Women and Political Representation in Canada

Chapter 8: Entry to the Commons: Parties, Recruitment, and the Election of Women in 1993

8 Entry to the Commons:Parties,Recruitment, and the Election of Womenin 1993 LYNDA ERICKSON, Simon Fraser University Introduction An important element in the political representation of women is their very presence in the central decision-making arenas of politics, particularly the representative institutions of government. With the beginnings of second-wave feminism, feminist scholarship started documenting the lack of women in the cabinets and legislatures of Western democracies. As studies proliferated, the extent to which women were excluded from the representational forums of democratic politics became clear (Jacquette1974;Githens and Prestage 1977; Brodie 1977; Iglitzin and Ross 1976; Kohn 1980; Lovenduski and Hills 1981; Brodie and Vickers 1981; Brodie 1985), as did the ways in which countries differed in this respect (Norris 1985). Subsequently, however, feminist work on representation shifted much of its emphasis from concerns about the presence of women in the corridors of power to issues related to the representation of women's interests (Jones and Jonasdottir 1988; Mohanty 1987; Jonasdottir 1991; I. M. Young 1990; Phillips 1991; Vickers 1997). Questions of diversity and difference among women, how or whether we can talk about women as a group having shared interests, and whether the presence of women has or would signal a new kind of representation have become more central issues. Much of this work is critical of the notion that the proportion of female members in representative institutions is a sufficient measureof the effective representation of women (Gotelland Brodie 1991). While these critiques alert us to the fallacy in assuming that increasing the number of women in positions of political power will necessarily produce more public policies and political procedures that favour women, we should not ignore the problem of women's numerical underrepresentation. As Arscottmentions in her chapter, this problem of the erasure of women in politics already preoccupied the RCSW at the 220 WOMEN AND POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN CANADA beginning of the 1970s. First, the question of whether women are still a small minority in representative institutions, in spite of their majority in the electorate, is important for reasons of equity. If access to the representative institutions of political life is substantially more difficult for women compared to men, then the fairness of the system is in question. Second, for feminists, the symbolic importance of women's inclusion in highly visible political forums also makes the issue of women's presence a critical concern (L. Young 1991b; Vickers 1997). Moreover, concerns about the representation of women's interests still suggest we should pay attention to the presence of women in the legislative arena. The representation of women's interests and perspectives, whether singular or multiple, is likely to find greater expression in the forums of government when women gain a more equal presence. Traditionally, one of the primary indicators of women's underrepresentation in representative institutions in Canada has been the low proportion of women members in the House of Commons. For many decades after women's enfranchisement, the election of a woman member of parliament was a rarity (Brodie 1991). Even as late as 1968, women constituted fewer than 1% of the House and by 1980 that number had increased to only 5% (see table 1). While women made some gains during the 1980s, by the end of the decade women still composed just 13%of the House of Commons. Table 1:Women Elected in Canadian General Elections, 1968-1993 Election Year Numberof Women Women as Per Cent of MPs Elected Elected 1968 1 0.4 1972 5 1.8 1974 9 3.4 1979 10 3.6 1980 17 5.0 1984 27 9.6 1988 39 13.0 1993 53 18 ENTRY TOTHECOMMO ttthhheee ccoooommmmmooonnnnss ooonnnsss ssoooonnnnnsss 22222111 221 After the 1993 election, when the face of the House changed dramatically with the very convincing defeat of the government and the introduction of two new parties into the legislature, 53women entered the Commons and the proportion of women there increased to 18%. Although it signalled continued improvement in the gender distribution of the House, this increase was disappointingly small given the opportunity presented by the election. First, there was an extraordinarily high turnover rate among MPs. With low turnover rates in national legislatures targeted as a factor in restricting the entrance of women into national legislatures (L. Young 1991a; Darcy, Welch, and Clark 1994; Erickson 1991), the very high turnover in 1993 met one of the structural conditions necessary...