Strategies for equal representation of women

Perhaps he meant Iceland? Anyway, there is really a lot of interesting information in the [url=http://www.quotaproject.org/]Global Database of Quotas for Women.[/url] (particularly under "Papers and Conferences")

Hamas elected 6.

I was suprised.

It has been suggested that women are socialized differently than men, and consequently, are at a disadvantage in competing in the political arena. To do politics I believe a combative, somewhat aggressive mindset is needed. Women are socialized to be cooperative and conciliatory, traits that don't necessarily predispose them to surviving in politics.

Any imposition of a quota system will be ridiculed by opponents of change.

Another example of apparently absolute democratic principles being adjustable or prioritized against other principles based on context.

Right. The fuzziness.

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Originally posted by white rabbit:
[b]Any imposition of a quota system will be ridiculed by opponents of change.[/b]

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I don't think that quotas should be attempted on a national basis, imposed by law, as they did in France. It should be a decision made internally by individual parties, which has been the most successful method, and the most democratic.

More often than not the move was pushed by a critical mass of women within the party demanding such a move -- which is, itself, an expression of democracy.

Newer parties also tend to have less problems with questions of gender representation. A good example here would be the Australian Democrats, which was founded around the mid-1970s. Not having to deal with an already entrenched cadre of men at the top levels of the party, women were able to take a good number of leadership positions right from the start.

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Originally posted by Cueball:
[b]Another example of apparently absolute democratic principles being adjustable or prioritized against other principles based on context.[/b]

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Hardly. Unless you want to boil down 'democracy' to the most base level possible.

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
[b]Does a quota system imply that a party must field a certain proportion of female candidates, or that the electorate must elect them?[/b]

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Field.

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Originally posted by Cueball:
[b]

How they are interpreted in the popular understanding is as relevant as the principle upon which they are being defended. In other words how the cartoons relate t the principle, not the principle itself, which is context maleable.[/b]

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Not to hijack the thread, because I like this topic, but the absolutism is a rather Randian interpretation isn't it? Removing the existing external and historical realities from the discussion of the principle, as if it were an objective truth that nothing can impose upon.

First, on the question of freedom of speech, I'm not sure where I stand. I think freedom of speech should necessarily take a backseat to basic decency and respect towards the other groups living within the society. To use an easy example, I doubt there's a newspaper in the country that would reprint the Protocols of the Elders of Zion just because they can, because we know it to be nothing more than a bogus tract intended to incite hate and enforce a blatantly false stereotype. Almost equivalent to printing false news. The cartoons -- some of them, anyway -- fall into much the same category.

My immediate reaction to printing them is less, "This is a terrible thing to do", and more "Why would you even want to?" Defending the right to print them is one thing, but defending the actual printing of them is another thing entirely.

I [i]can[/i] stick my tongue into an electric socket, but you'd be right to question my sanity if I [i]did[/i] it. Similarly, a newspaper that came out and said, "We assert our right to print the cartoons" is far and away different from one that actually does it just to prove a point.

But anyway, back to representation of women...

I think that the most important question is whether the voices that exist in society are being expressed in our government. If they are not, then there is a problem somewhere that needs to be addressed. I don't think there's a more chronically under-voiced group than women, at the level of our legislature anyway. When a group that makes up half the population receives a significantly smaller proportion of the seats -- or even the nominations for those seats -- then it is clear we are missing something somewhere.

Again, defending the democratic principles is fine and well, but applying it absolutely in the face of obvious inequality is just irresponsible.

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
[b]To be fair, women make up a little over half of the population, and there are no legal obstacles to women being party members, nominating, running for office, or voting for the candidate of their choice.

So then what barrier do you see preventing women from being elected as representatives (if that's what the electorate — mostly women — wants)?

Is it necessary to impose a quota in the interest of parity if there's no material barrier to that parity and if parity could be acheived without it?[/b]

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There are practical and material barriers - these include fund-raising, and support and mentoring from senior party members. Why are you pretending there's no real problem because there's no legal problem?

