How do we recruit more women as candidates?

First of all, I would like to see some numbers. I have met a lot of women in the Green Party, and quite a few are running as candidates, or are seriously considering doing so. Does anyone have an updated number of how many female candidates are already lined up? How do our numbers compare with those of other parties?

Next, it is important to realize that women are inspired by other women. The fact that we have Elizabeth May as a leader is, in and of itself, going to inspire women to get involved. This is a process, and as Elizabeth May becomes more visible, other women will be inspired to become involved in the Green Party. This is not a process that will happen overnight, it will probably take a few years before we are happy with the gender balance.

I don't want to be a candidate "just because I am a woman." My reasons for getting involved in the Green Party extend far beyond my desire to see more women in government. I hope that we don't make such a big deal about having female candidates that it becomes a farce. Quotas can be dangerous, because if we pick women to be candidates only because they are women, rather than for their talents and vision, it is degrading and patronizing. I think a lot of other parties really have trouble with this (like the line-up of women seated behind Harper, so that they are visible whenever he is shown flapping his yap in the house). I personally think that we will have less trouble with this, as the Green Party has within its policy many policies which are more attractive to women in general (very generally speaking...it tends more towards nurturing society than towards business and ambition).

It is also important to find out what it is that is holding women back. Who are our role models in the present government? Hedy Fry? Rona Ambrose? Belinda Stronach? Do we want to end up like them, with their personal lives exposed, or relagated in the media to being little more than a pawn or a loudmouth? When the media focuses on women in parliament, it is often to expose the negative aspects of their characters and roles in government. Again, people like Adriane Carr and Elizabeth May will be critical as role models for women.

A women's caucus is a good idea. But, as Bill Hulet said, it has to be more than a bunch of women getting together to blab about how great it is that we're women. It can't be about man-bashing either, if we really want to move towards being seen in society as equals. It has to be about addressing the real concerns and triumphs we face. It has to be about leaning on each other and developing community and networks. It needs media coverage, so that other women will see who we are and want to join us.

And, of course, this is all another reason why we HAVE to get Elizabeth May into the debates.

Alina Abbott
Candidate nominee
Chatham-Kent-Essex

I'm glad council is talking about taking on formal measures to ensure that there are more female candidates. We need to remember though that we are at a stage of development where it's still difficult to get a full roster of candidates across Canada, female or male. Getting a full slate of candidates needs to remain the first priority at least until it's not a challenge anymore.

I suspect it's a question of maturity of the party. When we have more members, stronger EDA's and more visibility we will attract more women candidates (we will attract more candidates period). At least we have a good start with Elizabeth and Adriane showing the way. Spending our energies raising their profiles is probably a good immediate plan for attracting more women candidates and good for a lot of other reasons too.

Ard Van Leeuwen (Dufferin-Caledon)

Yes, absolutely! I'm sure we would all agree that attracting more candidates in general is very important.

Where I differ with Ard, though, is I believe that without a specific effort to recruit women, the general growth of our party won't necessarily result in gender parity. In other words, in addition to general party-building, we have to consciously be reducing barriers specifically to women.

An interesting discussion so far. My 2c:

Quotas are potentially dangerous. By imposing gender quotas for Green Party candidates, we communicate that we support quotas as a solution for other areas, too. This doesn't play well with many people.

I also think quotas are a bit misleading. Our party leader and deputy leader are both women. Does this make up for fewer female candidates? Or should one of them step down to be replaced by a male? (I am not suggesting this - that would be stupid - just pointing out that this is the logical extension of gender quotas.)

Regarding the support issue, it's not just women who need the support. That is a generalisation, and we must be careful with those. I find our political system already heavily slanted toward those with independent income or retired, those with no or grown children, those with flexible work schedules, and so on.

Better that we build a system that supports the types of candidates that we want. It seems to me that the single biggest support we could provide would be strong EDAs, followed by strong central support with materials, support, and advertising. Without these, running for office is a huge challenge for any candidate, and especially so for those with children at home or regular jobs.

While we're building strong EDAs and strong central support, a primary goal of every EDA should be to find strong and representative candidates, perhaps with an emphasis on women if that is what is lacking at this time.

Brian Gordon
Nominated Candidate, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca
Green Party of Canada

Trained Presenter
An Inconvenient Truth

People - Planet - Prosperity
The New Green Economy

This has been expressed very well above but let me just state again that I would be AGAINST any form of "quota" system. Although I agree with the idea behind it(more balanced gender representation) a quota system is the wrong way to go about it. Particularly I think it would play against our value of Participatory Democracy in that a ridings candidate would have to be in some way predetermined by a central authority. Solutions will come from having a strongly organized party(as Bill mentioned above) and creating an environment and party atmosphere where women feel compelled to run and that they are considered for more than their gender. This take a lot longer to create but change is "real" when it happens.

I remember in the last leadership race some people mentioning to me that they
were voting for Elizabeth because she was a woman. Should I have voted for David because I'm a man?(sounds a bit strange doesn't it?) I'd rather judge a candidate on their actual strengths. I think my generation tends to look past these categories(gender, race, etc...) but these prejudices take time to be put to rest.

What people tend to forget is that making representation mandatory at 50/50 assumes that men are already the majority. In my programme at University(Environment and Resource Studies) I would estimate that 75% of my year is female. At a government agency I used to work for the split was 60/40 in favour of females(in an agency of 2,000+people). My riding in the last Ontario provincial election had 4/5 candidates as women(only the Family Coalition Party had a male running). These are all cases where a quota system could have actually decreased female representation.

How about as a start that each person that has commented in this thread or has read it think of a suitable and qualified female candidate in their EDA and suggest to them that they run? That's a good first step that everyone can take towards creating that positive environment.