Status of Women Committee on March 31st, 2010

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I would like to call the meeting to order, please. It is 3:30, and everyone seems to be here.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are undergoing a study on increasing the participation of women in non-traditional occupations. Today we have witnesses from the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists, Monsieur LeBlond and Yaroslaw Zajac. From Carleton University we have Ms. Hellemans, assistant professor, Department of Psychology, Institute of Neuroscience. As an individual we have Wendy Cukier, associate dean, Ted Rogers School of Management from Ryerson University.

Before we begin, welcome, witnesses, and thank you for coming to talk about what is a very important topic. Second, I'd like to let you know some of the rules. Because you are three separate bodies of witnesses, so to speak--in fact, Monsieur Leblond and Mr. Zajac are in one group of technology and technologists--each group has ten minutes to present. We're going to keep you to time, and then after that there's a round of questions and answers, which are also timed.

I will start you in the order in which I have you here on my agenda. We will now begin with the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists. Monsieur LeBlond and Mr. Zajac, you can decide if you want to divide your time or if one of you will speak or whatever.

[Yaroslaw Zajac, Executive Director, Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists (CCTT)]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, ladies and gentlemen, as we have been introduced, I am Yaroslaw Zajac, the executive director of the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists. Beside me is Mr. Isidore LeBlond, who is the manager of program development at the Canadian council.

We wish to thank you most sincerely for inviting us. We are pleased that the work we have been doing in encouraging young women to consider careers in technology has in fact been brought to your attention, and hence this invitation to speak before you. Thank you very much for that. It is much appreciated.

Let me start by way of introducing CCTT as the national federation of ten provincial bodies that certify technicians and technologists across this country. We are also the body that accredits technology programs in community colleges across this country. At this moment there are over 250 accredited technology programs that produce the skills that our future economy needs.

We represent about 53,000 certified technicians and technologists. Of those, I am sorry to say, only 8.3% are women. We are very concerned that this participation of women in this very important profession is so low. We are very cognizant of the human questions that you as a committee of Parliament have addressed. You have addressed issues of respect, of opportunity to get ahead in life, of avoidance of that glass ceiling that you all speak about. These are all vitally important human issues.

I would also like to put before this committee a question that relates to the same issue but from an economic point of view. If you think about the growth of the Canadian economy, then I put it to you that there is a centrality of technicians, technologists, and engineers to that growth. If growth in productivity within the economy is dependent upon innovation, then in fact it is the engineers who are generally the conceptors, the technologists who are there to take concepts and make them real by putting together systems, by sourcing systems, by making all those systems work, and then there are the technicians who operate and maintain. This is true for every sector of the Canadian economy, be it resources, services, manufacturing, or whatever.

In fact, if you look at productivity gains in whatever sector you wish to look at in Canada, they can only be enabled by technology. Think of a hospital. Think of a hotel. Those are service industries. They need technology and therefore they need the technology professionals to put them together. Take a look at that picture and say okay, there are only 8.3% women of this entire cadre of technicians and technologists in Canada. National statistics indicate that while there are 53,000 technicians and technologists, there are in fact 375,000 working as technicians and technologists. Our recent study done together with Engineers Canada has shown that the participation of women in that profession is only 19%.

Now, think about it this way. If you look at current projections of the cohort who is going into post-secondary education, last year, 2009, that cohort of 15- to 19-year-olds peaked and it will be steadily decreasing down and down. What that means is fewer people of post-secondary education age are coming into that level of schooling. And if you say that within that group only 19% are women within the technology professions, then that 19%, in absolute numbers, will also continue to go down and down, literally, in the next ten years.

What we're looking at is the need to increase total numbers of technicians, technologists, and professionals working in the technology fields, and we need to ensure that the 19%, which in absolute terms is going lower and lower, actually increases.

We're looking not just for gender equality; I suggest that we should be looking for gender balance, because we need more and more women in that economy. We need more women in the central factor that drives our economy, and therefore it is vitally important to look at ways in which we can indicate to young women that a career in the technology professions is of interest, is rewarding, and is contributing to the strengthed economy. For that reason we are busily working to encourage young people, and young women in particular, to consider careers in technology.

With that, I'll give the floor to my colleague, Isidore LeBlond.

[Isidore LeBlond, Director, Program Development, Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists (CCTT)]

Thank you, Yaro.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Our message is clear. How can Julie think about a career as a water quality technician or a food technologist if she doesn’t know these occupations exist in the first place?

Last September the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists took part in the promotion of technology careers at World Skills 2009 in Calgary. National Technology Week and GoTechgirl hosted five demonstration areas within Canada House for the very first time. Imagine 5,000 students, teachers, educators, and parents per day for five straight days marveling at all the options available to them.

