields that do not require a degree. 2011 U.S. data shows that in the non-academic workforce, only 26% of STEM workers were women, yet we know that overall women make up 48% of the workforce.

More significantly, there is still an alarming absence of women at the leadership level, both in academic research and in industry. Statistics from 2013-14 show that women hold only 15% of full professorships in science overall and only 8% of full professorships in engineering, as compared with 31% in the humanities. Also, only 3.3% of the top 25 NSERC grantees, as measured by grant size, involve women.

The story is similar outside academia. Huge tech companies—Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google—show promising diversity statistics, such as 35% of their workforce being women, but women represent only 15% to 17% of their technical employees and only 20% to 25% of senior staff.

Until we understand and act to counter the historical and cultural forces that keep women from STEM leadership, we have solved only part of the problem.

In the 21st century, the challenges that face Canada and the world are not simple, and new kinds of thinking will be required to take them on. Recognizing this, education systems across Canada are evolving to focus on creativity, innovation, communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and critical thinking. Whether addressing climate change, new diseases, management of an information economy, or feeding a growing population, we need to think differently.

Leaders who think outside of the historically informed archetype can bring fresh perspectives to solve complex, interconnected problems. More than 20 years of research tells us that gender diversity is key to this kind of innovation. Studies by the Conference Board of Canada in corporate governance link gender diversity not just to employee satisfaction but also to improved governance, innovation, and economic benefits for corporations. Studies in the Journal of Business Ethics found that the presence of at least 30% women on a board decreases “group think”, while women directors improve a firm's ability to navigate complex strategic issues.

What we can learn from these studies is that a lack of women in STEM leadership isn't just a problem for ambitious women. It's a limiting factor in the ability of Canada's researchers and corporations to thrive and grow. In other words, STEM needs female leaders.

Women working in STEM identify many barriers to their success. Some of these are in the form of infrastructure and systems that hold them back, some are related to organizational or workplace culture, and some are related to attitudes about women's abilities in these fields. Over time, strong women and their supporters, bolstered by public policy and law, have chipped away significantly at the most obvious parts of these barriers.

Societal attitudes about who can and should participate in STEM have changed enormously. It's well established that there is no innate connection between gender and mathematical or scientific ability.

Human rights legislation makes discriminatory hiring practices illegal. Breaking down the final barriers requires us to change how we think and requires a level of self-reflection.

Most people are not aware of implicit biases that cause them to make small assumptions without realizing it. This is a critical barrier to women's advancing in STEM, since even the best-intentioned teachers, guidance counsellors, professors, and hiring managers have implicit biases. To illustrate the effects of implicit bias on women's advancement into leadership positions, a study presented a CV to several science professors and asked them to evaluate the candidate for a lab manager position. The male candidate was offered 12% higher salary and more mentorship and was rated more competent and hireable than the female candidate, even though the only difference in the CVs was the name at the top.

Regular and repeated use of instruments such as the Harvard implicit bias test can help educators, managers, and HR professionals become aware of and combat biases. Being aware is the first step.

The importance of role models in encouraging women as they enter non-traditional fields is widely recognized and is the raison d'être of many successful programs, such as SCWIST's Make Possible and ms infinity programs, as well as Let's Talk Science, and the scientists and innovators in the schools program.

However, when women in STEM are recognized and celebrated in the media, the stories often reflect inherent societal stereotypes. Media critical tests such as the Bechdel test for movies can help identify the gender biases that we are so used to seeing. An analogous test, the Finkbeiner test, serves to call out representations of women in STEM fields that define their successes in the context of their gender. To pass this test, articles about a woman in STEM must not mention, among other criteria, the fact that she's a woman, her husband's job, her child care arrangements, or how she's the first woman to.... These items may seem normal, even laudable to include in a story about a successful women in STEM, but we have to ask ourselves whether we would say these things about a man in the same field. While we need to see more women in STEM represented in the media, it's essential to be mindful of how they are portrayed.

As you can see, the representation of women in STEM is still lacking at the leadership level. This needs to change, because more diverse models of leadership are what Canada needs to meet 21st-century challenges. To move forward, we need to continue to support the best practices that have advanced women in STEM thus far, and we need to address the many more subtle barriers, such as implicit bias in media representation.

