Then there’s the 17 per cent of New Brunswickers vot-
ers who voted for one of the other three parties - the ones later heard saying, ‘what are we, chopped liver?’ Their vote will not be reflected in the House. As the representative of Fair Vote Canada said after the
New Brunswick election, “The voters said one thing and the voting system did another.” He called for Canadians to “connect the dots” between our anger and understanding that something is wrong with the voting system. Some say this is the real reason for voter discontent. In the mixed-member proportional representation that
was recommended for New Brunswick by the Commis- sion on Legislative Democracy in 2005, the Conservatives would still form a majority government after the recent election, but four parties would be represented in the House. Likely more women would have been elected than the 8 who were recently elected to the 55-seat House, 15 percent. Without a clear relationship between the parties’
share of the vote and its share of seats, the debate in the House is poorer and less representative. In most coun- tries with some form of proportional representation, there is more gender balance in the House’ for several reasons. One of them is that often proportional repre- sentation requires parties to work together collabora- tively, which is more attractive to many women than the current confrontational games. One of the major “women’s issues” of any election is
the number of women who will be elected. Each time, we can only hope that more of us will be able to find some- one who represents our political views and is a woman. Getting more women in the Legislative Assembly would help women . . . and it might help politics, first since it is always recommended to get your talent from 100 per cent of the pool- always bet on a team with diversity. For women to have an impact, they need to be at least
a third, 33 per cent, of the larger group. As Michelle Bach- elet, then president of Chile said in 2006, as she appointed an equal number of men and women to minister and high level government positions, “When there are a few wom- en in politics, politics changes women, but when there are many women, it is politics that change.” Changing the electoral system to one that is more pro-
portional is not the only nor a necessary action needed for improved gender representation. In many countries it is reform led by political parties that made a difference. Many nominated candidates in Canada, successful and unsuccessful, male and female, will tell you that getting the party nomination was the hard part. The election was easy in comparison. In a new report based on exit interviews with 65 Mem-
bers of Parliament as they left their elected position, the nomination procedure is described quite negatively as con- fusing and subject to chance; “a black box: a system whose inner workings cannot be easily seen or understood.” Many found the exercise absurd, “the worst political
experience of my life,” one said. And these were the ones who had come out of the process successfully. “When the winner of a race complains about the rules of the competition, it may bear closer scrutiny,” say the author, Samara Canada, a charitable group that works on strengthening democracy. The report, Accidental Citizen?, concludes that the nomination process was subject to ma- nipulation by riding associations, the national party lead- ership and local groups.
“ When there are a few women in politics, politics changes women, but when there are many women, it is
politics that change.” —Michelle Bachelet, former President of Chile
As political science professor Joanna Everitt shows, some things that work against women are the facts that unseating incumbents is difficult and that winnable seats are less likely to be offered or held by women -- parties have stereotypes of “winnable candidates” and recruiters recruit from their own networks. There are other reasons why New Brunswick and most
provinces have so few women. Our electoral system, one of the few remaining of its type in the world, is not great at producing “diversity” in those elected, and spending lim- its, both for nomination and elections, disadvantage those with less access to money. But the main reason why there are so few women and so little progress is probably because we have not yet really tried to fix the problem.
Elsie Hambrook is the Chairperson of the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women, an independent government agency that advises government and raises awareness of issues of concern to women. She can be reached at acswcccf@
gnb.ca
December 2010 | Campaigns & Elections 47
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