CCWESTT is another example. From May 13 to 15 this year, the Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology is holding its biannual conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Madame Matsui, the past president of CCWESTT, has already appeared before this committee.

National Technology Week and GoTechgirl will be playing host to the youth program during the CCWESTT conference. There will be four half-day sessions of interactive learning, tours, and real-time hands-on demonstrations.

We bring to your attention key findings of a recent high school survey that was conducted across Canada in five cities: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax. Finding number one was that the majority of young women do not have a good understanding of what applied science or engineering careers entail; therefore, they cannot aspire to those careers. Only 9% reported having heard of National Technology Week. This year marks our seventh year across the country.

A majority of young women have negative perceptions of engineering and technology occupations. Compared with young men, young women do not have role models who encourage them to consider technology careers in the first place. GoTechgirl is trying to disseminate career information to young women by tackling the negative perceptions.

And lastly, too few parents encourage their daughters to study math and science.

So what are the highlights of the GoTechgirl program? First, it is a registered trademark of the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists. Second, it is a national outreach campaign to educate and inform. Third, it is seeking out success stories and forming a champions list, a mentor list, to build the role models. Fourth, we have a number of national contests to encourage young people--young women specifically--to show us their skills across a number of areas. And lastly, we promote and put on technology camps. They're usually held in colleges and are hands-on Saturday morning sessions. Young women get to come with either mom or dad as their free ticket in to experience applied science and engineering technology occupations. These are held across the country and are gaining speed.

Do we need the program to grow? The obvious answer is yes. Do we need more resources? The answer again is yes. We are working with the private sector to do that. We represent 14 different sectors of technology, and we're doing a major outreach campaign to help us promote that. We're going to the workers, the employers who are looking for those workers of tomorrow, to help us to be part of the solution.

We bring forward to you today three recommendations. The first one is that together we must do more to educate and inform young women of the many career choices available through scholarships, mentors, information sharing like career nights for students and parents, and summer job programs for students in grades 9 to 12. And we must teach the influencers--the school counsellors, the teachers, and the parents--who face an enormous task.

Second, the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists welcomes the opportunity to work with the Museum of Science & Technology to develop TECH ZONES to promote those careers in technology.

Lastly, the Canadian council is a strong advocate of a national co-op placement program, especially in the areas of applied science and engineering technologies. In Canada, the greatest successes that take place are when the private and public sectors collaborate to attain a common good. That is our suggestion.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Before I move on, there's a show I really like because I'm that kind of techie freak, and it's called NCIS. The girl in NCISis a technologist, and she is so hard-hitting and funky and everything. I think “GoTechGirls” should get her as their role model. She is absolutely fabulous.

Now, Ms. Hellemans from Carleton University, Department of Psychology, Institute of Neuroscience. Ten minutes.

[Dr. Kim Hellemans, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Institute of Neuroscience, Carleton University]

Hello, everybody. Good afternoon. Thank you again for having me speak here today.

I'm speaking on behalf of the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology. I am a woman who entered a non-traditional career. I am a neuroscientist, which most people when I say it think nursing science. No, neuroscience.

I am very happy to be here today, particularly since this subject is a particular passion of mine.

I'm a former board member of the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology. I was on the board from 2006 to 2008. It's a 29-year-old registered charitable organization and it has roughly 200 members across Canada, although SCWIST is based in B.C., particularly Vancouver. SCWIST has programs for young girls; “ms infinity” is our program for young girls. It has programs for students, undergraduates, graduates, post-doctoral fellows, also women who are continuing in their careers in science, engineering, and technology. It also has a program for immigrating women in science, called IWIS, which is what I'm going to be focusing on today.

The IWIS program was initiated by SCWIST in 2001 with the idea of supporting internationally trained women professionals in science, engineering, and technology through the process of their assimilation in the professional scene in B.C. and Canada, commensurate with their education, training, and experience.

IWIS has recently developed a newsletter and a blog. It has a wonderful presence on the Internet, and I have in my notes, which will be disseminated, the address for you so that you can go and take a look.

I want to talk a little bit about the Canadian landscape. Rick Miner, who is the president emeritus of Seneca College and a human relations consultant, recently stated that Canada is faced with an aging population, and that severe labour shortages will coincide with a surplus of jobs requiring skills and educational attainment. It is estimated that by 2031, 80% of all new jobs will require skilled workers who need more than a high school education. And this is interesting, because it is up from 65% today. CCWESTT, which my colleagues have previously mentioned, a national coalition of women in science, engineering, trades and technology, makes a compelling business case that it makes no sense to exclude half the Canadian population from participation in technical fields.

