You know, it's one of these truly wicked problems where we can talk about a number of features that play out to over-determine this under-representation. I'll begin, again, by referencing this notion of unconscious bias. This idea has shown to be incredibly important at every stage of entry, to every stage in an institution like the university, the association of characteristics that are not typically leadership characteristics with women regardless of what women themselves might actually possess.
There is the need to understand that leadership comes in many different forms. There are different styles of leadership. Some styles of leadership can be much more effective for their very lack of the sort of traditional features that we associate with male leaders. It's also the case that the character of these leadership jobs is not always attractive to women.
We're constantly coming up against the gender division of labour in our society: the lack of adequate child care, the way in which the workplace is not structured so that you can be the primary caregiving parent and a full member, a full paid worker in it. That's true not just of universities, but it's certainly true of universities.
The atmosphere at universities is increasingly sharp, pointed, and competitive. On the push for productivity, I've seen a dramatic change in its character and its quantity in the 20 years or so that I've been a university professor. It is hard to have the kind of life as parent and worker that we want everyone to have, and to be fully committed to a leadership position at the university.
It's often the case that women don't think they want to enter into that sort of environment. We have a community of incredibly talented and competent women with tremendous leadership capacities and real promise to reform our institutions in positive ways. We have yet to create the environment that allows them to flourish. There are a variety of reasons for that. Pretty much all of them are discriminatory. Some are forthrightly intentional, but a lot of this unconscious bias—again to refer to the various studies that are tracking that right now—is a really powerful force in limiting opportunities for a number of groups, but particularly women.
I'll just mention one thing that I did do. I started a mentorship program. Mentorship has been shown to be incredibly important, to have women in leadership positions who not only set examples for women so they can imagine themselves moving into those positions and having that kind of career. It also provides the kind of support and appreciation of what it is to be female in an institution and to pass along advice. Mentorship is one good example. Role models are a feature of that.