Female candidates in Canadian elections

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Gender representation has been a significant issue in Canadian politics.

The first woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons was Agnes Macphail, in the 1921 election. Although female representation in politics has increased since then, and several political parties have identified increasing the number of female candidates as an organizational and political goal, no major Canadian political party to date has achieved perfect gender parity in the number of candidates nominated for election.

Political parties have occasionally achieved balanced representation in their elected caucuses, but only as a byproduct of a party collapse — for example, in the 1993 election, the Progressive Conservatives achieved gender parity in their elected caucus, but only by virtue of electing just two Members of Parliament nationwide and losing official party status. At various times, parties have also had 100 per cent female representation in their caucuses, but again only by virtue of having a caucus that consisted of just one or two members.

1 Women as federal representatives
2 Women as provincial representatives
3 Women as leaders
4 Political aspects
5 Municipal politics
6 2006 general election
7 2004 federal election
8 External links

[edit] Women as federal representatives

As noted, in the 1921 election Agnes Macphail became the first woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons. Four other women — Harriet Dick, Rose Mary Henderson, Elizabeth Bethune Kiely and Harriet Dunlop Prenter — also stood as candidates in the same election, although they were not successful.

Macphail was reelected in every subsequent election until 1940. She was the only woman in the House of Commons until 1935, when she was joined by Martha Black. In the 1940 election, Macphail was defeated and Black did not stand as a candidate, but Dorise Nielsen was elected. Cora Taylor Casselman was elected in a 1941 byelection to succeed her late husband. Nielsen and Casselman were both defeated in 1945, but Gladys Strum was elected that year. Strum, in turn, was defeated in 1949, the only election after 1921 in which no female candidates were elected to Parliament at all.

After 1949, however, every subsequent election has had at least two women elected to Parliament, except 1968 when Grace MacInnis was the only woman elected.

In 1957, Ellen Fairclough became the first woman appointed to the Cabinet of Canada.

The number of women elected to the House reached double digits for the first time in the 1979 election, when 10 women were elected.

Federally, the 1993 election holds the record for the most female candidates in a single election, with 476 women running for office that year. In terms of women elected to the House of Commons, the 2004 election holds the record, with 65 successful female candidates. In the 2006 election, one fewer woman was elected for a total of 64, but this remains the second highest total in Canadian history. [1] As well, because 11 fewer women stood as candidates in 2006 than 2004, the percentage of female candidates who were successfully elected to office was higher in 2006.

Of the major federal political parties, the New Democratic Party has nominated the most female candidates in every election since its creation, except in the 1962 election when it tied with the Progressive Conservatives. The Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada nominated more women than the New Democrats in 1979 and 1980, although they are a minor party who have never won a seat in the House of Commons. Between the 1935 and 1958 elections, the top ranking was consistently held by either the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation or the Labour Progressives.

In 1987, Sheila Copps became the first female politician in Canadian history to give birth to a child while sitting as a Member of Parliament. In 1999, Michelle Dockrill became the first Member of Parliament to bring her newborn baby into the House of Commons.

[edit] Women as provincial representatives

At the provincial level, the first woman elected to a provincial legislature was Louise McKinney, who also holds the distinction of being the first woman elected to any legislature in the British Empire. The first woman to serve as a provincial cabinet minister was Irene Parlby. Both McKinney and Parlby were members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.

In 1985, Quebec Member of the National Assembly Pauline Marois became the first woman in Canadian history to give birth to a child while serving as a cabinet minister. She was followed in 2001 by British Columbia Member of the Legislative Assembly Christy Clark. In what some commentators have characterized as an example of sexism, Clark was asked by several journalists to explain how she could properly do her job as provincial Minister of Education while simultaneously raising a newborn child.

[edit] Women as leaders

Canada has had one woman Prime Minister, Kim Campbell. She became Prime Minister before the 1993 federal election by winning the leadership of the governing Progressive Conservatives, but lost the subsequent general election. No woman has ever been elected Prime Minister of Canada in a general election. Two women, Sheila Copps and Anne McLellan, have served as Deputy Prime Minister, although this is largely a ceremonial post with very little actual power.

Several women, including Mary Walker-Sawka, Rosemary Brown and Flora MacDonald, had previously run for the leadership of federal political parties. MacDonald unwittingly lent her name to a political phenomenon known as "Flora Syndrome", when even some of her own committed delegates at the Progressive Conservative leadership convention, 1976 failed to vote for her, a loss of support which many commentators attributed to sexism. Kathryn Cholette of the Green Party was the first woman to win the leadership of a Canadian political party, and Audrey McLaughlin was the first woman to win the leadership of a party with representation in the House of Commons.

Canada's first woman premier, Rita Johnston, was a similar situation to Campbell. Johnston won the leadership of the governing Social Credit Party in 1991, becoming Premier of British Columbia, but was defeated in the subsequent general election. To date, only one woman, Catherine Callbeck in Prince Edward Island, has been elected premier of a province in a general election. Pat Duncan and Nellie Cournoyea have served as territorial premiers, Cournoyea through a consensus government system in which she was selected by her colleagues in the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories rather than by the general electorate. No other women have, to date, ever served as leaders of a Canadian provincial or territorial government.

