Representation by women has been a significant issue in Canadian politics since 1900.
The first woman elected to a provincial legislature in Canada was Louise McKinney in the 1917 Alberta general election, while the first woman elected to the House of Commons of Canada was Agnes Macphail, in the 1921 Canadian federal election. Although female representation in politics has increased since then, and political parties have identified increasing the number of female candidates as an organizational and political goal, women are still significantly underrepresented in politics compared to the general population. Canada has had one woman Prime Minister, Kim Campbell.[1]
Political parties have occasionally achieved balanced representation in their elected caucuses, but mainly as a byproduct of a party collapse – for example, in the 1993 election, the Progressive Conservatives achieved gender parity in their elected caucus, but only by virtue of electing just two Members of Parliament nationwide and losing official party status. At various times, parties have also had 100 per cent female representation in their caucuses, but again only by virtue of having a caucus that consisted of just one or two members.
The Yukon New Democratic Party attained the distinction, in the 2011 Yukon general election, of becoming the first party with official party status ever to have an elected caucus that reached or exceeded parity between women and men, with four women and two men elected as MLAs. The Alberta New Democratic Party attained the distinction, in the 2015 Alberta general election, of coming the closest that a governing party caucus has ever come to attaining gender balance — the party's caucus had 25 women and 28 men, representing a caucus that was 47 per cent female.[2]
The non-partisan consensus government of the Northwest Territories achieved near gender parity across the entire legislature in the 2019 Northwest Territories general election, with nine women and 10 men elected as MLAs; at the first formal meeting of the legislative assembly, the MLAs selected a woman, Caroline Cochrane, as premier, and chose women for four of the six cabinet roles.[3] After one of the 10 male MLAs resigned his seat in 2021, the resulting by-election was won by a woman, making the Northwest Territories the first jurisdiction in Canadian history to have an outright majority of its legislators be women.[4]
As of 2010, Canada ranked 50th in the world for women's participation in politics, with women holding just 23 per cent of the seats in federal, provincial and territorial legislatures.[5] At the federal level, Canada was tied with Mauritania for 49th place.[6]
^"Kim Campbell becomes Canada's first woman prime minister". CBC. June 21, 2018. Retrieved October 25, 2019.
^"Young MLAs, many of them female, will soon rule in Alberta". Toronto Star, May 9, 2015.
^Ollie Williams, "Here's who will be in Caroline Cochrane's NWT cabinet". Cabin Radio, October 24, 2019.
^"'Gender never came into my mind,' says woman who brought N.W.T. Legislature to Canada's 1st female majority". CBC News. July 29, 2021. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
^"Canada 50th in participation by women in politics". Toronto Star, March 8, 2010.
^"Women in national parliaments". Inter-parliamentary Union, February 28, 2010.
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