Dr. Katriona O'Sullivan:

I thank the Chair. I really appreciate the Senator's comments on the mentorship piece. Mentorship can be used in so many different ways. When I talk to women in industry, it is about someone to get you up the ladder. When I talk about mentorship, it is literally about having a relationship with another person that could possibly transfer information about where they could go. We definitely need more of that across the system. We need more of it from higher education, to secondary, to primary and more opportunities for girls to see people like themselves, to talk to them and to understand. That costs money. It is not like you can build a programme and just deliver it. It requires a massive commitment to trying to change the face of it. My belief is the only thing that really moves a woman or girl from the place of thinking she is something to something else is being able to have the human capital or the skills to do the thing; the cultural capital, which is to understand the environment, and finally the social capital, which is a relationship with another person where the woman or girl says that person did it and so could I. If we consider everything from that point of view, we can definitely change things for young women.

It is like research. When you are a girl you think it is a man in a white coat and it is quite nerdy. I remember a girl from a DEIS school coming to me and saying Kim Kardashian is really a researcher. I said no, but she is something. She is a businesswoman. These girls were actually looking to who they relate to and asking who is like me and who likes what I like who I can relate to. I was not necessarily advocating her as the role model but I said it is really important we see people who are a bit like us or that we can relate to, too. I do not know whether that answers any of the Senator's question but relationships are key to everything. That is it.