Dr. Jennifer Brennan:

I will make just a brief comment. We need to take this back to primary school level as well. We touched on that in our more comprehensive written submission in March. Certain things happen in primary school that discourage women in particular from looking at STEM areas. For example, there is a well-known disparity that can occur in children around spatial ability and ability to see things in space, which can be corrected quite easily. There are some nice educational programmes developed by researchers from within our own higher education sector on this. We should probably see those kinds of things happening in primary school and correct them before they become a problem.

Professor Scott is quite correct that at secondary school level there is an issue with access to certain subjects that would put people on a particular career path. I also think we could do a little bit more ourselves in the higher education system around outreach towards men in the kind of careers they do not tend to go for, such as in the caring professions. We have a lot of support from people like those in the Discover Programme in Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, to get women into STEM but we do not necessarily see the same kind of support. I do not know where that would come from to target and have activities that would be designed to encourage men to look at other or more female-dominated professions.