Political boot camp for women celebrates first electoral wins
When downtown Toronto flipped from red to orange in the provincial election, two of the biggest upsets were pulled off by rookies who had the help of a small but ambitious political network.
Jill Andrew and Suze Morrison are newbie NDPs who ran in stubbornly Liberal ridings: Toronto—St. Paul’s and Toronto Centre, both of which had voted Grit since 1999.
One might call them establishment outsiders: Andrew is a Black queer woman with diverse advocacy interests, pursuing her PhD while running a body confidence organization and co- owning the world’s oldest surviving LGBTQ bookstore. Morrison is a communications professional who identifies as having mixed settler and Indigenous heritage, the daughter of a disabled mother who spent her early years living in a school bus.
But on June 7, these two outsiders won. As they prepare to move into Queen’s Park — the inner sanctum of provincial power — both are crediting a little-known group for jump-starting their political careers.
“I certainly don’t think this would have happened to me now, if not for Women Win TO,” Andrew says.
Almost exactly one year ago, these newly-minted MPPs were among the dozens of Toronto women filling out applications for a new program offered by Women Win TO, a volunteer-run grassroots organization.
Call it an incubator for female politicians: an eight-month boot camp run by political veterans, teaching aspiring politicians the nuts and bolts of running a successful electoral campaign. Women Win TO has one goal: to get women elected, especially those with diverse backgrounds. And after just a year of existence, the organization is already well on its way. Of its 15 “graduates,” three women have already run their first political campaigns, two of whom — Andrew and Morrison — were elected. Another six are now campaigning in the upcoming municipal election, including lawyer Saron Gebresellassi, who is gunning for the mayor’s chair.
The road ahead won’t be easy, but on Thursday night there was a charge of confidence in the room at Ryerson University, where Women Win TO gathered to celebrate its “Class of 2018.” As each woman stepped forward to introduce herself to the cheering crowd, one thing was already clear: the white, male dominance of political power in Toronto is officially on notice.
“I am a proud Afro-Latina,” said community organizer Andrea Vásquez Jiménez, who recently ran as an NDP candidate for York Centre. “We all deserve to have a seat at that table.”
“Who am I? A Black, Somali, Muslim woman from Scarborough,” said Samiya Abdi, a health promotion consultant. “Why now? Because it’s time. We’re sick of being on the sidelines.” Women Win TO was formed last year by Melissa Wong, a policy director for city councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, and Hema Vyas, a senior policy adviser in the provincial government who once ran for city council in Ward 18 Davenport.
After the 2014 municipal election, Vyas was alarmed to see the number of female councillors dropping below a third of council. Even more worryingly, council only has six visible minorities, only one of whom is a woman.
“Really, in 2018, we’d like to have more women, especially more diverse women,” Vyas said. “I really felt this sense of urgency, this fear. What if more women aren’t elected to council?”
Over a fateful meal at a Chinese restaurant (“The Lunch,” as Vyas now calls it), she and Wong sat down with Wong-Tam and talked about creating an organization that would bring more — and different — women into the political fold.
Winning as a first-time candidate without the backing of a political network is “near impossible,” said WongTam, a key supporter of Women Win TO. But women face additional hurdles, particularly if they are racialized or LGBTQ2. Obstacles are often systemic; for example, the fact women are paid less than men, making it financially riskier for them to take time off and run for office. Child care and family considerations often come into play.
But barriers can also be internal; studies have pointed to a so-called “confidence gap” amongst women, largely because of how they are socialized. In a 2013 study of American college students, men were more likely to be encouraged by their parents to enter politics and twice as likely as women to believe they would eventually be qualified for office. Wong-Tam says on average, women have to be asked between seven and nine times before they seriously consider running for politics. For Women Win TO, part of the goal was to simply tell women: you can do this. “One, I wanted to empower women, and let them know that they can do it,” she said. “And two, let them know that they don’t have to be alone in that journey.”
After receiving dozens of applications, Women Win TO chose 15 candidates who demonstrated a clear intention to run for city council (Andrew and Morrison both initially considered joining the municipal race but eventually switched gears and ran provincially instead.)
The group met once a month for eight months, learning everything from how to collect data to building a campaign team and crafting a compelling political narrative. The training wasn’t always technical; the final session was about self-care on the campaign trail. There was also a role-playing session to practise a crucial task that everyone would have to repeat ad nauseam on the campaign trail: door knocking.
“We (practised) in the classroom — knock, knock — and were given 30 seconds. And we all took turns pretending to be different people at the door, with dogs barking or babies crying,” said Chiara Padovani, who is running for city council in Ward 11.
Padovani said she has long dreamed about running for office but Women Win TO offered a rare and invaluable opportunity to access the collective wisdom of political veterans such as Wong- Tam and former MP Peggy Nash. Other women who volunteered their expertise included war room veterans such as political organizer Michal Hay (Jagmeet Singh’s NDP leadership campaign director, who now runs the new non-profit Progress Toronto) and Ruby Latif, a former Dalton McGuinty adviser who worked on Mayor John Tory’s 2014 campaign.
For Andrew and Morrison, the most valuable resource they’ve gained from Women Win TO is the supportive community of like-minded women. Firsttime candidates often lack the extensive networks that incumbents and political insiders rely upon for fundraising or volunteer recruitment. But Women Win TO graduates now have a support system of women who understand the importance of diversity but also how to play the political game.
Both Andrew and Morrison had the full weight of the NDP party machinery behind them during their provincial campaigns, but they still found themselves turning to Women Win TO whenever they needed advice, volunteers, or just a sympathetic ear.
“It was really just about the culture of sisterhood and a culture of support,” Morrison said. “Any time of day, no matter how we were struggling, we knew we had other women in the group and in the leadership that we could call up.
“We knew we weren’t alone.”