Evidence of meeting #75 for Status of Women in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was men.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Pam Damoff
I'm going to call the meeting of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women to order. We're going to continue our study on the economic security of women in Canada.
We're pleased to welcome Dr. Imogen Coe to the committee today. She is dean of science at Ryerson University.
Welcome, Dr. Coe. You have 10 minutes for your presentation.
Professor Imogen Coe Professor, Dean, Faculty of Science, Ryerson University, As an Individual
It's a great pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for this opportunity to present to the committee on the topic of economic security of women in Canada. As you know, I'm the dean of the faculty of science at Ryerson, and a professor of chemistry and biology. Ryerson University is a national leader in understanding equity, diversity, and inclusion and their role and importance in aspects of Canadian society.
I'm also a research scientist. I have a research lab at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto and I've supported many students along the way in conducting research on fundamental aspects of drug efficacy.
I've also, over the last 30 years perhaps, been a vocal advocate for those who have not been treated fairly in science, technology, engineering, and math, which I will refer to as STEM. Under the university system in Canada, as in other parts of the world, it's really important to note that the most privileged are the last to see the inequities, because they are the ones who have benefited the most.
Some of what I'm going to say here comes from a piece I wrote in response to a particularly nasty inflammatory piece by Margaret Wente in The Globe and Mail in June of this year, in which she commented on the federal government's policy around Canada research chairs. I wrote a response to that which, as they say, went viral.
In my work over the last 30 years, I've heard the voices of many people, including the voices of girls who, data show, participate in equal numbers to boys in STEM through high school, but who, after being gender stereotyped and marginalized in their choices since birth, doubt their self-worth and their potential for contribution to STEM in Canada. I collect these stories now and I share them in the many talks I give, over a hundred in the last 18 months to two years.
I've also heard from young gay men who want to forge careers in tech, but who are wary of the “bro” culture. I've heard from young men of colour who are interested in aspirational pathways in STEM and would like more than just more after-school basketball programs, and I've barely heard from the first nations students, whose voices seem to be hardly more than whispers, who have so much to contribute but who are neither seen nor heard by so many in the educational system and in the universities and by us in science.
The owners of these voices, and particularly women, represent the future potential of Canada in many ways, including beyond STEM, and that requires us to respond with, I and many others submit, evidence and informed data-driven strategies that will address the inequities. These inequities to access and in access and participation directly impact the future career and employment prospects of young women and thus their economic security, as well as the economic development of the nation, because we know that diversity is a driver of innovation and we know that we must have diversity in order to innovate. It's an economic imperative.
Many OECD countries and G20 countries, including Canada, now understand that diversity and equity, particularly in the STEM-based career pathways, are an economic imperative, and many countries have recognized the economic value and importance of improving diversity and closing the gender gap to their economic future, financial stability, and competitive abilities. A highly skilled workforce with advanced skills in STEM-based disciplines is essential if Canada is to remain competitive.
These highly skilled jobs of the future are also going to provide economic security for these workers, so by increasing accessibility to STEM career pathways and education, which lead into these highly paid jobs, we can improve the economic security of women and the nation. To do this we must ensure that as many members of Canadian society as possible—that is, women, people with disabilities, our first nations, and our under-represented groups—have access to STEM-based education and training.
This means that education, academia, industry, business, government, media, and society at large must work together to mobilize, support, and retain as large and as diverse a STEM education-to-workforce pipeline as possible.
However, we live in a sexist, racist, homophobic, and ableist world. It's a fact. If you want to understand gender stereotyping for children, I have a TEDx talk I gave a couple of years ago. Babies are born natural scientists, but from the moment they're wrapped in a blue blanket or a pink blanket, their frame of reference is defined. They're drenched in cultural conditioning and they are gender stereotyped. While we think we're a progressive country in Canada, we're just as bad at this as everybody else is.
These societal attitudes frame their worlds and limit their potential, both boys and girls. Gender stereotyping disenfranchises boys as much as it does girls. A recent study showed that by the age of six, girls will articulate what they think girls are good at or not good at, including perceptions around their own abilities in, for instance, math.