IWIS provides a unique support for women. The broad goals of IWIS are to increase knowledge; build community and individual capabilities of immigrant women in science, engineering, and technology through building communities; and providing networking and skill development events for immigrating women in sciences and technology. In the eight years of its existence, the program has successfully helped immigrant women in science, engineering, and technology to work through the practical and systemic barriers in finding suitable professional opportunities by facilitating community participation, mentorship and networking opportunities within professional circles, and building connections with local employers, immigrant settlement, and employment agencies. With these functions, IWIS is a growing community of dynamic women with immense capability and potential.

A positive recent advancement is that Engineers Canada has created an assessment form for international engineers. However, the challenges faced by men and women immigrating to Canada are unique. For example, immigrating women are less likely to have opportunities to learn English and French, get retrained, and find a community of women scientists. Men and women face different barriers, so programs that work for men may not necessarily work for women.

Data published by Statistics Canada in February 2010 on immigrants working in regulated professions is a positive step in describing the labour market in Canada. For example, between 2001 and 2006, 42% of immigrants who landed in Canada had a university degree, compared with 16% of Canadians. In 2006, 41% of university-educated, working-age immigrants had studied in fields that would typically place them in regulated occupations such as health, law, and engineering. Fifty-two percent of foreign-educated immigrant graduates had engineering degrees, of whom 71% were male and 26% were women; only 19% of them were employed in engineering: 20% of the men and 12% of the women.

We believe at SCWIST and IWIS in helping women directly. In fact, our IWIS chair at SCWIST herself is an immigrant to Canada. Her name is Gülnur Birol, and she immigrated to Canada from Turkey in 2005. She says:

My experience as an immigrant woman has been quite different since I came from the United States; that is where I got the “North American/Canadian” experience. As such I was able to find a meaningful job right away. However, SCWIST has been extremely important in my transition in the sense that when I came here I started from scratch as far as my network goes.

So networks are something we are definitely emphasizing as important.

Meeting like minded women in science and technology facilitated my transition tremendously. It helped me see other women--immigrant or not--who have been in transition and their experiences as they go through this transition. It was an "aha" moment for me to realize that I was not the "only" one and I was just in transition. Half of my network is as a result of my interactions with SCWIST. The workshops that SCWIST put forth have been invaluable in clarifying my career and personal goals, helped me stay in focus and more importantly empowered me to take the next steps in my career. For that I am grateful and that is why I wanted to join the SCWIST board to give back to the community and I am glad that I did.

So what is needed? I'm sure I'm not the first person to mention child care.

We need to facilitate the recognition of foreign credentials. Although we recognize the government has made steps, it's clear we need further movement in this direction.

We need further mentoring and timely language skills workshops. We need networking workshops, employer connection workshops, and sector specific workshops. We need events to facilitate immigrants to connect with current Canadian society. We need community round tables and basic skills workshops, on résumé writing, interviews, Canadian culture introduction, career goal setting, and how to transition into a new culture.

We need opportunities to facilitate immigrants to somehow get some Canadian experience. You cannot get a job in Canada without Canadian experience, but it's impossible to get Canadian experience. For example, we could develop a program where companies can take on skilled immigrant workers, such as co-op or volunteer experience. There's a company in Vancouver called FutureWorks, which works with the provincial government to support and help with training of new hires.

There are obviously cultural and language barriers. We need more convenient channels to help immigrants build up their confidence. Many immigrants report that they feel their training is devalued in a new country. Another program in Vancouver, called SUCCESS, has set a good example. However, we need much more.

To conclude, Canada will face an acute skills shortage, and it needs to develop fast-track programs to use skilled immigrant workers more efficiently. It typically takes about ten years for immigrants to reach their education-appropriate level of employment in Canada. In many cases immigrants will require further education and training in order to take advantage of available opportunities.

Immigrant women form a very special group of people with highly specialized skills and knowledge. They can contribute tremendously to the Canadian workforce.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

You're probably one of the first people who has talked about the cross-cutting factor of immigrant women as one of the factors we have to look at in non-traditional work.

Now, Wendy Cukier.

[Wendy Cukier, Associate Dean, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, As an Individual]

Thanks very much. I'm pleased to be here.

I will try not to repeat what has been said by the other panellists, although I very much endorse some of their key points.

I'm going to provide a high-level presentation drawing on a number of studies that Ryerson's Diversity Institute in Management and Technology has conducted in recent years. Unfortunately, most of them are only available in English, but if people want to follow up with me, I would be happy to provide more detail.