Absolutely, I am having simply illustrating a more general point by recasting it within this discussion. And carrying on my general dispute with Skdadl, here.

My only real problem with instituting a quota system at the party level, is not so much the idea, which seems fine as a kind of proactive adjustment, but with the idea of entrenching it within the party aparatus itself. This seems to further reinforce the positions of parties as a an unaccountable power construct themselves.

[ 15 February 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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these include fund-raising, and support and mentoring from senior party members. Why are you pretending there's no real problem because there's no legal problem?

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Because neither of these is insurmountable if women really want to see more female representation, either in their party as candidates or in the House as MPs or MPPs.

In other words, if you, a woman, wants to have a woman represent you in the House, you can vote for a woman even if she wasn't heavily funded or didn't get a lot of mentoring. I'm not saying that a lack of funding or a lack of mentors isn't a detriment, but it's not truly a barrier. Men with limited funding and limited mentoring get elected anyway sometimes, no?

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So if the pressure comes from inside from a sizeable number of people asking for it, then it could hardly be called undemocratic, could it?

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Not if "sizeable" means 50%+1.

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I don't quite get what you mean about 'material benefit'.

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Barrier. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]

Just in passing, I worked out sometime about a year ago that Norway's roughly 38% representation rate was extremely unlikely to arise by chance, if the proportion of parliament members was taken to be a random sample of the country's population.

The same holds true for Sweden's 45.3%. Z=-2.15, P=0.03 or so, so 97% of the time a random selection of Swedes would net you a more even distribution between the sexes. No, I didn't bother to correct for the sex ratio of parliament-aged people only, but then there'd be even less boys in the pool of candidates!

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Originally posted by NWOntarian:
[b]The countries that have been most successful -- either reaching 50% or somewhere statistically equivalent -- have also adopted some system of proportional representation, generally MMP.

Quotas and MMP work very efficiently together for a few reasons.

1) Once one party in a competitive electoral system adopts a quota system, other parties quickly move to copy them out of fear that votes will be siphoned off.

2) Being able to nominate two or more means that the party will be far more likely to run women along with men.

3) Party lists allow parties to do things to ensure closer representation, such as alternating males and females.[/b]

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Quite right, and Doris Anderson made the same points yesterday. The CBC Politics programme had an item on the 25th anniversary of the successful battle to get equality rights and women's rights in the Charter. Susan Bonner interviewed the leader of that fight, Doris Anderson (then chair of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, who resigned in protest against the omission and the cancellation of a government conference on the issue). During the interview, Doris worked in the following classic succinct statement. She was asked about the status of women in Canada today, and said:

"We're terribly behind in representation in our House of Commons and our provincial legislatures."

Bonner: " . . . what do you say to people who say, look, the provisions are there, we've made ways for women to choose to come into these worlds, it's women's choices that keep them out of these worlds?"

Doris: "I think that's bunk. Our problem is, we have an electoral system called the First Past The Post system, and women are disadvantaged greatly by that system. We need to change. It's far beyond the time when we need to change to some form of proportional representation."

Bonner: "With a guaranteed number of seats for women?"

Doris "No, I don't approve of that. Under proportional representation women automatically do better. In country after country, New Zealand, Scotland, Wales, they almost doubled the number of women when they changed from First Past The Post to proportional representation. There's only three countries left with our antiquated system, and that's England, Canada and the United States, and we all rank abysmally.

"(Women) get reamed out in the nomination process. They don't have the deep pockets that men have. The riding organizations like safe candidates, and the safe candidate is usually a young professional man with two-and-a-half children. That's ideal . . ."

Bonner: "So if you changed to a proportional representation system, how does that fix those kind of problems. Is it just a matter of numbers?"

