Certainly. Thanks very much, Marilyn.
We have anecdotal information that the kinds of factors you describe are among the key reasons many women are leaving engineering. We've seen some great strides in women enrolling in engineering. For example, this past year at the University of Toronto, more than 40% of the entering class were women.
But what happened to all of the women like you and me, the ones who surrounded us in our first year of class? Why aren't they represented now as women in the senior parts of their career, who could be role models and reasons for women entering the profession?
The factors that you describe, Marilyn, are all of the ones that we've seen and heard about. Because there is mainly anecdotal information about those factors, it can be a challenge to identify what, in the Canadian context, is the right thing to do.
In the United States, there have been studies on how women are retained in engineering. We can draw upon those studies and also share the links and the studies themselves with the committee. We know that the Canadian context is different, and we need to understand that context.