About 60 per cent of B.C. NDP candidates, 45 per cent of B.C. Green candidates and 25 per cent of B.C. Conservative ones headed into the provincial election on Oct. 19 are women.
Equal Voice, which advocates for gender parity in provincial and federal elections and tallies up the nominees on its election tracker, notes that 42.5 per cent of MLAs elected in the last provincial election were women, short of its goal of a 50-50 split.
Kimberly Speers, a University of Victoria assistant teaching professor in the school of public administration, said political parties in B.C. need to ensure that their representatives reflect the population.
“Otherwise, they may face voters who do not see their needs and themselves reflected in the policies and faces of political party and will vote for the party who has made the effort,” she said.
According to Statistics Canada’s 2021 census, women made up just over half of the approximately 864,000 people living on Vancouver Island (444,000 women versus 420,000 men) and of the 5 million people in B.C. (2.5 million women versus 2.4 million men).
Ensuring a legislature or council effectively represents its population is critical for a well-functioning government and society, said Speers.
Vancouver Island University professor Michael MacKenzie, an expert in democracy who holds the university’s Jarislowsky Chair in Trust and Political Leadership, said the legislature is supposed to be a microcosm of society more generally.
“We want to make sure that different points of views and perspectives and also lived experiences are represented when our governments are making decisions for everybody,” he said. “It really matters.”
MacKenzie said while it’s possible for an individual to represent others who are not like them, it doesn’t look legitimate if governments and legislatures represent only certain people within society. “It’s never going to be perfect, but it should be pretty close.”
There is even political science research to suggest women have an electoral advantage when they are competitive candidates running in winnable ridings, he said.
“Part of the reason is that people are very critical of the sort of archetype politician who they feel is not well representing their interests. And if you ask people what the archetype politician is, it’s usually a kind of middle-aged, white male.
“So women may have an advantage because they’re seen as a sort of, you know, candidates who are not the typical politician.”
While women run for all political parties and have varying perspectives on how to govern, “the common trait is that they represent a group that has been underrepresented in positions of political power,” said Speers.
Electing women to all orders of government has been a struggle since women were allowed to run, she said.
Speers said evidence suggests there are numerous barriers to women participating in the halls of power, including online and direct threats of violence, less access to resources in nominations and running, and bearing a disproportionate share of household and child-rearing duties.
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