WOMEN STILL STRUGGLING TO FIND PLACE AT COUNCIL TABLE
Corman Park Reeve Judy Harwood is a female council representative for a rural municipality in Saskatchewan. That makes her part of a select group as women continue to be under-represented in politics across the province.
When Judy Harwood was concerned about how the Rural Municipality of Corman Park was being run, she decided to do something about it.
In October 2012, more than a decade after she was first elected as an RM councillor, she decided to run for reeve against incumbent Mel Henry.
Most elected officials within Saskatchewan’s local governments are men, but Harwood wasn’t fazed about chasing her council’s top job.
“I wasn’t intimidated by it — maybe I should have been. I wasn’t,” she said.
Harwood won in a landslide and has held the position since then. She’s aware that she’s a member of a small group; women are under-represented on local governments across Saskatchewan.
According to information available on the Government of Saskatchewan’s municipal directory, female representation on elected councils is 38 per cent in northern municipalities, 25 per cent in villages, 21 per cent in resort villages, 21 per cent in towns, 20 per cent in cities and six per cent in rural municipalities.
The gender of elected officials in Saskatchewan’s local offices can be found on the provincial government website by exporting data from the municipal directory as a PDF file. For some municipalities, that’s the only way to know the gender breakdown of council.
The Saskatoon Starphoenix and Regina Leader-post emailed all 774 local municipalities in the province this fall, inquiring about their gender breakdown. Some local administrators refused to disclose the information, citing concerns about violating councillors’ privacy.
Some administrators said they did not know the gender breakdown of the councils they served.
“I have no forms or requirements in my office that require my council to declare their gender; so literally I cannot provide that information, as it is unknown,” one rural municipality administrator wrote.
The lack of gender parity isn’t limited to local governments. Provincially and nationally, less than half of elected officials are female.
Women make up 26 per cent of elected members in the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly; 29 per cent of members of Parliament are female. Both the Legislative Assembly and Parliament of Canada make the genders of elected officials easy to find online.
Harwood said the low proportion of female elected officials in local governments, including rural municipalities, is “disappointing ” but not a surprise. “That’s just the way it is,” she said.
There are outliers to the male-dominated councils. The Village of Consul’s council — three members strong — is entirely comprised of women and has been since 2007.
Mayor Linda Brown, who was first elected to the Consul office in 1995, said she believes attitudes around women holding leadership roles are changing in smaller communities. She said part of this is because more women are active in agriculture and are managing or co-managing family farms.
“I don’t think that there’s a barrier that way anymore because women are out there working to make farming and ranching work, so I think maybe that’s helped,” she said. “Then why can’t women be involved in government — local government — and do as good a job as anybody? All you have to do is be interested and learn, I guess, as you go.”
Brown said she thinks municipalities should release the gender breakdowns of councils if asked. She believes local governments need to be transparent and not afraid or offended to answer questions about things related to elected positions.
Joe Garcea, a political-science professor at the University of Saskatchewan, said he suspects the number of female elected officials on local government councils is higher today than it would have been a generation ago.
He said women historically contributed to the community by participating in social activities rather than politics, which led to men dominating elected councils. Men would stay on for a long time and be replaced by other men.
“Once some of these men were elected, they would stay on for life because nobody challenged them. Incumbency was such a major factor,” Garcea said.
In some ways, the legacy of women participating in the community in more non-political ways is evident in the fact that rural municipality administrators are overwhelmingly female.
Harwood finds that gender split somewhat ironic.
“The person that’s kind of directing the majority of male councillors is a woman,” she said.
Harwood has spent much of her life working in male-dominated environments. She grew up playing contact sports like football and had two older brothers. In school, she participated in student government and, as an adult, she has served on a number of provincial boards in Saskatchewan.
“Most of the boards I sat on, the majority were men,” she said.
As a member of SARM’S governance committee, she is doing what she can to encourage more women to run for rural councils. She said part of doing that is gaining a better understanding of why more women aren’t running for office.
“If we can figure that out, I think you’ll find our numbers will increase,” Harwood said.
SUMA, too, is looking at what can be done to improve gender parity. At its 2019 convention, one of the main topics of discussion was focused on working toward equal representation.
Harwood sees family and work responsibilities as possible barriers. “But to be honest, (women) are needed at the table. We bring a different voice. We certainly bring a different thought process, right or wrong. I encourage strongly for every woman, that’s even got a small desire, to get out and try it.” With Starphoenix files from
Andrea Hill tjames@postmedia.com