Thank you very much.
You're absolutely right. One of the ways to address a gender wage gap is to encourage more women to enter what we call STEM professions—science, technology, etc. Status of Women knows this and has been working on it. I must commend the agency, because they've been leaders on this issue.
Much of the work we've done through granting has been around encouraging women to either enrol in STEM studies or to take that education and then gainfully apply it to employment.
There are two issues, really. There is the issue of engaging women to be interested in STEM, which is, as we can see from our academic outcomes, starting to decrease as a problem, but the bigger problem is actually moving women who are educated in STEM areas into the workforce. For example, the rate of women in mining is incredibly low. It's something in the range of 7%.
These are the kinds of things that Status of Women is very interested in. I had the great opportunity to visit one of the not-for-profit organizations that receive Status of Women funding in Vancouver. They have a very innovative program in which they have almost an online matching system whereby they connect young women who are seeking or pursuing a career in STEM jobs, for lack of a better word, to mentors they have sought out who will help these women navigate their way in an often very male-dominated field.
These are the kinds of things we're actively exploring to make sure that women who are interested in those careers have an opportunity to not only gain the education but then gain access to those fields.