by Anna Muselius
I am interested in politics and in the past, I have been actively involved in campaigns for municipal, provincial, and federal candidates. Through those campaigns, I have learned a lot about how politics works and I have a great deal of respect for anybody who chooses to become a candidate, regardless of party affiliation or political leanings. Despite the cynics out there, politics is important and it takes a certain kind of person to become a candidate: someone who is willing to make themselves vulnerable before the public and the media; someone who is willing to give back to their community. Most politicians, or aspiring politicians that I have met, want to do good and most work tremendously hard. If they don’t work hard, they’ll never make it. Politics is one tough gig.
The other thing I have come to realize through my experiences are how few women choose to run for elected office. I think this is a shame. Without a diversity of voices, without diversity in the halls of power, we all lose out as a society. Equal Voice is a non-partisan organization that promotes the election of women in Canada. Despite the fact that females comprise 52 per cent of the country’s total population, only 21 per cent of elected representatives are women either federally, provincially, or municipally.
According to Equal Voice, when seeking office, women still encounter barriers, including stereotyping, media imbalance in the treatment of women politicians, failure of political parties to bolster women candidates, and exclusion from informal party networks (especially critical when it comes to raising funds). Equal Voice has an impressive roster of politicians on its advisory board such as Flora MacDonald, Anita Neville, and Audrey McLaughlin. Equal Voice offers a variety of programming, public awareness campaigns, and initiatives to promote the involvement and election of women to all levels of political office. The organization seeks to achieve equality in the electoral realm by creating a climate where more women are elected to govern Canada at all levels. As far as I’m concerned, gender parity in the political world is long overdue.
