Dr. Arjumand Younus:

If one cannot pay the bills, one will not consider taking up unpaid labour. Much of the work to gain clinical experience is unpaid. I do not have a solution for this. It is a big problem, especially for those who have to pay for childcare. Childcare in this country is very expensive. There was a point when I was on a short-term contract as a post-doctoral researcher that all of my salary went towards childcare. I did not mind that because I was developing my career. I had the luxury of being able to do so because there was another salary coming in. Single mothers or mothers who are disadvantaged do not have that luxury, so they will never gain that clinical experience. This ties in with the core issue of childcare that Dr. Smyth raised. I have read some of her work on this issue. It is also tied in with higher education policies. The Government needs to sort out the issue of childcare in order to increase the number of female academics and incentivise people who wish to do research experience or clinical experience. It needs to provide more childcare subsidies or something like that. I do not have a proper solution but it is a very important issue to address if we want more women in the workforce.