Women in Politics
Aaron Spitzer | CBC Online News | Oct. 29
For the Northwest Territories, it's a sad superlative: tied with Nunavut for the lowest percentage of women MLAs in Canada.
That statistic dismays Sandy Lee, one of the assembly's two female members. "Two out of 19 is quite pathetic," she says. "I dream of a women's caucus. I say, if you have three women, that's a caucus. If you just have two, you're just talking to each other."
It hasn't always been like this. In 1991, a 51-year-old Inuvialuit woman, Nellie Cournoyea, was named premier of the N.W.T. She was the natural choice: For 12 years she'd been the territory's MLA for the Beaufort Delta, and had held various cabinet positions. But by taking on the assembly's top job, Cournoyea made history, becoming the first female premier of a Canadian province or territory.
Her ascendancy wasn't the only notable achievement for a female politician in the N.W.T. that year. In the western half of the territory - the part that would remain after the separation of Nunavut in 1999 - a second woman, Jeanie-Marie Jewell of Fort Smith, won election and was named to cabinet. An impressive total of 12 of the 40 electoral candidates from the western N.W.T. were female.
But since then, women's political fortunes in the territorial assembly have been in decline. When the 1995 election rolled around, Cournoyea left politics, and Marie-Jewell was defeated. Only one woman, business owner Jane Groenewegen of Hay River, won office in the west. And 1999 wasn't much better: Groenewegen was re-elected, and Lee, a lawyer from Yellowknife, gained a seat in a newly-created riding.
According to Lee, it's not that the N.W.T.'s male politicians are bad at representing women's issues. "But this is a house of representation," she says. "It has to reflect the make-up of the society. It used to be OK for white people to represent Aboriginal issues, but people just don't accept that anymore. People have to be able to speak for themselves."
The big reason women aren't elected, Lee says, is because they don't run. In rural ridings, they may face challenges getting the endorsement of their communities. Or, the prospect of pulling up stakes and moving to Yellowknife may be too daunting. But that doesn't explain why women hold so few Yellowknife ridings - just one of seven. "It's just not on women's minds -- it's not on their to-do lists," Lee surmises. "I know more men who have an undying desire to be an MLA."
Lee isn't the only one distressed by the under-representation of women in the territorial assembly. Barb Saunders, head of the N.W.T.'s Status of Women council, says the territory has a long way to go just to reach the national average of 20 per cent. "Socially and economically," she says, "we're still a few years behind."
To improve on that, the Status of Women's Council has launched the Women's Voices in Leadership Project (http://www.statusofwomen.nt.ca/wvl/). So far, project organizers have hosted workshops in Yellowknife, Hay River and Inuvik, aimed at urging women to run for office, and helping them plan for the unique challenges they'll face.
According to Saunders, Northern women encounter barriers even in contemplating running for office. Particularly in small communities, she says, the concept of female leadership can be alien and unpopular, and women with political aspirations are often dissuaded by family and friends. Moreover, burdened by domestic duties and possessing less disposable income, women even in urban areas often can't find the time or money to campaign.
Saunders says women who do put their names forward face further barriers at the ballot box, where voters often balk at the prospect of electing a woman. That fact seems borne out in recent N.W.T. elections. In 1999, for instance, 23 per cent of those running for the assembly were women, though only 10 per cent won office. In the prior election, 14 per cent of candidates - but only seven per cent of victors - were women.
Saunders still has hope for the future. On the local level, Northern women's political fortunes have been on the rise. Currently more than half of municipal councilors in the N.W.T. are women. And four out of 27 chiefs are female - an improvement over past years.
But will there ever be gender parity - an equal number of men and women -- in the N.W.T. assembly? Saunders laughs ruefully. "There will be," she says. "But maybe not while we're alive."