First, we cannot stop supporting the initiatives that we have worked so hard on this far. This includes support and advocacy networks such as SCWIST, DAWEG, WWEST, and the NSERC chairs for women in science and engineering program. lt includes mentorship programs for girls and young women such as SCWIST's ms infinity program, and our double-X networking evening. It also includes skill-building opportunities, such as SCWIST's immigrating women in science and ladies learning code programs, as well as its science and tech camps for girls.

Second, we must invest in systems to help HR professionals and educators understand and counteract their biases. This will help ensure that unconscious systematic biases against women in STEM will not continue as barriers. Workshops for professionals and academics, supported by the sharing of best practices for combatting biases, could change the landscape greatly.

Promising initiatives in this area include the WinSETT workshop series, Make Possible's HR inclusion workshop, and the HR toolkit on diversity being developed by Digital Nova Scotia.

Third, we must recognize and celebrate organizations that are models of diversity and tell the story of how they have benefited. For example, we know that the Fortune 500 companies with the most women on their boards far outperform those with the fewest. Motivating change in well-established institutions and corporations will be easier when the business case for diversity is widely understood.

Finally, we must work to build, connect, and integrate the existing networks of mentorship and peer support for women in STEM. We need to encourage initiatives that bring like-minded organizations together for common goals. For example, Creating Connections is a conference in metro Vancouver at which university and college STEM students meet with organizations that support women in STEM to bring together people of all genders to discuss issues of personal and professional development, networking, and inspiration.

Women in STEM and their allies have a lot of work still to do to provide Canada with the STEM leadership necessary for the 21st century and beyond. The advances we've made thus far justify optimism and further support as we take on the next set of challenges.

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

The floor now goes to Ms. Winterflood, representing the Centre for Education and Work.

You have 10 minutes.

[Suzanne Winterflood, Executive Director, Centre for Education and Work]

Good morning.

My name is Suzanne Winterflood. I am the executive director for the Centre for Education and Work. My colleague is Jeri Marchinko, senior adult learning specialist.

The Centre for Education and Work is a not-for-profit organization. We have partners in industry, education and government. We create relevant and real-life digital learning materials in affiliation with the University of Winnipeg, focusing primarily on industry workforce development.

The background of our project is that we were focusing on funding received from Status of Women Canada. We conducted research. We developed a website with online resources for employers and women in non-traditional occupations. The project focuses on the way to support recruitment and retention of women in non-traditional occupations, especially in manufacturing.

Why focus on manufacturing? There are no existing resources for Manitoba employers or women in manufacturing. For example, if a manufacturing company has female employees, they are more likely to be office staff, human resources personnel, or in finishing departments. They are rarely, if ever, heavy machine operators.

One focus group participant remembered that in 30 years only two women had worked in the press room, and they had not stayed for long. He said that it takes a special type of woman to incorporate herself into an environment where it is exclusively male.

“We just don't have a lot of women in the sector, and it puzzles me why they are not more”. That was a quote from the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

Participation rates show low participation. Although these numbers reflect only skilled trades, women also have low representation in unskilled trades. The need to encourage and support participation in non-traditional occupations has been well documented. As you can see from the figures, there were 128 women out of a total 5,053 in apprenticeship training in the trades in Manitoba, with a participation rate of 2.5%. That's extremely low.

We've undertaken years of research, conducted a needs assessment, completed a literature review, and identified a number of challenges and promising practices. There were insufficient responses from women in the manufacturing industries. We identified this in our project risk assessment at the beginning of the project. We therefore decided we had to broaden our scope to include occupations in other sectors, for example heavy equipment operators, truck transport mechanics, carpenters, painters, and electrical technicians. But as you'll see, there are very few from manufacturing, which speaks to it.

What did we learn? What we heard from our focus groups was that findings for female participants were similar to other studies. Although there has been work done in the areas of awareness and career planning, there is clearly a need to do more. There is also a need to extend awareness activities beyond high school. Several participants said that they had tried the traditional route first, went to university and entered jobs that were acceptable within their culture and their families. It wasn't until they were more mature, less influenced by peers and family, that they started to explore options they felt were more suited to their skills and interests. That's when they explored the non-traditional occupations.

There are recruitment challenges. All employers interviewed said that they got few applications from women and were, for the most part, unaware of gender biases in their job descriptions. Focus group participants said that they wanted to see real women in promotional material, not models with full makeup on. Focus group participants said that they were still being asked questions that were not asked of male counterparts in interviews, so gender bias exists in interviews, in questions, and in job descriptions.

As far as retention challenges, there are still problems with basic accommodations, changing rooms, washrooms, personal protective equipment designed for men rather than women, and inappropriate photos in the workplace. I dare not elaborate.

