Certainly some of these barriers are quite obvious. I can give you a few examples.
If you look at the facilities that exist underground in some of the mines, with washrooms in different parts of the mine, historically these were not in place to accommodate women, and today they are. I won't say in all mines, but today we do have both male and female washrooms underground in certain locations.
It's even a matter of things like having the right PPE, the personal protective equipment. We saw this year on the CBC show Dragons' Den that somebody struck a deal for overalls that were now female friendly. That's from our industry, and Women in Mining Canada in particular have completely endorsed this sort of thing.
These were barriers that existed. When we're not providing our employees with the right equipment to do their job effectively, how can we expect them to be retained in the sector? It takes so much effort to attract somebody to the industry, but once we bring them in, if we don't equip them properly, they leave.
Those are some examples of the very obvious practices or policies in place that we are trying to change. There are other ones that may be less obvious, and I'll give you an example involving the way work is being scheduled. Many of the mines today offer shift work and require a 12-hour shift, and you only work four days a week. That may work for some individuals, but we have found that it certainly doesn't work for the majority of women or young men who have families at home.
So part of this project is trying to accommodate different policies and procedures or identify these policies and procedures that may be in place. The mining company may not be aware it is discriminating against women, but the result of the policy is that fewer people are interested in working for it. And part of what we're trying to do is identify those barriers and help companies address them systematically.