Status of Women Committee on June 12th, 2018

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Are there some women who are just not cut out for it, who are inappropriate and shouldn't bother running?

[Prof. Melanee Thomas]

I think there are some people in general who do not aspire to have a political career. We find in our estimates that levels of ambition for a political career are actually really low. We see ambition for public office as a really low event.

In our most recent sample, 5% of men indicate some kind of ambition for political office, and 1% of women. There is still a gender gap there, but if you have a district that has 60,000 electors, let's say, then 30,000 of them will be women, and 1% equals 300, so in that community alone you would have more than what you would need for an entire party to run a gender-balanced slate.

I would also say that under section 3 of the charter, every Canadian has the right to vote and every Canadian has the right to seek public office. It's constitutionally entrenched, and the court isn't going to let us down on that.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Rosie and Sarah, I would ask you the same question. Should there be space for a diversity of views and beliefs in women in parliament, or should that be restricted?

[Prof. Sarah Childs]

For me it feels like a very strange question, because the answer would be that our parliaments should be representative of the countries they serve. Gender is a salient characteristic. Women are diverse, and that diversity should be present within our parliaments.

[Prof. Rosie Campbell]

Is your question about whether, if you have quotas, it's creating a restriction, or is it about—

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

No, it's quite simple. Do you believe there should be space for diversity within the parliamentary system?

[Prof. Rosie Campbell]

Yes. Absolutely. Obviously, voters have to vote for candidates, but we want to create an environment where there is much more equal opportunity and where a more diverse slate of candidates is possible.

[Prof. Sarah Childs]

I think if a parliament is so skewed, one would wonder about what barriers are stopping different types of people from entering it.

In a way, for me the absence of different kinds of people from a parliament indicates or demonstrates problems of gatekeeping that keep certain kinds of people out. For me, it really questions the fundamental democratic quality of an institution if it is so overwhelmingly—as we know globally, drawing on the work of Melanie Hughes from the University of Pittsburgh—elite majority men everywhere who are overrepresented in our parliaments. I don't think we should be apologetic about calling that out.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Are there specific reasons diversity is important to protect?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

You have about 30 seconds left.

[Prof. Rosie Campbell]

We all know the research about groupthink. Unfortunately, if people's voices are not represented in a parliament, policy isn't of the same quality.

Take the example of domestic violence. In most countries it used to be considered a private matter. If you called the police out to it, they would not deal with. Then when you actually get women entering politics, suddenly it's a public policy issue. It's very similar with child care.

That can be spread across different groups. You need to have people's voices in parliament in order to deliver better policy for their communities.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

Thank you.

We will now go to Ms. Mathyssen for seven minutes.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for your input.

I wanted to start with a question about this system. The British parliamentary system is reflected here in Canada. It's adversarial. We square off on opposite sides of the House of Commons, two-and-a-half sword-lengths apart. The language we use is very aggressive and warlike. Does that dissuade women from wanting to become involved? Do you think they look at it and think this is nonsense and they don't want to be involved?

[Prof. Melanee Thomas]

One of the reasons I think adversarialism in our system is not a bad thing is that it helps clarify different positions that different actors are taking. You have to take a stand on important issues, and that's what this structure helps to facilitate.

I can understand that many people, not just women, look at some of the more adversarial moments and are a little put off by that. Research by Tali Mendelberg of the University of Pittsburgh and also by Chris Karpowitz of Brigham Young University looks at gender balance on political decision-making groups and decision rules. It shows that under majoritarian rules like ours, as soon as you get into a majoritarian context, you get adversarial positions, and in those contexts, increasing the number of women matters a lot in terms of how often women speak, the kinds of policy positions that come forward, how often women are perceived as leaders. The conclusion the research draws from very innovative work is that you need a lot of women in decision-making groups, but you need majoritarian rules.

The really disheartening thing for me is when they increase the number of women in consensus-making groups, it just doesn't do anything to change interruptions, speaking times, all these other sorts of things.

In that sense, sure, some people are turned off by adversarialism, but we're not changing that out of our system, and there are things we can do with it that will be good for women in that context too.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you very much.

Professor Campbell, in your research on the representative audit of the British Parliament, I wonder if you found if voters are influenced by the gender of the candidate.

[Prof. Rosie Campbell]

There's very little research that voters are influenced by the gender of the candidate, not in my research in the U.K. We did find one example in the 2010 election showing that women who were more feminist were more likely to vote for women. There were similar findings in the United States in 1992, which famously became the year of the woman election with the Clarence Thomas hearings, where women, particularly feminist women, voted for women candidates.

Mostly there is no effect. There isn't a punishment effect, but neither is there a positive effect. Most voters will vote according to the party rather than the sex of the candidate.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I wondered if you noticed anything in media treatment of female candidates.

[Prof. Rosie Campbell]

The media treatment of female candidates is not my expert area, but if you look at the media treatment of women leaders in particular, I can think of some current examples. Our current Prime Minister and Julia Gillard are constantly described by the media as being wooden and not clubbable. Others might be able to jump in there.

[Prof. Melanee Thomas]

For six premiers, three women and three men, we wanted to see if there was a variation in the number of stories that were written about them and the kinds of policy that was forward in those stories, and then the tone. One of the things we found was that women had fewer stories published about them. For me, the most striking thing was that in the first year of her premiership in 2015, Rachel Notley in Alberta received fewer stories per day than Jim Prentice did in the nine months he was premier prior to the 2015 election. We have some evidence to suggest that women as heads of government don't get as much coverage as men do. Encouragingly, we find that the policy areas they receive coverage on are not overly feminized. They are on the issues their governments prioritize.

We have some evidence to suggest that when the media do talk about women's appearance, they are quite condemning. The tone is really negative. That's only in about 3% of coverage. We also found that men's appearance was discussed in about 3% of stories as well, but that was neutral.

I think the news has come a long way in Canada. It's more things like social media and the Internet that become a problem.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

Professor Childs, you also wrote a report. Since the publication of that report, I wonder which if any of the recommendations have been implemented. If they were implemented, what results did you see?

[Prof. Sarah Childs]

Yes, there have been a number of the recommendations implemented, starting from the institution itself recognizing the report through one of the governing bodies, which really plays into the idea that Parliament, as an institution, has a responsibility to reflect and put into place interventions to increase diversity.

The Women and Equalities Committee, which was a recommendation, has been made permanent, so that's happened too.

There is currently consideration of adopting maternity and paternity leave—baby leave—and that has been approved in principle by the House. A procedure committee has devised a scheme, and that will need to come back before the House to be implemented.

There have been changes to the identity process, because there were concerns that certain kinds of members were often questioned about where they were on the parliamentary estate.

There have been efforts to better collect data for the diversity of committee witnesses. Often when we talk about changing Parliament, we're talking about the political side, but if we want our parliaments to be representative of the people and to bring in different kinds of views, clearly we also need to make sure the people Parliament speak to as they undertake inquiries are also diverse. There are new efforts to try to increase the diversity of witnesses who come before parliamentary committees.

We famously—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

That's your time; I'm sorry.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you so much.

[Prof. Sarah Childs]

I could provide details, if you would like on those.