For example, one focus group participant told us the following story, “I used the upstairs restaurant washroom and the general foreman called my boss and told him that I thought I was special because I wouldn’t use the construction washroom—it had no door and no toilet seat.”

Sometimes women were asked or expected to clean up after team meetings, to make the tea. Participants said that they wanted to be treated in an equitable manner—no special treatment, just to be respected for the work they do. One comment that was given was, “They give you every opportunity to not succeed, but it's so nice when you do.”

Other women's experiences included the lack of information on knowledge of employment standards and the fear of taking maternity leave—fear of losing their jobs or of just not being called back when they were ready to return. We identified a lack of mentoring programs. Support and acceptance varies from workplace to workplace. You have to find the right fit and not be afraid to leave a job to go to new pastures. Lack of part-time and/or flexible working options was another identified issue.

Among the promising practices we identified—some employers are engaged in these activities already—were: employers working with school divisions to educate teachers, parents, and students on career options to transcend gender definitions; gender inclusivity in advertising and promotional materials; women in non-traditional occupations speaking at career fairs and schools, etc.; and pre-employment programs for women who had different voices.

Some women felt it was helpful and others felt it was demeaning to have special programs just for women. “There weren’t special programs for men to enter nursing—even when there was a nursing shortage.”

There were clear progression paths in companies. On-the-job training or access to further training is available. Putting respectful workplace policies into practice, identifying gender bias in interviews or in people with hiring decision-making authority, providing on-site child care and flexible working arrangements—these are some of the things we identified throughout the research.

As a result of the research, we're developing resources. There are two websites. The focus group website women's portal emphasized the importance of connecting with other women. This was key to having a successful website. They wanted awareness of occupations, positive and potential challenges, and information about rights, etc.—employment standards, maternity leave. They also wanted a support group online, interactive cases or studies for actual scenarios that women encountered in the workplace and how they have coped with them, and connections to mentors. These are just some of the things they want to see on their website.

There will be an employers' portal. Reaching employers has been challenging. All employers interviewed to date said they were interested in improving their recruitment and retention of women in non-traditional occupations. Some employers, especially those from smaller companies, stated that they would welcome supports in these areas. We're looking to develop tools to checklist or self-assess whether they are female-friendly workplaces; to provide tips on how to make the workplace more equitable, including online mentoring kits; and to show how to conduct a focus group with the women in their companies to be able to use them as a reference.

Thank you for your time. If you have any questions, we'd be pleased to take those.

One final note to take away, change is happening but it's slow. It takes a long time for attitudes to change.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We now move to the representative of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. You have 10 minutes.

[Dr. Kate McInturff, Senior Researcher, National Office, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the committee for the invitation to speak today.

My name is Kate Mclnturff. I'm a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The committee has already heard that women are highly under-represented in most STEM fields and in the skilled trades. I'd like to spend my time today talking about why that is the case, and what kinds of public policies are needed to increase women's representation in these occupations and to address the challenges that are most pressing.

Men and women in Canada work in different fields, for different numbers of hours, at different rates of pay. Women are three times as likely as men to work part time, twice as likely to work for minimum wage, and nearly 100% likely to be paid less for the work they do.

The fact that men and women tend to work in different fields isn't unusual. Canada is fairly typical in terms of labour force segregation in OECD countries. The problem lies in the fact that there are women who want to work in non-traditional fields and they are being pushed out or meeting insurmountable barriers to achieving their goals. The problem lies in the fact that the women who make it into those male-dominated occupations are making less than their male peers, as we've just heard, and facing obstacles such as a hostile work environment. The problem lies in the fact that women's work in both male- and female-dominated sectors is undervalued.

Women want to work in skilled trades. Over the past 10 years, young women under 30 have gone from being 13% of new registrants in skilled trades training programs to 18% of new registrants. That's a 5% increase. However, the share of young women in the same age group completing those programs has increased by only 1%. This suggests that a significant portion of those new entrants are meeting barriers during their training before they even enter the job market.

I've met some of these women. When I taught at the University of Ottawa, I found them in my classes. They told very similar stories. They were inspired by a teacher in high school, a mentor, or a parent, and they entered trades training programs with high expectations. They were going to be the next Mike Holmes, but what they found was persistent discrimination, sexism, and exclusion.

Women who do manage to make it through their training and into jobs in skilled trades continue to face gender-specific barriers. Efforts to increase the presence of women in Canada's mining sector are a good example.