Doris: "It's a much fairer system. It not only would help women, it's a fairer system. In our system, there were six million votes just lost. If you voted for somebody that didn't get in, your vote isn't even counted. Under proportional representation all votes are counted. And you would vote just the way we do now for a candidate, and then there would be a block of seats that would be topped up and assigned to the parties according to the total vote they get. So those seats are filled from lists the party puts up. Now a party isn't going to put up a list that's all male, or all males at the top and the women at the bottom. That's another thing that happens to women, we're always running in seats that can't be won. So it works."

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Originally posted by Rici Lake:
[b]In an open-list system, that's less clear. One might think that closed-list is more favorable to electing women, but there are a lot of other variables (not least of which is the degree of sexism in the country).[/b]

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I agree. When Sweden recently changed to an open-list model, it finally helped women slightly. It was introduced for the first time in 1998. In this election 12 MPs, 5 women and 7 men, were elected who would not have been elected if not for the PV system. In the Riksdag, this reform meant that one more woman was elected than with the previous electoral system. The PV system has thus, to the contrary of expectations, been positive for women. In the 1998 election women's representation increased from 40 to 43 percent. In the 2002 election 10 MPs, 6 women and 4 men, were elected because of the PV system. 2 women were elected who otherwise would not have made it being too far down on the party list.

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Originally posted by skdadl:
[b]The Welsh national assembly doesn't show up separately on those lists (that I could see), since Wales is not fully independent, but I think they are at roughly 50 per cent as well.[/b]

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They are. But it wasn't by quota. Nor, I hate to say, mainly because of the 33% of members from party lists, although they helped. It was mainly because Labour used "twinning" at first for the single seats: nomination meetings for pairs of ridings, nominating one man and one woman in each pair. A technique which the NDP doesn't seem to need, federally, but oddly, the Ontario NDP has never amended its constitution to even permit this, let alone require it: only members residing in the riding can vote at a nomination meeting.

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Originally posted by NWOntarian:
[b]that's the system that France currently uses for it's regional elections -- mandated by law. Fixed lists are much more successful. In Bavaria they used a system where the voter could choose the ranking of the people on the list -- about 1/3 of women managed to improve their ranking that way, but half got demoted. Places that use STV returned some interesting results. In Ireland, for example, when they introduced it women tended to vote for the women in their party of choice, and moved their second choice votes to women in other parties. Still, none of the places using STV did any better than places using first-past-the-post. Ireland lagged behind Canada in terms of representation. Malta was abysmal with it, with the number actually dropping -- from 2 women to only 1.[/b]

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Yes, France's Parity Law works very well, where they have lists. Belgium just adopted a similar method. Doris thinks we won't need one. Belgian women should have been helped "automatically" by the same logic of the lists. Yet they were stuck at 13% or so until they went to quotas, at first one of the first three names, now one of the top two.

As for women preferring women under STV, it happens more in Northern Ireland than in the Republic, but damn seldom in either place. I believe they will do so more in BC under BC-STV, but that may be unfounded optimism on my part, and it's not shared by Doris.

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Originally posted by Rici Lake:
[b]Perъ has an open-list system . . .

The quota was first applied for the 2000 national elections (it had previously been applied to municipal elections), and the number of elected women doubled from 10.8% to 21.6%. After that election, the quota was increased from 25% to 30% and the electoral system was changed from a single national list to departmental lists (provincial/territorial in Canadian terms). in the following election, the percentage of elected women dropped to 18.3%, even though the "effective quota" was now about 36%.

The effective quota was higher because to comply with the 30% rule, a small list must have more women. For example, a list of five candidates can only be 2 women/3 men or 3 women/2 men, making the effective quota 40%.

However, the PR system makes it likely that many parties will only elect one representative in a particular department, and that person is more likely to be male. So the quota was reasonably effective in Lima, which has almost a third of the country's 120 congresspeople, but not very effective in the remaining 24 departments, each of which is fairly small.

