Yes, we will share it. I will start.
My name is Nancy Peckford, and I am the executive director of Equal Voice. With me is Giovanna Mingarelli, who has joined us as a communications and membership liaison.
For those of you who don't know Equal Voice, we were founded in 2001 and we're a not-for-profit national and multi-partisan organization that advocates for more women in politics. It's self-evident why we are here today. We clearly need more women in politics, and we strive for parity, so our goal is that 50% of all legislatures in the country, from regional to federal, have 50% women and 50% men.
We gave some postcards to the clerk. I hope you have them. That postcard reveals some of the more sobering statistics about why Equal Voice exists. I don't think many of Equal Voice's founders imagined we would still need this sort of organization in order to move forward, but the reality is that representation of women across the country and in many legislatures remains very low. Federally, as you all know, it's hovering at 22%, and has been there for more or less a decade. There has been some stagnation and fluctuation back and forth, but we are in the low twenties.
Gia will say more about that in a moment, but despite the fact that we have such low numbers, Canadians in general consistently say they want more women in Parliament and in legislatures. We did an environics poll during the previous federal election in 2008. It was released last May and it overwhelmingly demonstrated that more than 85% of Canadians were supportive of increased efforts to elect women to our legislatures.
So we do not have a public opinion problem, but we do have a system problem, and that's what Equal Voice works on. I'll tell you a bit about some of our strategies, but I would like Giovanna to give you more of a sense of the numbers as we go forward.
Giovanna.