Women’s Representation After The 2004 Federal Election
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By Gina Bishop
Efforts to increase the number of Canadian women in elected office are grinding to a halt.
There is still much debate over whether having more women elected would result in more effective representation for them as a group. There is also plenty of discussion on how to effectively measure their political impact.
Furthermore, it can be argued that there is no ideal percentage of seats for either sex as voters choose the candidate they consider best for the job. Men may vote for women and women for men.
There is, however, a compelling argument for improved gender equality among elected representatives. That women constitute more than half the population of Canada and that, at the same time, accounted for little more than two out of 10 candidates in the last federal election suggests there is much to be done to correct their electoral under-representation in Canada.
What is most disturbing is that despite initial progress, efforts to correct the imbalance are marking time.
This was one of the points raised at the “Women and Westminster Compared” conference last June, organized by the Research Centre on Women and Politics at the University of Ottawa. It looked at women’s political representation in a number Parliaments modeled on Westminster.
Dr. Lisa Young of the University of Calgary noted the lack of progress in increasing the number of women elected federally – a concern supported by the research of Dr. Linda Trimble (Athabasca University) and Dr. Jane Arscott (University of Alberta). They found that while the numbers of women candidates and office holders in Canada were on the rise in the 1980s and 1990s, they have since stalled, and in some cases, are actually dropping.
The last federal election
By way of illustration, consider last June’s federal election. The 65 women elected represent 21.1% of the 308 MPs. This is the barest increase from the total of 20.6% reached in both the 2000 and 1997 federal elections. The following table shows how many women were elected from each party and the total number of seats won by each party.
Women elected in the 2004 federal election, by political party.
Party Number of women elected Total elected
Bloc Québécois 14 54
Conservative Party 12 99
Liberal Party 34 135
NDP 5 19
Independent 0 1
Total Women elected : 65
According to Elections Canada, 1,685 candidates ran in the 2004 federal election. Of these, 1,294 were men and 391 were women. During the campaign, women accounted for 23.2% of candidates – a minimal increase over the 2000 federal election where women accounted for 20.7% of candidates.
A tight race
The last federal election was marked by a tight race between the Conservatives and Liberals. It is very important to look at the number of women candidates each put forward.
Despite measures taken by groups such as Equal Voice to encourage party leaders to nominate more female candidates, only 12% of Conservative Party candidates and 24% of Liberal Party candidates were women. Of those candidates in the Conservative Party, 27% ran in Quebec ridings, where not a single Conservative candidate – male or female – won a seat.
Had the Liberal party continued to lose support among voters, and the Conservative party gained those votes, it is reasonable to suggest that there could have been an overall decrease in the percentage of women elected to Parliament. And, had this occurred, it would have marked the first decrease in the proportion of women in Canada’s parliament since 1972.
Clearly, progress on this very fundamental issue of fairness cannot be taken for granted without the risk of losing ground.
Gina Bishop is Interim Co-Director and Research Coordinator for the Centre for Research and Information on Canada.
@ October 21, 2004