Thank you.
Good afternoon, Madam Chair and committee members.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you about increasing the participation of women in non-traditional occupations.
My name is Hiromi Matsui and I'm a past president of CCWESTT, the Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology. I work out of the IRMACS Centre, which is an interdisciplinary mathematics research centre at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.
CCWESTT is a pan-Canadian umbrella organization with 27 member organizations, from SCWIST, the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology, in Vancouver, British Columbia, to WISE in Saint John's, Newfoundland. CCWESTT holds biannual national conferences for women in SETT—that's science, engineering, trades, and technology. The next conference will be held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in May 2010.
CCWESTT member organizations promote women-in-SETT through recruitment and retention activities, in the form of workshops, hands-on activities, and talks with role models. We have a website, www.ccwestt.org, which contains a wealth of statistics, reports, and information. I invite you to go there to share what is going on in Canada.
CCWESTT encourages young women to consider careers in non-traditional occupations. This is an important topic that covers a wide range of occupations, from engineering professionals to women working in skilled trades. These women face many similar challenges and barriers as they try to advance their careers. The lack of role models in leadership positions is a critical factor.
One of the most exciting conferences I attended was a women in trades conference in Vancouver organized by Kate Braid. To see a room full of skilled female tradespeople, from carpenters to millwrights to welders, strong women both physically and mentally who've dealt with challenges and harassment in the workplace and survived, is an uplifting experience.
Yesterday I talked with a young millwright in Saskatchewan who is the only female in her company. The company uses her as a poster child, but she has to do double the normal amount of work to prove herself and admits it is difficult. When she first started working at the company, she would ask her supervisor questions about procedures and what she should do and he responded with grunts and other strong communication noises. She started calling him “Caveman Joe”. Fortunately, her sense of humour helped her cope and survive.
The reality is that many companies in trades do not want to hire women. They view diversity as a problem, which is why we've developed a checklist of strategies to work with companies to help them cope with training challenges—we're working on the French version of that checklist; I'm sorry we don't have it ready yet.
CCWESTT has developed a centre in Edmonton, called the WinSETT Centre, to partner with industry to deliver women-in-SETT leadership programs. We've already run career awareness workshops for aboriginal and immigrant women and we plan for more in the future.
A great deal of work has been done to encourage women in non-traditional occupations, but you know the gender pay gap still exists in Canada, especially for women with post-secondary training getting 68¢ to the dollar that men get. We need to communicate to employers and policy-makers the business case for diversity.
Diversity policies can result in increased innovation potential. Employers can access a broader base of talent. They can have stronger financial performance.
In 2002, Richard Bernardi found a clear link between companies with female directors on boards and those on Fortune 100's best companies list. In its research, Catalyst found that companies with the highest representation of women directors outperformed those with the lowest representation.
Diversity policies can result in enhanced market development. Women influence 80% of consumer purchase decisions. Many of you know that the number of women entrepreneurs has increased dramatically between 1981 and 2001, over 200% compared to a 38% increase by men. You have to remember this increase also includes women engineers, and it includes skilled tradespeople.
At work I've met a woman who has set up her own caulking company because she has found a niche in trades that fits her strengths and what she wants in her work. She specializes in industrial caulking and she does very well.
Julita Vassileva is the NSERC chair for the prairie region for women in science and engineering, and she points out that “Research must be carried out to develop an enhanced understanding of gender issues”. She says:
Promoting women does not mean treating them in the same way as men. Men’s characteristics, situations and needs are often taken as the norm, and--to have the same opportunities--women are expected to behave like them. Ensuring gender equality means giving equal consideration to the life patterns, needs and interests of both women and men.
I'm here today because I have a dream of a Canada where equal opportunities will exist for all women and men. My dream is inspired by my grandmother, who came to Canada as an immigrant. She and my grandfather built a cabin in Marpole. They were very poor. The children were hired out to families as house help when they were eleven years old.
My grandmother had a dream for her children, a dream of opportunity. I have a dream of a Canada where young people, particularly young women, will be encouraged to study mathematics and physics by counsellors and teachers, not discouraged. I still hear this every day.
My own experience in an Ontario high school was having my principal advise me not to become a teacher because he said I'd have difficulty finding a job because of my racial background. My mother worked as a housekeeper but took courses and got a secretarial job in a hospital. I thought about teaching, but ended up studying at the London School of Economics and worked on the contribution that working women make to the economy. Having come from a strong line of working women, I saw that they did a lot and contributed to the economy and I wanted to do research in that area.
Simon Fraser University supported me in working on diversity in the faculty of applied sciences, and if you think that's a common thing, you're not right. I was fortunate to work with two deans who supported my work in diversity with both faculty and student groups in computing and engineering science. We now have several female faculties in engineering science, where previously we had one female faculty.
My grandmother gave me a dream and a gene pool with a lot of determination and strength. We have the business case, we have the data, we have the case studies, but there are still many challenges to move forward. But I say to you, yes, we can.
Merci.