Without their actually having had much experience in math, they can articulate what they think girls are good at, not from their experience but because they've absorbed messages from the world around them about what girls can and can't do.
These messages continue to build. They're micro-messages. They're like a death by a thousand cuts. Girls and their interest—or lack of interest—in STEM are not the problem.
I see the high achievers by the time these young women get to university. They're A+ students, but they are sometimes paralyzed with self-doubt and concerns about their worth and their contribution to science or to society. They've experienced a couple of decades of gender stereotyping that no amount of science camps, “leaning in”, or mentorship can fix.
We all, as society, are the problem, and we all must address that problem.
As you can tell, I grew up in the U.K. I tell students that I went to Hogwarts.
Prof. Imogen Coe
I didn't, but I went to a school a little bit like Hogwarts, and for Halloween that's appropriate. My experiences are typical. At the age of about seven, the girls in my class were gathered up and sent off to one room to take sewing lessons while the boys went off to another room, I think for woodworking lessons, but I don't know, because I didn't get to go.
Professor Imogen Coe Professor, Dean, Faculty of Science, Ryerson University, As an Individual
I didn't know that it was a girl-boy thing. I just knew at that time that it was not fair. It's not a gender issue. It's a human rights issue. It's not fair. I couldn't advocate for myself at that time, and no one else seemed to notice because that was the norm. That was the way the system worked, yet, to quote somebody I have a lot or respect for, I “persisted”.
When I was about 12, my father—and fathers are incredibly influential and important in supporting young women in STEM-based pathways—who thought it was normal for girls to do math and science and had no sympathy with my struggles with physics, took me to the open house at my local university, which happened to be the University of Cambridge.
It included a visit to the world-famous British Antarctic Survey. This is a scientific research unit based at Cambridge, but it has a research station at the South Pole. I thought this was the most exciting, exotic thing that I could think of. I wanted to do this. I was naturally curious. I loved the outdoors. I wanted to be an explorer. I wanted to be a scientist.
With great excitement, I bounced up to the British Antarctic Survey rep who was manning the booth there and asked, “So, how many women do you have at the base station at the South Pole?” His rather tired response was—it has since burned into my brain—that “the environment there is very stressful for the men doing research and we don't want to add to that stress by introducing women”. I heard the slamming of a door to a potential pathway that I was interested in.
The door closed. That was it. I knew that it was not something for me, yet I persisted, because here I am. I'm the exception.
I was reminded of this experience at the British Antarctic Survey about a year ago when I was at the Ontario Science Centre to see Commander Chris Hadfield receive an award for science outreach. He told a story of seeing, as a young boy at the science centre, a piece of the moon, and at that point realized that he wanted to go into space. He wanted to be an astronaut. There was no slamming of the door for him. Nobody said to him that it's too stressful to send white men into space for that all-women crew. As an aside, it'll probably be an all-women crew that goes to Mars, because of physiological reasons.
There was no slamming of the door. That pathway was wide open to him. There was nobody who said, “You don't fit and you don't look like an astronaut.” Nobody said he was the wrong colour or the wrong gender or anything. Culture and context support the dominant group. Culture and context repeatedly, over and over again, say to girls and to women that you don't fit, girls suck at math, you don't look like a scientist, and we can't have girls in the lab because they cry.
We often focus on girls as being the issue that needs attention, although data, science, and studies show that this is not the most effective way for increased participation in the absence of concomitant cultural change.
For instance, we can support girls in access to robotics through something like FIRST Robotics—my colleague there knows about that—but if we don't at the same time teach boys how to work with girls on teams in robotics, then we're not going to see a change. Those girls are still going to experience the reality that the boys ask them to do the fundraising, the boys ask them to do the marketing, and the boys won't let them do the software and the hardware or drive the robots. We have to engage everybody and not focus just on the girls.
Supporting science camps for girls makes us all feel good, and it allows corporate Canada to check their corporate responsibility box, but until we acknowledge that society has an issue—and society is sexist, racist, and homophobic—and we challenge and address that, we're not going to see significant change systemically.
