While other parties are more open to setting goals to encourage diversity, quota wariness is not unique to the Conservative Party. When you're the number you're put at the table… and therefore your voice is not heard.” “When you earn your place at the table, you're respected and your views are respected. Kellie Leitch, the current minister on the status of women, takes the Conservative Party position that quotas are not the answer. Some variations include going as far as sanctioning a party in the event that it does not diversify its candidate list to a predetermined mark, as is the case in France.

“In many old democracies you have a resistance to any kind of special treatment or a quota system,” said Dahlerup.ĭahlerup has also observed the effectiveness of gender quota systems. In the aforementioned Bolivian election, there was a proviso that women would be slotted first, thereby ensuring representation in the instance of a party with only one seat. In Sweden, for example, this is achieved through alternating the gender of each successive candidate. “When you earn your place at the table, you're respected and your views are respected.” Our research shows that is not necessarily a fact.” “We have this perception that gender equality should come naturally. “There is no doubt that in the old democracies, including Canada, there is stagnation,” said Drude Dahlerup, a political scientist from the University of Stockholm who has consulted in countries such as Tunisia and Sierra Leone on gender equality in parliament. Women comprise just 33 per cent of the candidates from the five leading parties in this election. In spite of this, a large gender gap persists after decades of relative stagnation in Canada's House of Commons. The NDP's success in Quebec during the 2011 federal election largely triggered the uptick in the number of women in Parliament, with the proportion rising to 25 per cent from 22 per cent in the 2008 election. The 41st Canadian Parliament featured 77 women MPs, with a record 12 female ministers in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cabinet.

This figure places us 50th in a recent international ranking of women in parliaments.

The following feature - which was initially published before the election - examines the gender imbalance in Canadian politics.Ĭanadian women held just one-quarter of the seats in the House of Commons when the writ dropped back in August. The increase represents a modest gain in terms of representation, with women now accounting for 26 per cent of the seats in the House. A record 88 women were elected in the 2015 federal election, up from 76 in 2011.

50 cent many men government version