Thank you.
First, I have a word of thanks.
Thank you for inviting me to speak today in my capacity as an academic conducting research on the subject of women in politics.
For many years, I've been encouraged by the fact that this committee has been studying this very important issue in Canadian politics.
My comments today are going to reflect my own research, which is on public opinion and women in politics. It's going to reflect my research on the question of women's political under-representation in Canada and my reading of the research of others. It's a question that political scientists have been studying for decades. We have a good understanding of what the key barriers are. What we need is for a government with a sufficiently strong commitment to women's equality to be willing to take action on the issue.
I believe that the best and most effective strategy for addressing women's political under-representation is to legislate some type of quota or target that requires parties to increase the number of women they put forward as candidates in elections. This would result in both direct and indirect effects, but the quota doesn't need to be a punitive one. Indeed, I would argue that it should be in some form of financial incentive. It doesn't need to be framed as one to increase the number of women in politics. Instead, it could be framed as one that's putting a ceiling on men's overrepresentation. Voluntary quotas, unlike legislative ones, are unlikely to have any impact since the parties that are likely to adopt them are normally already committed to gender equality.
Political parties play a key role in determining women's access to political office. They're primary gatekeepers, and their willingness to see gender equality as a priority is central to ensuring that women can overcome these barriers.
It's not a new idea. Twenty-seven years ago, Dr. Lisa Young, writing as part of the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, noted that political parties, as the primary agents of recruitment and as the gatekeepers of the political process, would have to change their recruitment and nomination practices if there was to be substantial change in the number of women in the House of Commons. This point was reinforced by Dr. Bill Cross whom you heard from earlier this summer. Twenty-seven years later, we have not seen any concrete action on this issue.
When parties commit to gender equality, the results can be impressive. As an example, during the 2015 provincial election, 53% of the Alberta NDP candidates were women. From this, 45% of its caucus was made up of women, and Rachel Notley was then able to appoint a parity cabinet, one of only a handful we've seen in Canada to this point. This occurred in Alberta, which I think many would notice is the most conservative province in the country.
It can be done where the will exists, but the reality is that it's easiest to do when the party isn't expected to take office. Increased competition often pushes women out. We need to move gender parity in all parties across the ideological spectrum and at all levels of competition to ensure that women of all stripes are represented without having to wait for unexpected wins by parties committed to gender parity. The results under these conditions are too often short-lived.
Legislated quotas are key to moving forward because misplaced beliefs about the impact of quotas serve to perpetuate men's political overrepresentation.
One of these myths is that quotas limit the degree to which merit is a factor in the selection of candidates. Research makes clear that the exact opposite is the case. Quotas actually improve the quality of candidates who get elected. This happens because parties appear to be more careful of the skills they would like to see in their political nominees, rather than relying on short-hand mechanisms for selection such as gender and occupation, which tend to exclude women, and because quotas promote more active searches for individuals who possess these skills. The positions currently filled by less competent men in the absence of quotas tend to be replaced by more competent women and men. Merit is given greater, not less, attention under a quota system.
Quotas are also key because of the belief that women's access to political office is constantly improving and will naturally reach parity. That's quite simply wrong. The pipeline argument that women's level of political representation will come to mirror men's, as their education and common occupational makeup do as well, is just not supported by the evidence. Women's political representation has improved in many arenas over time, but in others it has stagnated or regressed. It's not simply a question of being patient. We continue to see gender gaps and income or occupational segregation that mean women do not have access to the same networks as men. This means they are often overlooked when it comes to political office. Who runs often depends on who is asked to run.
Even if we decide to be patient, however, the expected date for reaching gender parity in the House of Commons is long into the future. If we apply the same rate of improvement in women's representation over the past 20 years to future years, we would need to wait until 2075 to reach gender parity. That's not in my lifetime and it's certainly not in my daughter's lifetime.
We need bold action because stereotypes continue to hold that women are less well suited to the rough-and-tumble world of politics. This perception is reinforced by media portrayals of women politicians, as the work by Professor Linda Trimble at the University of Alberta shows. My research on women party leaders with Professor David Stewart shows that women are far more likely to be chosen to lead parties when the party is less electorally competitive. Men are more likely to be seen to possess the qualities required of leaders, such as assertiveness, confidence and self-promotion. Women are less likely to be seen to possess these, and even when they are seen to possess them, they are often penalized for not acting in ways that align with gender stereotypes—“Women should be more communal than agentic.”
These stereotypes are a barrier to women's access to political office. They're also difficult to directly and quickly eliminate. The adoption of quotas to improve their representation would do just this, though indirectly. Seeing more women in office acting as strong leaders would serve to dispel the stereotype that women are more suited to supportive roles than to leadership roles and are therefore unsuited to politics. It would also reinforce the role model effect. More women in political office increases the likelihood that women will see politics as an option for them. I think it would also help women to overcome the problem of feeling that they're not competent enough to engage in politics.
I just have one small anecdote as I finish. Women tend to underplay their strengths. This is partly why we don't run. It's a demand-side problem. Just to give a sense of how this works, I have a Ph.D. in political science, and I study women in politics. When I first received the request to come and speak to you, my first response was, “What could I possibly have to say that would be of any importance to this committee?” It was the people around me who told me, “No, you have to participate.”
I'll just leave you with that.