Liberal
Prof. Imogen Coe
Okay.
How do we address this? We address this through systemic, organizational, structural change.
Last week, I was in Washington, D.C., at the invitation of NSERC, to learn about the SEA change initiative, which is based on the Athena SWAN initiative in the U.K., which has been very effective in shifting institutional culture.
This program does not focus on women. It focuses on the culture. It holds leaders, who are often men, accountable, and there are consequences for failure to meet the goals of the program.
The most compelling feature of the Athena SWAN program in the U.K. is that it was proposed to be tied to funding. The Minister of Health in the U.K. mused that maybe she would tie funding to Athena SWAN outcomes. That immediately got all the universities on board, and they started working on cultural change.
We have an opportunity here to bring SEA change to Canada. I implore you to support that work. I applaud and support the work of the Minister of Science and the CRC secretariat in bringing accountability to the CRC program.
Promoting cultural changes doesn't come easy, and there has been some significant push-back, but this is the way that we will see pathways opened and barriers to full access removed for girls and young women in Canada. Please, support the fundamental science review across parties, and the initiatives in that review around equity, diversity, and inclusion, which are core, foundational principles for a better economic future for women and for Canada.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Pam Damoff
Thank you very much, Dr. Coe.
I know that FIRST Robotics will be thrilled with the shout-out you just gave them.
Our first questions, for seven minutes, are going to be from Mr. Serré.
Liberal
Marc Serré Liberal Nickel Belt, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Coe, for your excellent presentation and the work that you've done. Thank you so much. I couldn't agree more with all the comments you made.
I want to touch base on a few elements, in the seven minutes or so that I have.
First, you indicated the need for data-driven research, especially in the STEM field. Can you give some examples of what you would recommend Stats Canada or the federal government...? Do you feel that we should be gathering better data, and what type of data?
Prof. Imogen Coe
If you look, for example, at the census data the U.S. collects, which is disaggregated way beyond gender to socio-economic group, ethnicity, and things like parental levels of education, that's a good model in terms of the data they collect.
The challenges exist to some extent between provincial and federal jurisdictions. We definitely have the ability to collect data on participation rates, but I think we also need data on other groups. We've had a lot of discussions around how to collect data on, for instance, people with disabilities, if the disability is not an issue that actually impacts their access to STEM.
For STEM programming, for things like Athena SWAN and SEA change, I would look to the models that the U.K. and the U.S. have used. There are so many different levels of data you could collect, but that would have to be thought through.
Liberal
Marc Serré Liberal Nickel Belt, ON
Thank you.
My second question is this. You mentioned the last 30 years and the unfair treatment at universities when you look at STEM. You also mentioned the Canada research chairs. We know that we have a goal. I think it's 30%, which is still very low. It's currently at 15%. What do you feel the federal government should do to possibly shock the system? Thirty per cent is still a low target. This is appalling. What can we do to change that?
Prof. Imogen Coe
You legislate it. If you want to change it overnight, you legislate it and you tie funding to it.
We do that for people with disabilities, right? We have legislation that says you take out the steps and you put in a ramp. We don't ask people in wheelchairs to try harder or lean in. I think that's one way to do it.
There is one way to do it. They didn't end up doing that in the U.K., but simply the concept that it might be done really caught the attention of the universities, and then it became a competitive process where the competitive spirit took over and the universities wanted to compete with each other to get these awards.
There is the accountability and the consequences piece, or there is the incentivization and the reward-based piece. Money will always incentivize.
I think the federal government can do that through, for instance, the research funding. I sat on the Canada excellence research chairs selection board as the equity, diversity, and inclusion champion, and each university was required, in those applications, to put in an equity plan. For the most part, they were really, really substandard.
I think we could do what we do with other types of funding mechanisms that say that, until you have your biosafety certification in place, or until you have your animal care certification in place, or until you have your human research participants ethics certification in place, you don't get funding. It's not released to the universities.
