Good morning, everyone.
First, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you today about this very important issue.
As a woman in Canada who has been very fortunate to seek and enjoy a stable and enriching career in the service of others, I am passionate about my new path that speaks to the successful engagement of girls and women in STEM, the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.
For the past 17 years, I've had the opportunity to encourage girls and young women to challenge themselves in the FIRST Robotics family of programs. FIRST is an acronym that stands for, for inspiration and recognition of science and technology, a family of programs that is a catalyst for learning for students from grades 1 to 12. It's run nationally through school- and community-based teams. There are four FEWO committee members who have a total of 11 teams dispersed among their ridings. Five provinces currently have FIRST high school level teams.
The founding mentor of Canada's longest-standing, nationally and internationally most successful girls' team in FIRST, I am a proud supporter of this initiative. Now as chair of the board of FIRST Robotics Canada, and the first woman, I may add, internationally to be in such a role, I am in a national position to impact the ability of girls to chase their dreams in STEM.
What's the issue? Here are some of the statistics. Growing numbers of girls successfully pursue post-secondary education in STEM fields. They're very high achievers in university, college, and industry training programs. We tell them that they can do anything and that they know they can. They believe us. When they enter the world of work, though, something causes them to question their choice. Women retreat from these fields as they pursue their careers.
Why is there this attrition? They're unsupported by male colleagues. They're frustrated by gender biases, conscious and unconscious, in hiring and promotion practices. They're faced with stigmas related to women in STEM, which is perceived often as being unfeminine. They lack supportive networks. They don't have role models or associations. There is inequity in pay, as reported by Statistics Canada, across all STEM fields. In fact, in Canada, women make 72¢ on the dollar of a same job.
We do not see women in leadership—there are 12% of women employed in engineering—or colleagues achieving to their full potential. They're frustrated. They're very high-achieving women, of whom 64% report that they are under more scrutiny than their male colleagues, especially when they're applying for a promotion.
The U.S.-based, data-driven and research-driven NCWIT, the National Center for Women and Information Technology, says that women don't need to be fixed; men need to become their allies and advocates.
We often hear about the leaky pipeline. Little girls engage in STEM wholeheartedly. I have witnessed this. As they progress along the pipeline, though, they question their ability and lose confidence. Ultimately, without supportive peers and adults, they decide to leave STEM fields. The statistics are clear: those who continue are in a minority in post-secondary programs.
Further attrition occurs in the workplace for all of the reasons above. This is a travesty for Canada. It's proven that diversity brings richness of thought, enhanced innovation, stronger teams, and has a profound impact on our GDP.
What's the impact of FIRST Robotics Canada? Our recent strategic plan, EDI, equity, diversity, inclusion, is there to support girls or alumnae of the program, but we're in a catch-22. Here we are supporting girls, but we're not serving these extraordinary young women who will be Canada's STEM leaders if we don't focus on the workplaces they will enter.
The creation of the Girls in STEM Executive Advisory Council this year is a results-driven, strategy-based group with three aspirational goals: to support young women in FIRST programs; to change the culture of the workplaces into which they will enter; and to investigate the impact of men and dads on the attitudes of their daughters.
FIRST's strategy is this, to meet goal one. Last weekend we had our first girls in FIRST weekend. Sixty-five girls from 25 teams across the province and 35 adults came together for two days. The focus was on the development of personal life skills: to be resilient, confident, courageous, brave, embrace failure as a learning opportunity, and to flee from perfectionism—so often part of being a woman—to enable success in the STEM world.
On the agenda, we had presentations and panel discussions from role models and industry leaders. If you see her, you can be her. Challenges of the glass obstacle course were discussed. There were workshops to discuss issues, build skills, dream about the future, to network, and to assertively suggest how they would like to proceed. The goal is not to fix the girls, but to augment their skills. Conceived of and executed by adults created the head of the comet, but the girls themselves have taken on the tail. The next steps are emerging.
To meet goal two, the girls in STEM executive advisory board are seeking systemic change in workplaces where women traditionally retreat. We are building presentations to build awareness and to call out gender biases and to grow the movement of men as allies and advocates and champions, to clearly state that equity, diversity, and inclusion aren't just good for women, but they're good for society and the economy as well. It is an economic imperative.
We need to challenge the media, to change that image of scientists as being men in white lab coats.
We intend to call attention to the status quo where 22% of employees in STEM are women, and this has only grown 2% in the past 30 years. We know this will cause discomfort, but we're okay with that.
To meet goal three, there are workshops for men in the lives of girls, to make them aware of their impact and provide strategies to support their girls and their daughters.
These are aspirational goals of FIRST Robotics Canada to move the needle on the current generation of young women by helping them and by challenging systemic attitudes. If we don't, all the good work encouraging girls in STEM is for naught.
What's the national picture? We need women in STEM and for them to stay in STEM. We need to close the gender gap. It isn't just the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do. That is echoed around the world. We need to achieve systemic support for solutions, to demand change. This will be challenging, but together we can all make it happen. We need national strategies to reverse the trend. It is not just good for society, but for Canada's innovation strategy, the national economy, our place in the world, and it's good for 50% of the population.
I have some recommendations. Challenge the status quo by holding CEOs and boards accountable for their demographics and hold organizations accountable for systemic change. Withhold funding and other resources, as Minister Duncan's proposal for university funding states. Bring together organizations that support women in STEM. Build networks. Impose quotas to achieve balance. That's demonstrated by Sweden's voluntary quota project. They can be very effective in boosting diversity and improving systemic change. Engage men in the conversation so that they can become advocates. Empower women, and engage men. There should be support from the federal government to encourage the development of organizations such as Australia's Athena SWAN, the U.K.'s Athena SWAN, and the U.S.-based NCWIT, all of which support women in STEM fields. At present, Canada lags behind in this work, and we need to change that.