Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that anybody who has known me prior to this role in my life is not going to be surprised at the topic of my Member's statement today. On December 22, 2015, the United Nations passed a resolution to declare February 11th the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. As an engineer, I have worked tirelessly over the last decade to promote and advocate for women in STEM, so I just wanted to share with the Members and the Assembly some statistics around women in STEM in Canada.
In 2016, women made up 34 percent of STEM, which is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, bachelor's degree holders, and 23 percent of science and technology workers among Canadians aged 25 to 64. In my specific professional area of engineering, women only account for 12 percent of professional engineers.
Most women who departed from STEM did so early in their studies. By the start of their second year, 17 percent of women in STEM had either switched to non-science-based programs or left undergraduate degrees altogether. Between then and the start of the third year, another 10 percent left.
Among Canadian-educated workers aged 25 to 34, 54 percent of women with a bachelor's degree in computer and information sciences worked in science and technology occupations, compared with 74 percent of men.
Despite extensive research and a high degree of policy concern, Canada's progress on improving women's representation in STEM is very uneven. In 2016, women's representation among Canadian-educated STEM bachelor's degree holders was 36 percent for 30-year-olds, similar to 37 percent for 40-year-olds, and then both figures were much higher than with women's share of 22 percent for 65-year-olds.
Women, though, one stat that is in our favour is that we graduated faster than the men did from STEM programs, regardless of the field of study. For example, 27 percent of women and 16 percent of men who started out in computer and information sciences completed a STEM degree within four years. I just wanted to take the opportunity to mark the day as it is something that I feel very passionately about. Again, as we have all been hearing a lot throughout this session and the first one, I am very proud to be part of such a radically changed Assembly and showing a new face of governance in Canada. Thank you very much.