Hamilton council’s new gender balance
Historic lack of gender diversity looks toward a much brighter future
As the smoke clears on Hamilton’s 2018 municipal elections, one thing is crystal clear. Women — when given half a chance — are ready, willing and able to step up and become political leaders in this city. With seven women newly elected to our 15-member city council (plus the mayor), we are now closer to gender parity than at any other time in history. Before that, the share of women rarely exceeded 20 per cent, or three of 15 seats. Another first is that Nrinder Nann (Ward 3) has become the first visible minority woman elected to council. In one election, Hamilton’s city council has transformed from one that gets middling scores for diverse representation, to a leader among Ontario cities. What explains this?
To understand the scope and reasons for the lack of diversity in council, and to figure out what changed in 2018, we looked closely at what has happened in Hamilton since amalgamation. We focus here on the findings for women. Since 2003, there have been 83 separate ward or mayoral races, including byelections. Men won in 63 of those races (76 per cent), while women won in just 20 (24 per cent). That’s a poor showing, but the main reason is that women have been unlikely to run for election in the first place. Among the 432 candidates who ran over those years, 338 (78 per cent) were men, while only 94 (22 per cent) were women. So the share of women elected is actually marginally better than the share of female candidates (the ratio is 1.1 to 1), but overall, it is clear that the gender disparity on council begins at the candidacy stage, rather than at the ballot box.
This finding is consistent with other studies showing that well-qualified women are typically much more hesitant than equally qualified men to run for elected office. According to U.S. political scientists Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox, this “gender gap in political ambition” is an accumulated effect of gendered socialization extending from childhood through adulthood. They find that parents are less likely to talk to their daughters about politics than their sons, and that women are less likely to have been encouraged by others to seek elected office. Women may also see a run for office as riskier than men do — whether in terms of family life, career, personal finances, or simply holding themselves out to public scrutiny and criticism.
This led us to look specifically at “open” races with no incumbent running. Open races invariably attract more candidates because, in municipal elections, they’re really the only way a challenger can hope for a path to victory. If open races attract more candidates, we wondered whether they also attract more diverse candidates. Going back to 2003, there have been 18 open races that attracted 190 candidates — on average, almost 11 candidates per race. Of those, 150 were men (79 per cent), while 40 were women (21 per cent), which is statistically indistinguishable from the gender disparity among candidates across all elections. So, while open races attracted a disproportionate share of total candidacies (about 44 per cent, even though only 22 per cent of races since 2003 were open), the gender ratio of candidates does not change. In short, the idea that women might be strategically more likely to run in open races is not supported by our analysis. But where things get interesting is when we look at who won those open races. Here we do see a marked shift toward gender balance. Since 2003, women have won seven of the 18 open races (39 per cent) while men won 11 (61 per cent). The electoral outcome for women is much better relative to their candidate share (the ratio is 1.8 to 1) in these races, meaning that women are highly likely to win in vacated contests despite being vastly outnumbered as candidates.
These findings suggest that a couple of dynamics may be at work. First, it appears that voters are not biased against, and even tend to favour female candidates — at least when there is no incumbent seeking reelection. The female advantage here may be driven by voter cynicism about politics as usual at city hall, combined with gender stereotypes that characterize women politicians as being more honest or ethical, and more service oriented and community-minded than their male counterparts. Second, the success of women in open races can also be attributed to what political scientists refer to as the “compensation effect.” Simply put, women who overcome the obstacles to step forward as candidates are often superachievers in terms of their personal and career credentials, community experience, and campaign organizing skills.
Going forward, the challenge is twofold. First is to encourage more eminently qualified women to run. Second, is to identify and confront the institutional features of municipal elections that impede women’s entry. One notable barrier is a bakedin incumbency advantage that preserves a gender disparity that’s at least 20 years outdated. In Hamilton’s 2018 election, women broke through that barrier thanks in part to vacated seats and a redrawn ward boundary map. The future of Hamilton is better for it.