I am going to answer in English because it is easier for me.
First of all, I just want to clarify the numbers. What I said in my presentation was that women make up less than 20% of those in the really hard-core technical programs, but actually, overall among ICT professionals, it's 25% because some of those professionals are not.... They're like analysts, for example. Information systems analyst job programs are easier for women to work with. They're more attuned to the kinds of things that women want to do. So the overall number is about 25%, which is still unacceptable.
I have a couple of responses to this.
First of all, I think you're right that we don't have more women in the field because they're making choices, not because they're being kept out. They don't necessarily see the field reflecting their interests.
With respect to your concern, which is a valid one, historically it has been very true that the culture of information technology has not been very female-friendly. That has changed dramatically. Certainly ITAC's members, our members, and our 25 corporate members are very proactive with respect to all the issues you've identified and more, in terms of making sure that there's a very strong focus on work-life balance, with a special focus on women. Many organizations, particularly large companies, see creating working conditions that will appeal to women as an explicit priority. For smaller companies, it depends on the organization, but in general among large companies, it's now happening, not in every single one but pretty much across a large number of them.
The other factor is our view that it's not enough. Do women really see their aspirations and desires for the kind of career they want, the kind of work that they want to do, reflected in this field? Again, it comes down to the question of the old narrative—this geeky programmer who spends all day sitting in front of a computer screen—that's going to appeal to fewer women than men. That's just the reality. It's a cultural fact. But in this new narrative we're talking about, where, first of all, many of the jobs are actually business-oriented and require leadership skills, collaboration, communication skills, and so on and so forth, it is a fact that there's a significantly higher proportion of women in those jobs. Outside the IT sector, well over 30% of those jobs are actually filled by women. Inside, it's a little bit less.
But now the new narrative is saying, it's whatever you're interested in. Are you interested in life science? Go into bioinformatics. Are you interested in design? Well, you can do online design. You can design things.
The arts, social sciences, medicine—many, many fields—are now combined with IT at a technical level or at a business level. That's what is really turning the corner. By the way, it's not only turning the corner for many women. We're just getting started, and we've touched a tiny percentage of the Canadian population. By the way, we need financial support from government in order to do this. We can't just do this with our industry funding. We've had good support in the past. Now we need it to continue.
But what I was going to say is that we also need to recruit a certain kind of male into the field, someone who's a bit of a right-brain/left-brain kind of person, who's not just technically oriented, but who has those creative and communication skills as well. So our approach is to tell that narrative to the entire cohort, and based on at least our preliminary results, it's working.