Women make up 20% of those employed in mining and oil and gas today in Canada. That percentage has remained unchanged since 2006 in spite of initiatives to support women's participation in the field and broader economic policies that have tried to support growth in that sector. Why? Reports by women in mining have identified some of the barriers that women face to working in this industry. Top of the list is a hostile work environment. Next on the list is the lack of mentors and women in senior management positions. Finally, there is the lack of child care and flexible work practices.

Women in mining, oil and gas, like women in other skilled trades, also face significant discrimination in their wages. The wage gap in oil and gas in Canada is one of the largest of any sector in our labour force, with women earning 65¢ on the male dollar, working full time, full year. Women working in construction trades fare little better. They earn 72¢ on the male dollar. Female electricians earn 79¢ and female plumbers earn 82¢ for every dollar earned by their male peers, working full time, full year.

ln the face of this level of discrimination, it should come as no surprise that most of the women who go on to work in skilled trades are concentrated in female-dominated fields such as food service and the beauty trades. The men who complete registered apprenticeships are concentrated in programs for plumbers, electricians, mechanics, and carpenters. So even within the skilled trades, we see gender segregation very clearly.

The wages in these different skilled trade fields are also very different, with male-dominated occupations paying double the rate of female-dominated occupations in the skilled trades. Let me give you an example. The average full-time wage for a chef or a cook is $29,000 a year. For a hairstylist, it's $22,000 a year. Contrast this to the average full-time wage for a plumber, which is $55,000 a year, or for an electrician, which is $60,000 annually.

Why? Because cooking and hairstyling are still viewed as women's work, and women's work is valued less than men's work.

The persistent and endemic undervaluing of women's work is a problem. It is, I would argue, the most urgent problem facing women in the workforce today.

Earning $22,000 a year is not enough to meet the basic needs of a family—not even close. An average market basket of goods, as determined by Statistics Canada, runs closer to $35,000 a year. A woman who is struggling to pay for food and rent cannot wait for attitudes to shift of their own accord. They cannot afford to leave it to karma. They need change now, and they can have it. There is ample evidence from across Canada and other OECD countries that the wage gap can be narrowed and that women's work can be valued.

Research on narrowing the wage gap is conclusive. The mechanisms that narrow the wage gap are as follows.

Family-friendly policies are the first mechanism. Women's hours of household and care work have not fallen over the past 20 years as their hours of paid work have increased. Today women put in 3.9 hours of unpaid care work a day, compared to 4.2 hours of unpaid care work 20 years ago. Only now, that four hours of work comes on top of a full day of paid work for the majority of women.

This is double the amount of time spent on household and care work as performed by men in Canada. Unless we add more hours to the day, this puts an absolute limit on women's capacity to increase their hours of paid work and to go after those more demanding jobs that require them to work after hours or overtime. Women are five times as likely to take time off from work to look after family members. Without family leave and sick leave policies that address this reality, women are further marginalized within the workforce and see their opportunities for advancement and better pay reduced.

Solution number two is child care. Where affordable child care is readily available, women's labour force participation increases, the wage gap narrows, and the rates of promotion increase as well.

In Quebec, for example, women's labour force participation outstrips that of other provinces. Quebec has one of the smallest wage gaps in the country, second only to P.E.I. Women's employment in Quebec also held steady during the recession, while it dipped in other provinces. I think this makes an important economic point. This demonstrates the stabilizing effect of accessible child care on women's employment, which is all the more important when we see male-dominated sectors dip, such as, for example, the oil industry and construction. If we have women in stable employment, this means that families are better able to weather the storm during times of economic downturn.

Policy number three is regulation and wage-setting institutions. In every age group, in every occupation, at every educational level, the wage gap for women is smaller in the public sector than in the private sector. This is the result of regulation and wage-setting mechanisms, which require employers to track levels of pay and promotion and address gaps where they find them, because you can't fix the problem if you don't know it's there.

Engineers and electricians do not live in a vacuum. They live and work in the same society as everybody else. If we want to support women entering those occupations, we need to put in place proactive measures that are going to level the playing field for all women in Canada, wherever they choose to work.

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

We now move to our final presentation, which will be given by the chair of Women in Science and Engineering, Natalie Linklater.

Ms. Linklater, you have the floor for 10 minutes.

[Natalie Linklater, Engineering Co-Chair, Carleton University Women in Science and Engineering]

Hello. To start, off I'd like to thank the committee for having us here. We're very honoured to be here.

