Thanks.
I think we agree with that. There's a bunch of things that we can do to help women get elected, and I think we are doing a bunch of things already, but we're still not rising in the numbers.
Some of the initiatives are great to see, and I think they're very helpful, but if we're changing our electoral system, and if the government is also looking at issues under a gender parity lens, then I think we have to look at the electoral systems, and proportional representation does better. When you look at the numbers, you see Sweden at 45%, Finland at 43%, Norway at 40%, Denmark at 39%, the Netherlands at 39%, and Germany at 37%. Then you come down to Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom at 26%, 25%, and 23%.
First-past-the-post systems create barriers. If we can't identify them, then maybe we need to do more work on it, but on the results, on the correlation, Arend Lijphart has said that up to 8% more women get elected in proportional systems. It's a correlation.
We need to figure out what those things are, but I think we can be confident that PR elects more women.