Dr. Arjumand Younus:

With regard to women, there have been some steps recently which I appreciate. I mentioned the female university presidents, of whom we now have four. However, we were the last country in the EU to do that, which is a disappointment.

With regard to funding, the Minister, Deputy Harris, last year announced a call in regard to developing these funded investigators in universities, with four-year funding for them to hire a PhD or post-doctoral researcher. It said that female academics are encouraged. However, is just adding that addendum or adding that line at the end of funding calls enough or do we need female-only funding? I know that would be somewhat controversial to do because it is not about gender, it is about merit. However, we cannot just discredit all of those women academics who are leaving academic spaces. It is a huge brain drain for the workforce and we will never know the quality of those female academics if we do not support them fully. Let us face it. We will have to support our women workforce more because childcare and everything else is their responsibility. That is why I am emphasising a holistic model rather than just a few patches.