Mr. Cullen, it certainly is true from the research I've done as a pollster that there are a number of issues in which men's and women's opinions tend to differ. I would say those cover areas such as spending on health care, for example, and social services in general and those kinds of issues. Women tend to be more supportive of those kinds of programs in almost all polls that I've done at the national level, and we find that at every other level.
One area that people are not really aware of where we find very significant gender gaps is in attitudes towards military. For almost every question we've ever asked about military spending or about taking action in various theatres around the world in a military sense, women are less supportive than men of almost every endeavour in spending on the military. It's an area that I don't think a lot of people are aware of, but there are most certainly gender gaps.
The idea here is that if women are not represented equally, then those views may not be represented as they should be, that being one of the arguments to increase the numbers of women in our parliaments, because these are views that may not be heard as much as they should be if women aren't there. Of course, the first argument is that it is a matter of fairness. It's a matter of democratic representation. We're talking about our democratic institutions. We're talking about decisions that are made and that affect the entire society and the entire country.