Canada lags on gender parity in Parliament

Women hold just 30 per cent of seats in House, Jennifer M. Piscopo writes.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau boasts about his gender-equal cabinet, but Canada is tumbling down the global rankings for women in Parliament.

Women hold only 30 per cent of seats in the House of Commons, and Canada ranks 58th of 185 countries with active parliaments. In 2000, Canada ranked 27.

Countries such as Mexico, Argentina, France, Spain and Belgium all outrank Canada, electing legislatures in which more than 40 per cent of members are women. The secret to their success? Laws requiring parties to run specified proportions of women.

It's time Canada adopted gender parity for Parliament.

Quota laws set different minimum percentages for women candidates, but the current state-of-the-art is gender parity — 50 per cent women and 50 per cent men.

The European Union considers gender parity a matter of fairness and democracy. So do all 33 Latin American and Caribbean governments, which committed to gender parity in the 2007 Quito Consensus.

The reasoning is that governments and policies cannot be representative without including men and women in equal numbers. Indeed, voters perceive gender-balanced decision-making bodies as more trustworthy and more legitimate than those dominated by men.

Five countries in Western and Southern Europe and 11 countries in the Americas currently implement gender parity. France, Mexico, Bolivia and Ecuador even have it in their constitutions.

Studies show that countries with quotas and parity elect more women than countries without. Hard rules such as statutory quotas are better at overcoming centuries of discrimination than soft measures such as training women to run for office.

There's also no evidence that quotas sacrifice merit. In fact, countries with quotas elect women who have better credentials than their male peers — and quotas even weed out the unqualified men.

Canadians might argue that quotas and parity violate party norms and lead to undemocratic outcomes. The reasoning goes as follows: parties choose candidates via an organic sorting process that reflects the riding associations' preferences. So, forcing parties to nominate women tramples members' right to be represented by their chosen candidate.

Except most parties never achieve this grassroots ideal. The Samara Centre for Democracy found that, of the five federal election cycles between 2004 and 2019, only 17 per cent of House of Commons candidates emerged through competitive contests. Parties appointed the rest. The majority are men.

Another fallacy is that quotas or parity cannot work with Canada's single-member districts. Most countries have multi-member districts where parties run lists of candidates and women can be integrated in the required proportions. But with one candidate per riding, which ones get the woman?

Again, Mexico has a solution.

Across the 300 single-member districts where parties field candidates, they must have gender balance.

Parties can choose where women run, but unlike in Canada, parties must field women where they can win.

Mexico's federal electoral institute uses the previous election results to divide each party's districts into three tiers — winning, competitive and losing — and they look for gender balance within each tier.

Mexico has the world's most comprehensive gender parity norm, but Chile could steal that title. The new constitution, which goes before voters on Sept. 4, defines Chile as a parity democracy, conceptualizes 50 per cent of seats for women (including transwomen) as a minimum, and requires mechanisms for nonbinary individuals.

These innovations only push Canada farther down the global rankings.

Canada has a feminist international assistance policy and undertakes gender-based policy analysis, but the relatively few women in Parliament speak loud and clear.

Women senators have proposed that parties follow gender parity in nominations or face fines.

Getting that done would mean Canada actually starts walking the walk.