Gender parity in cabinet an election winner

As we saw last week, there’s a specific algorithm applied to create the prime minister’s cabinets, one that maintains the same number of women as men and that also ensures a one-for-one ratio of regional ministers. While the code appeared to be a little glitchy given the demotion of Jody Wilson-raybould — the only First Nations cabinet member — there is little doubt Justin Trudeau took much care in how this pre-election cabinet was constructed.

A little over three years ago, reaction to the much-ballyhooed reveal of a cabinet made up of equal parts men and women was mixed. For some, it was (and remains) an important and overdue breakthrough vouchsafing the equal place of women in political life. Who can forget Trudeau’s carefully rehearsed “because it’s 2015” response to the question of why he did it? For others, though, it was a cheesy gimmick, one that put quotas ahead of the best performers caucus had to offer.

Still, given that some of government’s top performers, such as Chrystia Freeland and Jane Philpott, are women, there are those who would say Trudeau’s experiment was an unmitigated success. On the other hand, some would point to the underperformance of women such as Maryam Monsef and Catherine Mckenna as a sign of failure. At the end of the day, one might argue gender has little to do with any of it.

In this election year, however, Trudeau’s approach is viewed by Canadians generally, though not unanimously, as successful. New polling from the Angus Reid Institute shows people are twice as likely to view a gender-balanced cabinet as having a positive impact on the functioning of government as are likely to see it negatively (45 per cent versus 21 per cent), although one-third say it’s made no difference.

When asked whether future governments should follow the same template to cabinet construction, just over one-quarter (27 per cent) say it should be while about the same number (28 per cent) say it shouldn’t be a consideration at all. A plurality, nearly half (45 per cent) say gender balance should be a goal, but not the top priority.

But as with so many issues these days, opinion cuts much more finely along political and (in this case, unsurprisingly) gender lines. By a margin of two-to-one over men, women see gender balance in cabinet as the standard for future governments. They’re also significantly more likely than men to view the impact of a 50-50 male-female split in ministerial makeup as positive (54 to 35 per cent). This jumps to a robust majority (68 per cent) among women aged 18 to 34.

Young men are less convinced than women their own age, but far more convinced than older men. That’s important, because Trudeau and the Liberals need reasons to persuade younger voters to come to the polls for him the way they did in the last election.

The divisions are even more stark when viewed by past political leanings. Just 14 per cent of those who cast a ballot for the Conservative party in 2015 see any benefit in a gender-balanced cabinet. Compare that to fully twothirds (67 per cent) of past Liberal voters and a majority (57 per cent) of past New Democrats. While Conservatives overwhelmingly say gender shouldn’t be a factor at all in deciding who leads government departments (57 per cent do), left-leaning voters see it as more of a nice-tohave than a must-have. Fully half of past Liberal and NDP supporters see it as a goal, but not the standard.

At a time when a multitude of issues threatens to bleed Liberal votes to the right and left — think carbon taxes, deficit spending, pharmacare and pipelines — and during a term that has so far failed to deliver on some big-ticket items (whatever happened to those infrastructure projects), the Liberals need to talk up achievements they truly own. Among the left-ofcentre base, gender balance is an achievement, and the Liberals do own it. You can be sure Team Trudeau will be showcasing the composition of its cabinet on the campaign trail. Because it’s 2019. Shachi Kurl is Executive Director of the Angus Reid Institute, a national, not-for-profit, non-partisan public opinion research foundation.