Happy International Womens Day?

According to a recent United Nations report, women constitute half of the world's population, perform nearly two-thirds of its work hours, receive one-tenth of the world's income and own less than one-hundreth of the world's property.

Less than 2 in 10 of the world's elected officials are women. You make think those figures are coming from other "backwards" jurisdictions but they are in fact not that different from the backwards numbers we have here at home. In Canada and BC we dropped to just 20% of MPs in the last federal election and all the way down from a previous high of 28% to just 22.8% in the 2005 provincial election.

You can make a difference. Encourage a woman you know to run for office. Tell her about the Women's Campaign School November 16-18 in Vancouver, sponsor her seat at the school, volunteer your time on her campaign and get her elected. And to make sure other women can get elected too, read legendary feminist  Doris Anderson's opinions on STV and join the KNOW STV campaign.

The last word to a Chilean proverb in honour of the election of their first ever woman president, Michelle Bachelet. "With a few women in politics, women change. With many women in politics, politics change."

Comments

[scott]

The Doris Anderson article you linked to is behind paywall, so I am still in the dark about why you thing STV is bad for women. Surely women will be elected under any system if only they are nominated, and we vote for them.

Is STV worse than FPTP? I ask because STV and FPTP are the only options on the table in BC.

[Andrea Reimer]

Hi Scott,

Sorry for the problem with the article. Although I'm not a subscriber to the Globe and Mail somehow it lets me in to look at articles so I was unaware of the problem. Subsequently, I've cut and pasted Doris' article onto my site and updated the link.

Essentially STV is very similar to the at-large system here in Vancouver. With so many names on the ballot, people remember those who have the money or the name recognition (or both) to be remembered.

At the provincial and federal levels women are generally disadvantaged in both regards and, as a result, STV systems have produced the worst results for women on the planet outside of the Middle East where women do poorly no matter what the system.

I'm happy to send you more information if you're interested.

a

[scott]

I realize that in places such as Ireland and Malta, women do not do well electorally, but its that because they use STV, or is it something else to do with their political culture?

OTOH women do do well in Australia under STV, and less well there where they don't.

You haven't addressed my question about whether STV is worse than FPTP, given that STV and FPTP are the only options on the table in BC.

[Rick Dignard]

Let me help you out Scott, is STV worse than FPTP? Yes! Australia uses AV for their national elections and a very "basterdized" STV system for it's upper house, in fact very few voters (less than 10%)consitently do NOT choose to rank candidates,instead using the one vote "ticket" option, so any women that system produces are put there by their respective parties, I'm not saying that's bad but it has nothing to do with STV, Ireland and Malta are great examples of how candidates within the same party might "face off" with one another,as if dealing with an opposing party wasn't enough! just what a gal thinking of a career in politics is looking for. Yes their are STILL only two options on the table "bad" and "worse" this you can blame Gordon Campbell for, he blew it! by not allowing the electorate to make the choice on E/R. the Ontario Citizen's Assembly is on track to get it right, and it won't be STV.

[RossK]

Andrea--

Sorry to veer off topic (but not really)....

Just wanted to let you know that my daughter heard somebody speak at her school recently and when she got home she couldn't stop talking about the speaker and what she had to say.

Which was great.

But the other important thing to realize is that my kid told me all about this with fire and brimstone in her eyes, her voice, and pretty much her entire being.

It was really amazing.

I waited, listened, made a few comments and then, all of a sudden, just like that, the penny dropped....

'Was the speaker somebody called Andrea Reimer?' I asked.

Sure was.

Thanks.

.

[scott]

replying to rick

The Australian lower house, which DOES NOT use STV elects 12% women but the upper house which DOES use STV elects over 30% women. (http://www.aph.gov.au/LIBRARY/Pubs/rn/1996-97/97rn41.htm)
In this case, where other things are presumed fairly equal, STV seems to be BETTER for women.

I expect that any system that offers more choice helps women.

You say that FPTP is better than STV. I just don’t get this at all. In FPTP you are relying on the parties to nominate women in your own riding if you are to have a chance of voting for one. In my riding no women were nominated by any party so I didn’t have the choice of voting for one. With STV, for example in a 6 member riding, if you assume that 3 parties will nominate 4 candidates each, you will have a choice of 12 candidates to rank. I expect that most parties will nominate at least some women, so then you will have the opportunity of voting for them. You could rank all the women across party lines if you wanted. Even if only 10% women were nominated under STV I would still have one or 2 to vote for, (better than FPTP).

[Rick Dignard]

Maybe you misunderstood Scott, both Australian systems are preferential, one AV, one STV and as I said before very few choose the STV when casting a ballot, in upper house elections,any women elected are NOT ranked, this is by party nomination, it sounds like you want a long list of womens names to be able to rank them, would an average voter have a clue what a couple of dozen or 40-50 (as is the case in Australia) candidates are all about? writing down numbers beside anyones name for the sake of it is not democracy and would be quite frankly "reckless" that's why 96% of all voters in Australia say NO THANK YOU to STV there's many other problems with this system in Australia that go beyond electing women:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3359

When we finally put a stake in the heart of STV in B.C., we can put our energy into a "real" electoral system, as Ontario is trying to do. If the NDP where smart they'd stick MMP into there platform.Is Carol James listening?