In fact, Canadian political parties led by women have often fared particularly poorly in election campaigns. Most notably, Lyn McLeod's Ontario Liberal Party lost the 1995 provincial election despite having more than a 10 per cent lead in the polls when the election was called. McLeod was criticized for a perceived tendency toward weak leadership and flip-flopping on the issues; PC election ads depicted McLeod as a weathervane shifting in the wind.

Campbell's Progressive Conservatives and McLaughlin's New Democratic Party were decimated in 1993, both failing to reach official party status. Alexa McDonough led the New Democrats to a modest resurgence in the 1997 election, but lost seats again in the 2000 vote. Several women leaders of provincial parties, including Sharon Carstairs, Lynda Haverstock and Nancy MacBeth, proved unable to capitalize on early signs of popularity, all ultimately losing significant ground for their parties. Carole James led the British Columbia New Democratic Party to a resurgence in the 2005 election, recovering from just three seats in the legislature to 33, but has also recently faced criticism from some voters who have asserted that she isn't a strong enough leader to take the party any further.

[edit] Political aspects

Unlike the offices of state governor or President in the United States, Prime Ministers and provincial premiers in Canada are not independently elected by the general electorate. Instead, the position goes automatically to the leader of the largest party caucus in the legislature. This creates a significantly different campaign dynamic, which may unintentionally complicate the efforts of women to achieve higher office.

Political commentators have also noted that Catherine Callbeck, still to date the only woman in Canada to actually win a general election to the office of provincial premier, was also the only woman in Canada to lead her party into an election where her main opponent was also a woman (Patricia Mella), and some have raised the possibility that even Callbeck might well have lost the election if she had faced a male opponent. Some have attributed this to the belief that the voting public still consciously or unconsciously ascribes greater leadership qualities to men than to women. Sheila Copps, for example, once noted in a newspaper interview that ""if you're a woman and you're aggressive, you're a ball-buster." [2]

Commentators have also noted, however, that political parties in Canada have tended to turn to female leaders as an almost cynical ploy in times of crisis — in some cases, parties have been accused of relying on the "novelty" of a female leader as almost a substitute for creating a substantive policy platform. In this interpretation, female leaders are frequently rejected by the electorate not because of their gender itself, but because their gender alone isn't enough to compensate for the weakness of the party's overall campaign. In her autobiography Time and Chance, Kim Campbell claimed that her own campaign staff sometimes treated her more as a figurehead than as the actual leader of the party, even going so far as to keep campaign offices at Brian Mulroney's preferred room temperature even if Campbell ordered them to adjust the thermostat. [3]

[edit] Municipal politics

Women, conversely, have had much greater success in politics at the municipal level.

Hannah Gale was the first woman elected to a Canadian municipal government, as well as the first woman elected to any political office in Canada. In 1936, Barbara Hanley in Webbwood, Ontario became the first woman ever elected as a mayor in Canada; in 1951, Charlotte Whitton in Ottawa, Ontario became the first woman elected mayor of a major Canadian city.

Other notable women mayors in Canada have included June Rowlands and Barbara Hall in Toronto, True Davidson in the former Toronto suburb of East York, Frances Nunziata in York, Dianne Haskett and Anne Marie DeCicco-Best in London, Hazel McCallion in Mississauga, Marion Dewar and Jacquelin Holzman in Ottawa, Janice Rhea Reimer in Edmonton, Gretchen Brewin in Victoria, Susan Fennell in Brampton, Jamie Lim in Timmins, Elsie Wayne in Saint John, Helen Cooper in Kingston, Janice Laking in Barrie, Lorna Jackson in Vaughan, Andrée P. Boucher in Quebec City, Dorothy Corrigan in Charlottetown, Moira Leiper Ducharme in Halifax, Susan Thompson in Winnipeg, Grace Hartman in Sudbury, Lynn Peterson in Thunder Bay and Elizabeth Kishkon in Windsor.

In 1984, Daurene Lewis was elected mayor of Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, becoming the first black woman to be elected as a mayor in North America.

[edit] 2006 general election

Main article: Canadian federal election, 2006

Main article: Women in the 39th Canadian Parliament

Overall - 23% of candidates were female. 19% of Members of Parliament elected in 2006 were women.
Conservative Party - 14 women out of 124 seats, or 11.3 per cent of the party's seats
Liberal Party - 21 women out of 103 seats, or 20.4 per cent of the party's seats.
Bloc Québécois - 16 women out of 51 seats, or 31.4 per cent of the party's seats.
New Democratic Party - 12 women out of 29 seats, or 41.4 per cent of the party's seats.

Gender breakdown
Party		Leader's gender	Candidates
Party		Leader's gender	Total	Female	Male	% female
	Conservative	M	308	38	270	12.3%
	Liberal	M	308	79	229	25.6%
	Bloc Québécois	M	75	23	52	30.1%
	New Democrats	M	308	108	200	35.1%
	Green	M	308	72	236	23.4%
	Christian Heritage	M	45	8	37	17.8%
	Progressive Canadian	F	25	1	24	4.0%
	Marxist-Leninist	F	69	24	45	34.8%
	Marijuana	M	23	1	22	4.3%
	Canadian Action	F	34	8	26	23.5%
	Communist	M	21	7	14	33.3%
	Libertarian	M	10	1	9	10.0%
	First Peoples National	M	5	0	5	0.0%
	Western Block	M	4	1	3	25.0%
	Animal Alliance	F	1	1	0	100.0%
	Independent		90	8	82	8.9%
Total			1634	380	1254	23.3%
Source: Elections Canada