Until then, she hadn't really had too many opportunities to work with equipment and to gain confidence in doing that kind of thing. When she showed up in her technology class, at the beginning the boys were not even wanting to talk to her. Three weeks in, when they realized that she could just outperform them on coming up with the CAD drawings, they started to huddle.
So it took a while to even start changing the culture, but the more work we've done with Skills Canada, the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum, and others who are really committed to and who understand the apprenticeship system.... A lot of it is exposure and experience, and ending the cultural norms that we continue to keep coming back to—that STEM is not connected with trades, or that trades are not a valuable pathway to follow when they are incredibly valuable, or that women are not capable of doing it.
When they try it and they see it, that can actually start to change attitudes. We've found that electricians, I think, are the best represented with women from some of the heavy trades, and it's only 6%. If 6% is the highest, I mean, we're doing a disservice by not letting everybody know the connections and the integration across them.