Women remain a distinct minority in House: Nancy Peckford

2016/02/09 Leave a comment

Nancy Peckford of Equal Voice on the challenges of gender parity, particularly with respect to committee chairs (we will have the full analysis of committee leadership diversity once all have chairs and vice-chairs have been selected the week of February 15 – currently only half have done so but enough to demonstrate the trend highlighted below):

This said, the excitement about a gender-balanced federal Cabinet has worn off some as we come to terms with the fact that women remain a distinct minority in the House. Many have expressed their dismay at the fact that there are so few women on the 28 House and joint House/Senate committees in Parliament. Some have questioned the government’s commitment to leveraging the talents of the women.

Clearly, few have done the math. While it may seems egregious, the reality is that with women comprising just 26 per cent of the House of Commons, parity on committees is nearly impossible. There are only 88 women in the House (versus 250 men). 50 of those belong to the Liberal caucus—more than half of whom are serving as Cabinet ministers or parliamentary secretaries, thereby precluding their capacity to sit on committees. The remaining Liberal women MPs are fewer than the current number of committees established. The opposition caucuses have, among them, just 38 women MPs and a limited number of seats on each committee. Ensuring there are more women serving as committee members can only happen if there are far more women elected to the House. It’s an obvious point but one that seems lost on many commentators.

This is why Equal Voice is so keen to encourage and equip thousands of more women to seek election—at all levels of government. And it’s precisely why we are preparing to do this work soon. It may seem premature, but the reality is that we will need hundreds of more women across parties to position, to seek, and secure federal nominations in the coming years if we are to achieve anything close to parity in the House of Commons, not just Cabinet. Only the NDP broke 40 per cent female candidates in the past election. As we celebrate an historic 100 years since (some) women in Canada attained the right to vote, achieving equal numbers of women and men on the ballot within the decade should be the ultimate goal.

Source: Women remain a distinct minority in House | hilltimes.com

Filed under Government Tagged with , , , ,

Nancy Peckford and Grace Lore: When it comes to gender parity in Parliament, better is always possible

2015/10/22 Leave a comment

More from Equal Voice on women representation in Parliament:

But there is one change that we at Equal Voice hoped for that did not happen. The percentage of women elected to the House of Commons did not meaningfully increase. It is just one point higher than the last time, at 26 per cent. How could this be? Many remarkable women were elected. Eighty-eight in fact. Fifty of them Liberal women. Further, the Conservative party, which fielded the lowest percentage of women, lost. Resoundingly. And yet, still the percentage of women barely increased.

In short, we can’t elect more women unless far more of them are on the ballot. More women won’t win unless many more women run. While overall in this election, there was a small uptick in the percentage of female candidates for the major five parties (33 per cent), it wasn’t enough. The significant variability among parties produced, in the end, a House of Commons whose gender balance is no different. While the NDP has a much smaller caucus of over 44 MPs, 18 are women (41 percent). The Conservatives, now with 99 MPs, elected 17 per cent women, the same as when they were in government. The Greens, despite hopeful projections, elected only the party’s leader Elizabeth May. The Bloc Québécois elected two women out of 10.

The women-held NDP seats that were lost in Quebec went to largely male contenders from the other parties. In Ontario, while Liberal women won far more seats, 28, it wasn’t enough to make up the difference. In Alberta and B.C., while the raw numbers stayed the same even with the addition of new seats, proportionally, women won fewer of them than they did last time. Other than Ontario, only in the Atlantic and Saskatchewan did we see an increase in the proportion of women elected.

Election after election, the uneven addition of women candidates to party slates has meant very small incremental gains when it comes to women in the House. And while the dramatic turnover in party fortunes means the addition of some incredibly talented newly elected women, in addition to the return of some high performers from all sides, the pace of change is incredibly slow. Given this rate of change over the last five elections, it will take 89 years before we reach parity.

We know we can and must do better than this. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Canada’s ranking has changed from 50 to 48 among 190 countries when comparing elected women in national Parliaments. Equal Voice has a plan to change this. Our multi-partisan national board has committed to encouraging and equipping up to 5,000 women to run over the next five years. This way, political parties won’t have to do all of the heavy lifting. We will recruit and help prepare hundreds, if not thousands, of prospective women candidates. So that more women will self identify as candidates, say yes when approached to run or, even better, not wait to be asked.

We know the next prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who understands the merit of a cabinet that is 50 per cent women, wants to make his own mark on the just society to which he believed so many Canadians wished to return. We can imagine no better goal than ensuring gender parity in the House during his lifetime. In his words, better is always possible.

Source: Nancy Peckford and Grace Lore: When it comes to gender parity in Parliament, better is always possible | Ottawa Citizen

Filed under Government Tagged with , , , ,

Myth-busting ridings: Shedding light on visible minority women in federal politics

2015/10/05 Leave a comment

Worth noting (apart from my book being quoted!):

A new myth-busting study by Equal Voice, a national, multi-partisan organization dedicated to electing more women to all levels of political office in Canada, provides a fresh way of looking at female representation on the federal stage. In analyzing Canada’s 33 most ethnically diverse ridings, they found that, contrary to stereotypes that visible minority communities are less open to women leaders, representation of female visible minority candidates is far higher than that of the non-visible minority candidate pool. Part of the reason? Political parties cultivate visible minority women in these communities in a way we don’t see them do with so-called “old stock” Canadians, to employ the risible term used by Stephen Harper in a recent leaders’ debate.

The Equal Voice study was undertaken to determine candidate diversity in diverse ridings, says its executive director Nancy Peckford. Researcher Grace Lore, a Ph.D. political science student at the University of British Columbia, crunched data on 33 ridings where more than 50 per cent of the population is visible minority as identified by Andrew Griffith in Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote —23 ridings in Ontario, eight in B.C., one in Quebec and one in Alberta. Forty per cent of visible minority candidates were women; among candidates of the non-visible minority pool, women comprised just 21 per cent. These aren’t lame-duck contenders, says Lore: “Many of the visible minority women in those 33 ridings are absolutely in winnable ridings.”

Parties are strategic in these ridings, says Peckford, many of which are battlegrounds in the current federal campaign: “Parties inherently understand that to be competitive they need to reflect the community back to them,” she says. “I think there is a lot of diligence to ensure they’re choosing candidates who have fairly comprehensive reach.” The effort seems to be encouraging women to come forward, she says: “It’s auspicious. We need more of it.”

Asked why less diverse ridings don’t field women, Peckford is quick to answer: “I don’t think they have to try as hard,” she says.

The study’s finding is consistent with research documenting that female visible minority MPs are better represented in Parliament than in the general population. A 2008 study, “Ethnoracial minorities in the 38th Parliament: Patterns of change and continuity,” by Jerome Black reveals that representation of minority women doubled between 1993 and 2004, from just 4 per cent to 8 per cent (though, as Lore points out: “that’s hardly a level to cheer about”). By 2004, minority women comprised 40 per cent of minority MPs. “Given that, in 2004, women overall comprised just 21 per cent of all MPs, that’s pretty incredible,” Lore says. Minority women have done better than minority men, she points out: “So the way we can phrase this is when we do more to get more women, we end up with more diverse candidates overall.”

 Source: Myth-busting ridings: Shedding light on women in federal politics – Macleans.ca

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,