Dr. Sally Aitken

At UBC, 47 per cent of undergraduates and 55 per cent of graduates in forestry program are women.  The gender balance has recently started to tip in British Columbia’s forestry industry as more women occupy leadership positions and complete post-secondary studies in one of the province’s key sectors. Sally Aitken, associate dean of forestry at the University of British Columbia, has noticed the shift in the classroom. Forty-seven per cent of undergraduate students and more than half of graduate students in the forest program are now women, and a third of the faculty are female, she told CBC Early Edition host Rick Cluff. “We see a big change in the numbers of women receiving professional degrees that relate to forestry,” Aitken said. “We’re now at about gender balance in terms of our educational programs.”