I wish I had something we could celebrate, but I have to be frank and say that when you look at data, which we all look at, the enrollment numbers of women in engineering are not increasing.
What makes a difference is having female deans of engineering. We now have several female deans of engineering. Elizabeth Cannon in Alberta was one of the first. We now have a female dean at UBC. We have a female dean in Toronto. These women are in positions of leadership and will make a difference, because deans have not a lot of power but they have enough power to influence things like hiring committees.
But organizations like CAF, and unions, which are pressing for greater equality, make a difference because they actually have some employers led by women and men who will listen and invite their managers and employees to work with them.
After working many years in the field, I have to say that when I was young and feisty I was angry a lot. I still get angry a lot, but I realize now.... Someone said that you have to work with the willing. And I think there are many people out there, both women and men, who are willing to listen. I worked for many years with the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C., and when I first walked into this room and saw all these middle-aged men in suits, I wondered what I had gotten myself into. That experience of working with those people developed some profound friendships for me, where we learned and listened on both sides.
Professional organizations like Engineers Canada and the provincial engineering associations can make a difference, because they can provide the leadership profile of encouraging their members to become aware and to become educated on the kinds of policies and practices that are barring and keeping women out. It's not only recruiting. You all know the retention issue is a huge one. We're training lots of women in science, but Canada is doing a very poor job of retaining them. And the obvious reason is that women get married, they have families, and there's no day care. You know, this isn't rocket science.
I think leadership is a key component, and nurturing women leaders. There are some industry leaders who realize that retaining women is a real competitive advantage. IBM is one company that is doing an excellent job. Johnson & Johnson are doing it. And as more multinationals realize it--once we recover from the recession--I think there is hope there.
But the impact of the cultural forces that are causing our young people and our teachers and counsellors to think in very narrow terms, in terms of nursing and teaching and medicine as career choices, is profound.
I have recently been looking at the online games targeted at pre-school children. The whole Disney machine, which is a very powerful one, is encouraging creativity and all the artistic design and so on. But there are positive things happening. Let me tell you, at Simon Fraser University we have a new campus in Surrey. At Surrey, one of our newest schools is called the School of Interactive Arts and Technology. That school is combining design and technology studies and they're attracting both women and men students, because women are interested in the design of a cell phone, in the design of an interface, as well as learning something about the technology. So interdisciplinarity is a huge area.
It's such a complex issue, as you yourself know.