Thank you so much for having us today.
My name is Victoria deJong, and I am the delegate for Edmonton Griesbach. For the next few minutes, I'll be talking about women's political participation and the way parties need to step up to run women.
As I'm sure we all know, women are less likely than similarly educated men to consider themselves qualified to run for office. Women have to be asked an average of five or more times before they run for office, while men will often come up with the idea on their own. Women in general will consider the idea of running significantly less often than men, for reasons that go beyond the scope of this three-minute presentation. These are all facts that we know to be true, based on research that organizations such as Equal Voice have compiled. These facts are not up for debate.
I see two steps that need to be taken to improve women's direct participation in politics, the first being that more specialized research needs to be done to identify the reasons that diverse groups of women differ in their participation. While only 26% of members of the House of Commons are women, these women are more often than not a fairly homogenous group. If we look around the table at the status of women committee, we don't see very much diversity in the women who are here today.
Although we have evidence of the barriers that exist, more research needs to be done to concretely identify the barriers that stop indigenous women, other women of colour, LGBTQ women, disabled women, and other marginalized groups from running for office and engaging politically.
Another group that is often overlooked is girls, as Melinda just talked about. The study of children and their conceptions of leadership and self-confidence is largely under-researched, as well as the way that these conceptions shift from childhood to teenagehood to adulthood.
The second step that I want to focus on and believe to be one of the most important, because it involves direct action, is this. We know, based on research, that the issue of under-representation of women in the political sphere does not lie with voters. An approximately similar percentage of women and men who are nominated will win seats in federal elections, so the issue lies not with voters but with the parties that run candidates.
I'd like therefore to speak to the members of this committee not as a committee of the whole but as members of your parties. You all have the responsibility to make sure that nominating women and nominating diverse women are a priority for each of your parties.
Party members have a duty to identify the women in communities across the country who do incredible and important work in their communities. Parties must lower the barriers to running by providing information and assistance to women who consider running and lowering the financial burden on women who run for office—and all people who run for office. Your parties must make it a priority to recruit diverse groups of women, because as the Daughters of the Vote initiative shows, Canada has no shortage of incredible, talented women who are willing and able to take their seats.
Thank you.