Status of Women committee  There are some studies, and if the committee is interested, I'll be happy to send a more complete bibliography. But for sure, with young girls, it's more their parents than their peers, and there is research that says that. There's definitely research that shows that fewer girls than boys in high school know what an engineer is.

Status of Women committee  Can I comment on computer science, though, so that my friends at ICTC, CATA, and ITAC won't disown me? One of the things that drove down enrolment of girls in technology was this notion that the ICT sector collapsed: Nortel laid off, Mitel, and so on. The fact is that there is a huge number of ICT jobs not in the sector.

Status of Women committee  On behalf of everybody, I would suggest the following; funding for transition programs and internships; language and cultural training; perhaps tax credits for companies that start to really invest in these things; and better counselling and customized services to ensure that women are getting the right information about where the jobs are and how to get them.

Status of Women committee  I want to be clear that there are more females in engineering today than there were 20 years ago. There are fewer computer scientists. But we've seen a decline of women in engineering since 2000 so that's one thing worth noting. I think the “More Than Just Numbers” report set out a very strong conceptual framework without anything to support the implementation or the accountability.

Status of Women committee  Yes. I am not an engineer. One of the things that I think is very important to emphasize--I'm glad you asked the question--is that many of the people working in technology jobs are not technologists, are not engineers, but they're what we would call hybrids. So a business student who does a minor in biotechnology could work in the technology sector.

Status of Women committee  Both, all.

Status of Women committee  Maybe let's let Kim have her share.

Status of Women committee  What was quite shocking about our study in Peel, and we surveyed 3,000 people--immigrants, non-immigrants, employed, unemployed--was that only 40% of the immigrants said they were satisfied with the services available, and only 25% of the immigrants with post-secondary education indicated that they were satisfied with the services available.

Status of Women committee  I would say it's a factor today, but not as much as it was. When I started working--and I was in an engineering-dominated environment more than 20 years ago--there were sunshine girls on the walls. My colleagues talked about female anatomy the way they talked about what was on the sports pages--including the women around us.

Status of Women committee  I'll echo that. There's also a class issue. Particularly for young women in lower socio-economic levels, the decision to work or not is often a question of affordable child care. If you look at the best companies in which to work in Canada, they're almost always companies with on-site child care and, increasingly, elder care and other forms of support for women.

Status of Women committee  There should be multiple pathways for exactly the point that you raise.

Status of Women committee  I can say that we had a program in Ontario a few years ago called “Double the Pipeline”. It created more space in the universities and colleges for engineers and technologists, but they couldn't fill the spaces. There's no question that there are ways to teach, ways to mainstream technology, so that all students are exposed to technology and all students are taught math and science in ways that make sense to them.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for the question. I think there's a great deal that the government can do from an educational point of view in terms of supporting innovative programs. The thing that would have the most profound and immediate effect would be for the government to use its influence, its procurement and communications policies, to promote this.

Status of Women committee  It wasn't translated so it's not in my report, but a number of studies have shown that different variables play a role. There are individual variables. There's your character. Maybe you play with Meccano sets or maybe you play with Barbie dolls. It depends on the environment you grow up in.

Status of Women committee  Exactly. The broader cultural context has a huge impact. Gender roles have a huge impact on the aspirations of little girls from an early age. In one study of 14-year-olds--it was in the U.S., but it could have been here--little girls were asked what they would like to be: President of the United States, president of a university, head of a corporation, or personal assistant to a celebrity.