On the other hand, women did better than in some other open-list systems in South America, which may be the result of the fact that Peruvian electors can vote for two candidates. The popular slogan "Make one of your votes count for a woman" seems to have had some effect. For example, in Brazil, which also has a 30% quota but a single optional preferential vote, women make up less than 9% of the lower house.[/b]

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You're wonderfully well-informed. If you're not already a member, please join [url=http://www.fairvotecanada.org/fvc/Home/]Fair Vote Canada[/url] and [url=http://www.equalvoice.ca/index.htm]Equal Voice[/url], and PM me if you have the interest in helping to design [url=http://www.wilfreddaylawoffice.com/ontmmpmodel139.pdf]an MMP model for Ontario[/url]

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Originally posted by skdadl:
[b]Rwanda did it by quota, which I am more and more coming to think is the solution.[/b]

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Well, Rwanda is a very special case. It's not even a quota for elected MPs: their women MPs are appointed by regional women's committees. Part of their plan for reconciliation after their huge problems.

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Originally posted by NWOntarian:
[b]Contagion.[/b]

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I know that's the normal political science term, but wouldn't it be better to use a term that doesn't suggest women are a disease? Something like "the power of example?"

[ 15 February 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

Equal Voice has launched an online tool for women interested in trying politics called [url=http://gettingtothegate.com/]Getting to the Gate[/url].

Wilf, thanks for letting us know about the show today at 11 am.

[url=http://www.equalvoice.ca/uploads/275_462683365b8da.pdf]Equal Voice announces a historic commitment of all political parties in electing more women to the House of Commons.[/url]

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“We stand to support the efforts to promote the increased participation of women in elected office,” Minister Bev Oda said in the House of Commons. “We must work together through non-partisan measures to ensure that women have an equal opportunity when it comes to serving in public life.”

“The fight for equality starts at the heart of our democratic institutions,” said Stйphane Dion, leader of the Liberal Party. “We need more women in Parliament and in government to ensure that the voices of all Canadians are heard.”

“The low participation rate of women in politics is a blemish on democracy in Canada and Quebec,” said Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Quйbйcois. “As democratic people, we cannot sit idly by; we all have an obligation to take action immediately. We are committed to increasing the number of female candidates from our party in the next election.”

“I offer my support to the Equal Voice Canada Challenge. Canadians want women elected in numbers equal to men in the House of Commons,” said Jack Layton, Leader of the New Democratic Party. “Women are needed in the House of Commons to bring the issues of their communities to the forefront.”

“The Canada Challenge is based on the success of Equal Voice’s 2006 Ontario Challenge,” said Raylene Lang-Dion, Equal Voice’s National Chair. “Dalton McGuinty, John Tory and Howard Hampton all affirmed their commitment to electing more women in the Legislature. Since that time, all the Ontario parties have done a better job of nominating women in by-elections, and the proportion of women in the provincial legislature has grown from 20% to over 25% -- a significant milestone.”

“With their statements, the parties are sending the message to Canadians that more women are
need in public life,” said Lang-Dion. “Political parties are the entry point for participation in politics and for this reason they can catalysts for change.”

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First, on the question of freedom of speech, I'm not sure where I stand. I think freedom of speech should necessarily take a backseat to basic decency and respect towards the other groups living within the society.

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I disagree. You don't have a right not to be offended. You have the right to change the channel, to not read or listen to ideas you don't like. But your freedom of speech trumps my right not to be offended.

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To use an easy example, I doubt there's a newspaper in the country that would reprint the Protocols of the Elders of Zion just because they can, because we know it to be nothing more than a bogus tract intended to incite hate and enforce a blatantly false stereotype. Almost equivalent to printing false news. The cartoons -- some of them, anyway -- fall into much the same category.

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But you can go to a library and read Mein Kamf and the Protocols of Zion and other stuff that is offensive to some people. And well you should be able to.

If the criteria is that speech which offends others is not allowed, then there is no free speech. I happen to find a great many things I see and read offensive, but that is not a reason for banning them.

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Defending the right to print them is one thing, but defending the actual printing of them is another thing entirely.

