Status of Women committee  Women Building Futures has had the opportunity to engage in many successful partnerships with industry that have yielded amazing results through partnership and through owners really working with us to ensure that their contractors are hiring the women who come through our programs.

Status of Women committee  I'm nodding my head before you finish, and I'm saying, yes, absolutely. I certainly think that's what's needed. I know in Alberta and across Canada it's not readily available. It's not affordable and the quality is not controlled. The child care that people can afford with convenient hours may not have the quality women need to feel comfortable about leaving their children.

Status of Women committee  It certainly does, because those roles tend to be higher paid, so there's that factor. It's also that women can enter into a lot of those roles without some of the academic prerequisites that exist in other roles. If you look at industries like construction and road building and mining, those are really some of the industries where you look at the VPs around the room and most of them will have started on the machines as operators and labourers.

Status of Women committee  Thank you, Eva. I certainly can tell you about that. That is a big question. It starts with attraction. Attraction starts with education and informed career decision-making. We teach women that they can do these sorts of roles. Often they believe that they can't; they haven't thought of it.

Status of Women committee  Thank you. Good morning. I'm the director of industry relations at Women Building Futures. I'll be speaking about the measures and strategies that we use, and that can be used, to increase women's entry, participation, retention, and representation in positions of economic leadership.