We are representing the Carleton University Women in Science and Engineering organization. It's an organization on the Carleton campus. My name is Natalie Linklater and I'm a Ph.D. candidate in engineering. With me is my co-chair, Rim Khazall, a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience.

To begin, we'd like to tell you a little bit about our organization. It was founded in 2007 by a group of graduate and undergraduate students and is still completely run by the students. We're all studying STEM fields: science, technology, engineering, and math. Our mandate is to encourage and support women to pursue an education and a career in science and engineering.

Across Canada there clubs similar to ours; however, we're all independently run and operated. We operate very graciously. We are supported by the deans of science and engineering, and that's how we've maintained all our programs that we're going to present to you today.

[Rim Khazall, Science Co-Chair, Carleton University Women in Science and Engineering]

CU-WISE exists because of what we know currently—and the social environment was presented before—that females' interest in math and science takes a drastic drop as early as the age of seven. By the age of 15 they have completely lost their confidence and their ability, which is shocking considering the fact that there are no gender differences between males and females on the science scale. Their abilities are there; however, their confidence is severely lacking.

It's also interesting that female enrolment in Canadian universities is actually 40% higher than males'. However, females do tend to choose social sciences, arts, health, and education. Now, there's nothing wrong with any of those fields, obviously. However, where WISE steps in is to ensure that we encourage and support any of these girls who want to pursue a career in STEM and really highlight their potential and the availability of really cool fields.

Our approach is a multi-modal approach. We have outreach programs in which we look at high school and elementary levels, and we'll be talking about that in more depth. We also have social programs on campus to support current students in science and engineering. These social programs range from networking events at our local bar all the way down to destressing yoga and lectures provided by different committee or community members at Carleton. Our outreach programs centre on real-world problems...[Technical Difficulty—Editor].

Oh! I touched no buttons—

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

That's quite all right. Sorry about that.

That made quite a point there.

[Rim Khazall]

There you go: real-world problems and real-world solutions.

I'd like to highlight both of these programs. The social on-campus supports and the outreach programs, which are really based on two very central effects that we use: hands-on activities, along with peer mentors and role models.

Natalie will speak to a few of these.

[Natalie Linklater]

We have a number of outreach programs, as we mentioned. One is called Go ENG Girl and is a program for girls in grades 7 to 9. It introduces them to concepts of engineering. After we introduce them to these concepts, they do a hands-on activity. Some of these concepts that we've introduced are roller coaster design, computer science and programming skills, bridge-building and earthquake stability, just to name a few. These programs are presented at universities across Ontario. They're supported by the deans of engineering and Actua. They allow the girls an opportunity to be introduced to these concepts.

I'm an engineer, and I wasn't introduced to the word “engineer” before grade 11, so it's really important to get the word out there as to what they do and educate them on the role of engineers. Also, we bring in their parents, so this is also a key aspect. It's to educate the parents on what these careers might entail. For a portion of the day, the parents are with their girls and they're hearing talks about the roles of engineering and how their university career might go. Then the girls are separated from their parents, and the parents get a little bit more of a boring lecture and we do hands-on activities with the girls.

Another similar program we do is Girl Guide badge day. This is catching on across universities as well. Not every university does it, but we have implemented it for the past four years at Carleton. It's for girls in grades 4 to 8. Girl Guides is a national program, and the girls come to school with their troop leaders this time. We're also trying to expose different adults as well as different age groups of girls. Girl Guides has an engineering badge, so we go through what an engineer is, the different types of tools they might use, as well as hands-on activities that are taught by our volunteers in the STEM fields. We use that peer mentoring approach again, which gives a different view of what an engineer is and shows the girls a closer view, so they might think, “Oh, I can be doing this in a couple of years, and it's not that scary.”

[Rim Khazall]

Some of our high school initiatives.... We do look at high school students, as well. Again, we find there is a decline and, really, a lack of information provided with regard to what an engineer is and what a scientist does. We have high school initiatives called Discover WISE and Women in Research, which have been designed and implemented by CU-WISE, so far exclusively. These focus on highlighting female graduate students and/or professors within the Ottawa field, not necessarily just at Carleton. Whoever will come, we'll take.

It allows a glimpse into the life of a researcher and an engineer—what do they do on a day-to-day basis?—again, really focusing on how this research is implementing real-world changes. Girls and women tend to be driven towards real problems and real solutions that they can actually help with.

