Thank you very much.
I think mentorship is a vitally important aspect of developing self-esteem and confidence and also in helping to plan career paths for young women. The problem is, if we talk about what you were expressing, that the early stages of development for young women, for young people, is so critical, and as we've seen in so many studies it's very difficult to break a cycle. If you have an impoverished mother with a relatively low education, then there isn't really a role model for the young girl to aspire to. So I think that the whole aspect of mentoring has to begin very early on. In my mind, it's part of the education process.
I don't think you can remove men or boys from the equation. I struggle very much with that. Many of our businesses are heavily laden with engineers, and while we're seeing enrolment increase substantially for women in engineering programs across the country, the mentality in our own companies, while it's unspoken, is that it is a man's world, and the job is for the boys in that club.
I'm really struggling with how we actually break that. The only thing I can come up with is celebrating at a very early age what women can accomplish and what pride they can take in their accomplishments. And I'm not sure that we really expose our children to those kinds of real-life stories and real-life women, whether they're young, middle, or older. I think we can learn a lot from the heritage of our first nations cultures, where in the matriarchal society oftentimes—I believe Paige said it best—the women set the rules and the men regulated on the rules.
Women need to know that they're strong. They need to know that they have the ability to do whatever they want. They can be carpenters. They can drive big dump trucks. They can be scientists, as Elyse said.
I think this whole thing has to start very early on, but we can't forget that we have to educate the men and the young boys along with this.