These studies include one for the Information and Communications Technology Council, looking at diversity, competitive advantage, with a focus on the ICT sector, and a study with Catalyst, which surveyed 17,000 middle managers across Canada, 7,000 of whom worked in technology sectors and 3,000 of whom were women. A recent study on unemployment in Peel showed a huge disconnect between the needs of employers and the available labour market. It was not a skills shortage, it was a skills mismatch. The jobs were there, the people were there, they weren't getting connected. I think that needs to be addressed. I guess the most recent project is one with the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance, which looks specifically at best practices for attracting and retaining women in Canada's technology sector.

So I'm going to try to draw from those studies at a high level. But the Diversity Institute is focused primarily on fact-based strategies to promote inclusion. We are in a business school, and for that reason we very much endorse the notion that inclusion is not just—although it clearly is—a matter of equity and human rights. Inclusion is also a matter of national competitiveness and innovation. We would like to see a better linkage between many of the social and developmental policies and the economic and innovation policies because they are so clearly linked.

Because I'm used to talking in three-hour blocks and I have 10 minutes, maybe only seven now, I'll start with my conclusions. The paper is high level because I wanted to stick to the 10 pages, but there are a few key points that I want to ensure I communicate.

The first thing is that I've entitled my paper "More than Just Numbers, Revisited" because I've been working on this issue for 20 years. Many of you will recall after the Montreal massacre that there was a huge focus on women in technology professions. The Canadian Council for Professional Engineers produced the “More than Just Numbers” report in 1992, which recommended an integrated strategy to promote women in engineering in particular, but it has implications for women in other non-traditional occupations.

I regret to say that many of the recommendations in that report almost 20 years ago are just as valid today as they were then. We made some progress, but in the last decade there has been considerable backsliding, and in fact you'll see from the data that today in Canada there is a lower percentage of women in computer science than there was 20 years ago. The participation of women in engineering increased over the 1990s, peaking in 2001, and since then it has declined, not quite back to the same level. In contrast we've seen tremendous growth of women in biotech and life sciences. We've seen tremendous growth of women in business and management programs, and the participation of women in mathematics programs at universities is well over 40% today. So the notion that women are excluded from technology professions because they don't do math is simply fallacious.

The CATA WIT study--Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance Women in Technology--which is hundreds of pages long, focused on best practices in employment. We did a lot of work with companies like IBM and Hewlett Packard and so on to look at best practices for attracting, retaining, and advancing women. However, working on this for the last 20 years, I'm absolutely convinced that those measures are important. Things we do at universities are also important. But many of the critical decisions that set young womens' lives in motion are a result of influences that affect them as early as grade three.

We need an integrated strategy. We need a strategy that focuses on upstream issues. We need a strategy that looks at the broad environment.

The other thing I have to say is that over the last 20 years--and we did a study where we evaluated 75 different programs--there has been a huge amount of energy and attention focused on this issue, lots of resources invested, very little longitudinal evaluation done to identify initiatives that work, as opposed to initiatives that are well intentioned. So obviously one of my themes, coming from a university, is the need to really emphasize the real evaluations--not the one-page evaluations that many organizations submit at the end of their funding--that look not just at satisfaction and participation levels, but also look at impact, at longitudinal effects over time.

The other thing that I want to underscore, which the other speakers have done, is the intersections between race and ethnicity and immigrant status, disability, sexual orientation, and so on. Our research showed very clearly that in large high-tech companies like Hewlett Packard and IBM, there is a slight gap between men and women in perceptions of fairness. Women feel excluded from informal networks. They don't feel they have the same opportunities. But the gap between white Caucasians and visible minorities is far greater than the gap between men and women, so the intersection between those issues is critical. Similarly, whether we're talking about engineers, lawyers, politicians, the intersections between gender and socio-economic conditions and class are huge.

I was the daughter of a single secretary who was widowed at the age of 33. I found out what an engineer was when I was 22 years old, surrounded by them working in a government office. I thought engineers were the guys at the back of the train in the caboose. There is a huge class and socio-economic dimension to young people's choices that often gets obscured, and we have to make sure that all residents of Canada have equal opportunities.

The notion of the links between social and economic policy is absolutely fundamental. Affordable, accessible day care is an issue that was raised across the country in all of our discussions--both the survey of over 3,000 women and also the consultation. It's a huge issue. It has a huge impact on women's ability to stay in the workforce.

The paper that is in front of me....

Dr. Fry, how many minutes do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one and a half minutes.

[Wendy Cukier]

Okay.