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So we should defend the right to free speech only in theory, but not in practice? I don't get that.

I was watching South Park on Easter and the story included Jesus needing to be killed so he could resurrect outside of the prison where he had been put by the Pope to stop Jesus from making a rabbit into the new Pope. It was hilarious, but I am sure it would be very offensive to some Christians.

A muslim who attacks a newspaper for printing an image of Muhammed is a criminal and should be incarcerated, in the same way as a Christian who attacks a newspaper for promoting access to abortion is a criminal who should be incarcerated.

Our society should defend the right of newspapers and other media to express controversial and offensive ideas without coming under violent attack.

A good question to ask might be, "do Canadians even want sex-balanced representation?"

In 1997, [b]57% of Nunavut's voters voted against the proposal that asked, "Should the first Nunavut Legislative Assembly have equal numbers of men and women MLAs, with one man and one woman elected to represent each electoral district?"[/b] Each voter would have been allowed to vote for both one man and one woman.

Personally, I thought this was a good idea. It avoids forcing parties to implement their own gender-based discrimination. In fact, it avoids this discrimination completely. But the voters of Nunavut weren't interested.

If anything, this is the strategy that should be employed. But we need to ask Canadians if they really want this or if they trust the current system enough as it is. So far, this very unique proposal has been rejected.

Uh, I am indeed suggesting that voters of Nunavut rejected equal gender representation. I did research the topic before posting my response. You suggest that they were "most likely rejecting having twice as many elected officials to pay for". I did not find this as a possible reason for why they rejected the proposal among any of the articles and reports I scanned. If you know of any such research that suggests that "huge government" is the reason for the rejection, please let me know. What I did find was that there are several reasons as to why the proposal was rejected, but not one reason in particular.

As for the [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img] , I don't think this is a fair response. I never implied anywhere that the Nunavut of 1997 is "so representative" of the Canada of 2007. I simply say that equal gender representation was looked at in our country 10 years ago (which I don't think is too long ago to no longer be relevant) and it was rejected. I cast [b]no[/b] judgement on the rejection itself. [b]Perhaps it was unclear, but when I said, "I thought this was a good idea," I was referring to the proposal, not the rejection of the proposal. I also said, "if anything, this is the strategy that should be employed."[/b]

To summarize: I think that if Canadians are interested in equal gender representation, then an equal gender-based parliament is something that should be considered.

Having seen me do presentations, read some of my stuff, or heard from someone who has, representatives from different parties have tried to get me to run as a candidate. I'm a political junkie, so it's hard to say 'no'. But decline I must, since I'm convinced I couldn't survive the harsh and unforgiving climate.

Among the problems:
[LIST][*]the very things party types like about what they hear or read (about me and, I'm betting, about other women they've approached and who have declined), are the very things that would be my undoing. You see, I speak the truth as I see it, and passionately so. When people agree with you, that's all well and good; in such instances, you're able to 'rally the troops' and get people's attention. But if the truth you see doesn't agree with something else's, then in the political sphere all hell can break loose [i]especially[/i] if you've spoken passionately.[*]Politics is competitive and I loathe competition of virtually any kind.[*]I tend toward courtesy. There appears to be no place for courtesy in the House of Commons.[*]I like to argue ideas, not personalities. Ever seen Question Period?[/LIST]

What strategies would get me interested in running as a candidate?

* There has been a cleanup of the HOC.
* The media has stopped digging for dirt and hunting for skeletons in closets. It no longer focuses on politicians' personalities, appearance, quality of voice, etc., or what politicians do on their own time. Instead, it turns attention only to what politicians say and do in their public life.
* Changing our electoral system to a form of proportional representation - researched and decided upon by the electorate. FPTP encourages, even seems to require, competition. PR encourages consensus.

Yes, I noted in the ad scam debacle how sexist the Liberals really were. All those who were up to their necks in corruption were male.

We need more female corrupt politicians.

It's only fair.