Well, we had quite the discussion in our tutorial today! The topic was, "Should Parliament mirror Canada's social diversity?" Somehow (I am probably to blame) the conversation narrowed to a rather heated (again, my bad) debate about whether or not institutional changes are necessary and/or desirable to increase the number of women represented in Parliament.
Of course, I realize my views are no secret, but I would like to clarify, elaborate, and substantiate my position. First, I am not the raging feminist that I know I sound to be. I do, however, know that women are without adequate political representation in this country, and I do not believe any "organic" or "evolutionary" process will change this. I would also like to be clear that my argument is not really that women should make up half of all members of parliament. If that were to happen democratically, so be it, but I do not argue for half of the seats in Parliament to be set aside for women. Instead, I argue for a more equitable candidate nomination process and a change to the electoral system to facilitate this.
Basically, the reality is this: women cannot be elected to Parliament if they are not given the opportunity to campaign. In this way, political parties function as the 'gatekeepers' to government office. There is clear evidence to support the positive correlation between the percentage of women nominated for candidacy and the resulting number of women elected to the House of Commons. So, it seems that getting the political parties to nominate more women candidates is a necessary step to increasing the number of women overall in Parliament.
This is why I argue for electoral reform. While there are many problems inherent in the single member plurality (SMP) electoral system, one is that it minimizes the number of female candidates put in the running for election. The reason is, because the party has to choose a single candidate to nominate for a riding, they most often will choose a male candidate because, they believe, he will have the widest appeal. Also, the SMP system allows local constituency associations to determine for themselves which representatives to run, so even if a party, at its core, decides to be more open to female candidates, decentralization makes enforcing this nearly impossible.
So, I believe that a combination of quotas and electoral reform would be the best remedy to this problem. With a proportional representational (PR) system, the party creates a list of candidates for a multi-member riding, electors vote for the party, the party wins a number of seats proportional to the number of votes they received, and then appoints candidates to those seats from their list. Quotas could be introduced at this stage to ensure that half of all candidates on a party's list are women. I believe the PR system to be superior to the SMP system for many reasons, but one is that it usually results in a more diverse political body, more reflective of the varied interests of society (including minorities of all descriptions). Countries which boast the greatest representation of women in national parliaments use List-PR systems.
This is definitely a complicated issue and I do not pretend for a moment that this is the only thing that needs to be done to increase women's participation in the political process, but I think that this would be an effective start.
I hope to hear from some of you. . .
(P.S. I've posted some links which you might find informative if you are interested in exploring this topic more.)
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3 comments:
I agree that more women in politics and specifically the House of Commons would be a great thing. However I don't think that imposing quotas or even electoral reform is the answer.
You said yourself there is a direct link between women running for parliament and those in parliament so isn't it a nomination problem. This has nothing to do with the actual election it is all about the party and who they nominate. Women and minorities should be encouraged to run and given incentives to do so but imposing quotas is not the way.
Making mandatory representation quotas in parliament seems a touch undemocratic.
Thanks for your response Ben. . . you're right, a large part of the problem is in women not being nominated for candidacy. But I think I explained in my post how electoral reform, and quotas imposed at the party-list nomination stage would increase the number of women in parliament. Political parties are reluctant to put forth a female candidate when they are limited to one candidate, because they tend to think that a male candidate will have wider appeal and is more likely to get the elected. They want the seat for that riding, so they nominate the male candidate. This is why I am in favour of proportional representation. Even if quotas aren't imposed, parties are more likely to nominate more women when they are able to nominate more than one candidate per electoral district. If a quota is enforced beyond that, parties have no choice but to put female candidates on their party-list.
Do you have another suggestion as to how we could get parties to nominate more female candidates? I'd love to hear other ideas.
And again, to clarify, I am not advocating quotas in parliament, I am arguing for quotas at the candidate nomination stage of the electoral process. I agree that having quotas in parliament is undemocratic. I do not, however, see much harm in including more women candidates on party lists (provided we have party lists).
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