You could do the same thing and say that you're not going to release the funding to the universities until you are satisfied that their equity plan is in shape and is acceptable, and it deals not just with teaching your hiring committees what implicit bias training is or having the training. We know that is not particularly effective. We need to go beyond that and we need to ask questions of how they are going to have sustainability, how they are going to ensure retention, how they are going to build their teams, and what the processes and policies are that they have in place. I want all of those things codified, and how they are going to improve them over the next three years.
We get universities to take responsibility for that and adopt SEA change or adopt Athena SWAN, and then reward those universities that do that.
Liberal
Marc Serré Liberal Nickel Belt, ON
A bit along the same lines, I want to get your comments—because it was raised here previously—related to quotas. Some of the OECD countries have quotas, and it has worked well. When we talk about legislation tying into the funding, I want to get your comments on.... Because not much has happened in the last 30 years linked to universities, are we at the stage where we should consider it? What are your thoughts related to quotas?
Prof. Imogen Coe
I hear a lot of young women in science saying, “I don't want the position just because I'm a woman.” I don't think anybody ever got a position just because they were a woman, except maybe those very specialized programs, and then there was a stigma associated with it, which is a problem.
However, I do believe that, if institutions are not going to engage in processes that will shift the needle and affect culture, then we need to do something else. We have the 30% comply or explain, which hasn't done anything in 10 years for boards. Next, if you're not going to do it yourself, then we're going to have to bring in some kind of legislation that will do it, and it may be that it is quotas.
In order to do that, there has to be a whole plan in place to deal with the conflict that will come out of that, because inevitably there is a big piece in terms of organizational change management and conflict management that needs to be done, be in place, and be ready. You need to be ready for that before that's launched.
But quotas, or the implementation of quotas, is a way to make an unfair system fair. That messaging has to be absolutely explicit. It's a way to make an uneven playing field even. Quotas can work.
Liberal
Marc Serré Liberal Nickel Belt, ON
Thank you.
In the last few seconds I have left, thank you so much for the shout-out for the fundamental science review and the support for the 35 recommendations. I had a question about immigration, but I'll have to leave that aside. The chair has said my time is up.
Thank you so much for what you're doing.
Liberal
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I appreciate the expertise you have, which is obviously very significant.
I have just a couple of clarifications. When you mention disabilities, what definition do you have that you're using for disabilities?
Prof. Imogen Coe
I use that in terms of the four designated groups. We've had a lot of discussions at Ryerson on what that means in terms of people self-identifying: whether they need to self-identify if it doesn't have an impact, or the fact that people who have mental health disabilities may not self-identify.
People with disabilities, as a designated group, are who I was referring to.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Okay. Thank you.
The history of medical and legal, in the sense of gender, are some numbers that I've seen over the years, and they've changed in those professions, as far as universities. Do you have any knowledge of those two professions from your background, as to the change in gender?
Prof. Imogen Coe
Both medicine and law are second entry, so an undergraduate degree is required.
Yes, those numbers have gone up. There's a great article that I would recommend to everybody, which is called “When Women Stopped Coding”. It describes the increase in participation rates of women in law, medicine, life sciences, and computer science until the mid 1980s, when the participation rate really dropped in computer science, relative to medicine and law, which are now pretty stable. Depending on where you are, it's roughly fifty-fifty, as it is in life sciences. Computer science was on the same trajectory—you can actually look at the data—and it dropped significantly.
The interpretation of those data are that media and marketing started it. The PC arrived on the scene, and it was marketed as a boy's toy. It became a cultural reference point that computers were for boys. Then we saw this drop off.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
What were the successful indicators for legal and medical, then, that brought them to that fifty-fifty ratio?
Prof. Imogen Coe
I think television had a lot to do with it. I think girls would see themselves potentially as a doctor. It was a desirable lifestyle. However, if you look at the retention rates in law and medicine, that's something quite different.
If you look at the participation rates in high school, girls are participating in high school at very equivalent rates, except in physics. We have those numbers, but their lived experience, their experience of themselves in those environments, is very negative. That carries through to a point where you decide the culture, the context around me, is not supportive.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
I appreciate your context of cultural change.
Finland, from my understanding in reading, 20 years ago decided to change their culture, and they used the education system to do it. Are you familiar with what Finland did?