I can begin. I'm Ashley Turner from Newfoundland and Labrador.
Thank you for your question. I think it's a very valid and a very important question when considering an increase in women's participation in general in these fields. I certainly understand where you're coming from. As you said, traditional and non-traditional occupations vary from culture to culture.
I mentioned some of the traditional occupations for women in our North American society, which are, again, types of secretarial work. Oftentimes child care and caregiving activities are considered traditional for women. Non-traditional work would be the construction trades, to which we've both referred. These may not be possibilities or considerations for women in other cultures. They may not have been encouraged to enter into non-traditional occupations on an even deeper level than perhaps we have in North American society.
On moving forward with policies or programs to actually attempt to increase the participation of women in general in these occupations, we need to take cultural considerations into account when developing our policies and programs. We need to apply them to cultures other than our North American society and other than the culture we've referred to in our presentation in order to ensure the programs are effective and no one is left out in terms of other cultures and other groups of individuals.