So within the paper, which goes through, in great detail, what's happened with the numbers, it talks about early interventions, the socialization of girls, what happens at high school, what happens at university, what happens in the workplace, and I paid particular attention to what governments can do at all levels. It's messy. It's federal, it's provincial, and it's local, but we need strategies.

I will just mention a couple of points, which I hope will stay with you.

Standardized testing in grade three.... We're talking about seven- and eight-year-old children. Little girls outperform little boys in both mathematics and in English, but when they are asked, “Are you good at mathematics? Are you good at English?”, little boys are more likely to say yes. That confidence gap has an enormous impact on the choices that young girls make, that mature women make. It affects not just women in engineering and technology and the sciences, it also affects women in law and it certainly affects women in politics. The things that Equal Voice is doing have just as much relevance in terms of the socialization of girls as any of the specific things targeted at math and science.

So that's one point I want to make, because I think--

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Now you have another 15 seconds.

[Wendy Cukier]

Fifteen seconds?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Some of it can come out in questions.

[Wendy Cukier]

In terms of the political context, the last thing I want to note is that governments can play a huge role. The Auditor General's report in 2009 said that we've lost gender-based analysis. In spite of the obligation to do it, it's not being done.

I would say that re-embracing gender-based analysis and mainstreaming gender when you're looking at innovation, at sectoral policies, and at economic development policies, is absolutely fundamental to creating an environment in which all women can succeed.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Wendy.

I'm just looking at all of your degrees, and I'm saying that as the daughter of a single secretary, you've certainly come a long way, ma'am.

We will begin with seven minutes of questions and answers. I just want to explain quickly that those seven minutes include the questions and the answers. I just want to give you due warning of that.

We will begin with Michelle Simson, for the Liberals.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank all of the witnesses for coming out. It's been really fascinating--rather depressing, as a woman, but fascinating.

I'd like to start with Mr. LeBlond. In your presentation you specifically say that “the majority of young women do not have a good understanding of what applied science or engineering technology careers entail and therefore cannot aspire to those careers”.

You used an example, saying that if Julie doesn't know those careers exist, she's not going to take that type of career path. How is it that little Johnny knows and little Julie doesn't? I mean, they go to school together. I'm just fascinated by that. I know it's true, but I'm wondering what we're missing.

[Isidore LeBlond]

That's a very great question. Part of the understanding of little Johnny is that he's probably surrounded by people around him who are actually practising and working in those areas. Other people, such as friends, relatives, and neighbours, talk about it. They know about things. They come home and they hear the different things that are talked about. Little Julie doesn't have anybody around her in her surroundings who says “This is what I do”.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Well, wouldn't she have the same brother, father, grandfather, or uncle? She's in the same family unit. This is just a question, but is it the family unit or the way they view it that's excluding her from even a conversation in regard to perhaps going into that area? What's your view?

[Isidore LeBlond]

I believe you've hit it right on the head. It's the family unit. Yes.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

We've heard a lot about role models. I'll ask each of you this. Is there is no way that a role model can be effective if it's cross-gender?

When I was growing up--and I'm going to date myself--from the time I was 10 until I was 19, I wanted to be a lawyer because I used to love watching Perry Mason. That was a male role model. I didn't want to be the nurse on one of the hospital shows.

How much does that come into play? I'll ask each of you to quickly respond to that.

[Dr. Kim Hellemans]

I can definitely respond as somebody who has been through that experience. As a scientist, I can say without a doubt that if I didn't have female role models who balanced life and family and science, I wouldn't be here today. It's definitely the case that women half a generation to a generation earlier didn't have those women mentors, because women who went into science didn't have families. It was very rare to see a female full professor who had a family.

I think there is something about looking at somebody and saying, “I can be like them and I can do what they're doing”.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

But you're saying that it has to be a woman?

[Dr. Kim Hellemans]

For the most part, yes, I think so.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you.

Wendy.

[Wendy Cukier]

It wasn't translated so it's not in my report, but a number of studies have shown that different variables play a role. There are individual variables. There's your character. Maybe you play with Meccano sets or maybe you play with Barbie dolls. It depends on the environment you grow up in. Parents are a very big influence. Parents, the research shows, are much more of an influence on girls than they are on boys. Peers are more likely to be an influence on boys.

One of the things that can have an impact and that could have had an impact on someone like me, for example, coming as I did from a single-mother secretary family, is what we call a transforming experience. So a teacher, a guidance counsellor, or a family friend who introduced me to the notion.... Girls are more likely to become engineers if someone in their family has been an engineer. Girls are more likely to be police officers if someone in their family has been a police officer.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

But that would be true of a lot boys, wouldn't you say? You see them. At General Motors they went on the line. You hear about that.