DO WE REALLY WANT EQUALITY FOR WOMEN?

  
     
     A CRUCIAL QUESTION -- Well, the One Hundredth International Women's Day has come and gone, and now we can expect renewed vitality and commitment in campaigns, worldwide, for advances in women's equality.

     Or can we?

     I raise this question because, in reports on all of the discussions and celebrations surrounding The Big Day that I've studied, I have failed to detect a single mention of the one huge forward step that would truly put the campaign for equal rights on a fast track to success.

     And that big step would provide the framework for overcoming the most serious of the discriminations against women -- including such matters as the wage disparity between men's and women's pay, and the "glass ceiling" holding down women's progress up the promotion ladder.

     That step, friends, involves nothing more than a relatively simple revision of laws governing political representation. It would work any place in the world where there is representative government, and I believe it also would provide hope and inspiration for women in those benighted parts of the world where women are treated as property, as virtual slaves.

     Now, I'm not suggesting the general question of women's involvement in the political process has been ignored during the International Women's Day festivities. Certainly there have been many references -- on TV, radio, newspapers -- to the fact of under-representation of women in the national, regional, and local law-making bodies of democratic nations, not to mention in those of near- and non-democracies of the world.

     Unfortunately, about all we get in response to the awareness of female under-representation is a kind of hand-wringing, plus mutterings about how we must urge our political parties and organizations to take more notice of the need for greater participation of women in politics and elections, and more nomination of women candidates. And, so, the status remains quo, and women, by and large, fail to be better represented. (But I must note here that the emergence of the new Liberal leader in B.C., the soon-to-be-premier Christy Clark, is a good sign; I hope she has an opportunity to examine my proposal, and perhaps be inclined to act on it. I think its adoption might just win her many, many women's votes.)

     But the status quo is why I am writing this piece. To some, the proposal I am going to outline may sound familiar, and that's because I (a man with three daughters and three granddaughters) have a deep interest in women's rights (as was my Shirley, the late, much loved mother of my daughters); it may also sound familiar because I have written about the subject before.



     AND NOW -- HERE'S OUR SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM:  Let's take the province of British Columbia, Canada, for our model in showing how the reforms I am advocating would work.

     The way it goes now in the election of a provincial government is the election of one Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in each constituency (also termed a riding), with candidates nominated by the party association (or politically independent group) wishing representation in the Legislature. When all the votes are counted in each riding, the candidate earning the most votes wins the seat. And the party with the greatest number of seats forms a government.

     As it now happens, male candidates usually outnumber female candidates, and in any event the number of MLAs who are male have always outnumbered the female MLAs. Thus, we get a "male-dominated" legislature (or city council, or House of Commons in Ottawa), with intermittent complaints about male domination of our democracy, and, when something like International Women's Day comes along, many, many well-expressed complaints of the same character. The cliche goes on and on: "We must have more women candidates, to redress the balance."

     Well, just saying such things hasn't achieved much, if anything. What I suggest is that we make one very simple amendment in our electoral law: We make space for two MLAs from each riding -- not just one, but two.

     One seat would go to a male candidate, from whatever number of male candidates were in the running for that male seat; and the other seat would be for a female candidate, whatever number won nominations to represent their party or independent group for the female seat.



    AND -- PRESTO! -- EQUALITY OF REPRESENTATION for women has arrived. One woman MLA for each constituency, one man MLA for each constituency. Think of it -- from then on, not a law would be passed, not a policy would be adopted, not a budget would be passed, not a single inquiry would be launched, without the interests and rights of women being well considered.

     I first made this proposal about seven years ago, after having read that some aboriginal groups in Canada's north had attempted to introduce such a system in their selection of representatives in their culture. The idea lost narrowly, but mostly, I would suggest, because of a male-dominant society there. My own view is that it's a great idea and our democracy would be greatly strengthened were we to adopt it.

     There was a citizen's assembly on B.C. electoral reform about seven years ago. The provincial government under Gordon Campbell set it up, on a model written by the former B.C. Liberal Leader Gordon Gibson. The makeup of the assembly was required to have equal representation of men and women, and it did.

     That knowledge encouraged me, so I sent in my proposal, crediting it to the Inuit, and gave my arguments in favor of the reform. It was accepted by the assembly secretariat as a formal submission to be copied and circulated among the full membership of 160 assembly appointees for their consideration.

     I was disappointed when the inquiry's report finally came down. It had no reference whatever to the proposal I had made.



     THERE IS NO DOUBT, THOUGH:  I intend to keep pressing on this subject, until I am shown good reason as to why it is a faulty idea, having received no such arguments as yet. One mild criticism I have heard is that some women might take the idea of legislated equality of gender representation as unacceptable tokenism. I believe the motivation for such an attitude might come from the idea that women want to "make it on my own merits, I don't need someone to legislate or decree my voting rights." And so on.

     My answer to that is the following:

     Is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms not a piece of legislation? Does it not demand and insist on equality of rights for the sexes? And do you not accept that Charter as a positive, proper and absolutely necessary part of our Citizen Rights? Of course you do.

     Well, what I say is that equality of representation of men and women in our democratic electoral bodies is not a form of tokenism, but rather is also a positive, proper and absolutely necessary part of our electoral -- our citizen -- rights.

      So step forward, citizens, put the heat on the political powers-that-be, and demand this important reform.