Following these TED Talks kinds of lectures, they go to a mentoring social event where they get to interact with graduate and undergraduate students who are part of the WISE family. Again, those are really the peer mentoring and the social support and role models that are being highlighted for them. We answer everything from basic questions such as, “How hard is first-year calculus”, to “I want to be an aerospace engineer; how do I get there?” We try to make sure everything is available for these girls.

Again, for these programs we bring in the teachers and the guidance counsellors. They are extremely important not only in decision-making, in terms of where these girls are going to go, but also in implementing their abilities—“You can totally do first-year calculus; it's not a big deal; don't worry about it”. They're very influential. Again, we're targeting people of power in these girls' lives and hoping they'll influence them in a certain way. This is not just a woman's issue; it's a social issue.

Turning to our campus support for the women in STEM, again, I mentioned that we have social events such as the meet-and-greet and networking events at Carleton. We also have a mentoring program, attracting both undergraduate and graduate students. The mentors range from graduate students to professionals in the field. We try to attract, as much as possible, people from across Ottawa.

Finally, we have a fund for a conference that has been very popular in the last couple of years, which we're very excited about. Not only does it offer money to help pay for conferences, but we also encourage them and send out a weekly newsletter that highlights different tech conferences and sciences conferences that are happening across Canada or internationally, building the confidence in these girls' abilities to not only showcase their skills but also engage with their colleagues, increasing their visibility within the science and technology fields.

[Natalie Linklater]

A couple of other really simple initiatives that we've implemented.... We try to break barriers and stereotypes of what younger girls or even current girls think engineering and science is. We have a strong history of female leaders in science and engineering, so a really easy thing to do using social media, which really grabs the younger girls as well as the university-age girls, is to take a picture from the Internet, which I Google, of past female scientists or engineers. We use an inspiring quote and we send that out on Twitter and Facebook as well as within a newsletter.

Examples of people we've used are Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, and Jane Goodall. These are just a few examples. It's really easy to put a different face onto what science and engineering could be.

We also maintain a blog. All our authors are current students. Another way of changing the face and increasing the visibility of females who are currently studying STEM is putting a picture of them at the bottom of the blog. It seems really simple, but it makes a difference. You get to see a person. You get to know what their interests are, what they're studying, and the wide array of people in our membership. It really makes me happy to see the variety of girls studying in the STEM fields.

[Rim Khazall]

Our recommendations are obviously based at a community level in grassroots production. They're basically outreach activities. These outreach activities have been working. We have had girls from our first-year programs in the last five years come in and enrol in engineering and science fields here at Carleton. It's working at our level, so hopefully it can work at a global level. As was mentioned before, it is a mentoring program, with scholarships awarded, and conferences, and also highlighting science and engineering fields in different school levels, starting from elementary and going up—what is an engineer, what is a scientist?

With that, we thank you for your time.

[Natalie Linklater]

Thank you so much for having us. We're very grateful for this opportunity to give you a glimpse of what's happening on campuses across Canada. This is just an example of some of the initiatives we've implemented.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for all those very interesting presentations.

We now move to the question and answer period, starting with Mrs. Truppe.

Mrs. Truppe, you have seven minutes.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madame Chair. I'd like to welcome and thank everyone for attending. It's a nice big group today, so we're getting a lot of feedback from you.

Suzanne, from the Centre for Education and Work, I think you mentioned you received some funding from Status of Women. Do you recall how much?

[Suzanne Winterflood]

It was $250,000 over three years.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

What was the project called?

[Suzanne Winterflood]

It's “One Foot in the Door”. You can see on the slide a logo that brands it.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Great. That's a good name.

Do you have programs for immigrant women who either have or don't have experience in skilled trades?

[Suzanne Winterflood]

We don't have a specific program for immigrant women. We've looked at this as being a program for women across the board, from all groups, but it's certainly something we would be happy to consider extending specific roots for.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

I can't remember if you mentioned hosting events, but do you host events or some types of initiatives that target women, to get them into the skilled trades?

[Suzanne Winterflood]

No, this particular project was purely to develop online resources to support recruitment and retention, and in looking at the barriers, as a response to those barriers that exist, to identify them within the needs assessment stage.

There are a lot of calls for events. One thing we have thought about but isn't really covered within this particular funding is to be able to hold a conference to launch this initiative in the summer—we're just at the beginning of developing resources—and to bring employers together as well as women, because there is a major shortage of manufacturing companies willing to employ women. They're certainly open to it, but I think they don't know what they don't know.