A
year ago at an estimates hearing in Australia, Finance Minister Penny Wong was
interrupted in the middle of her sentence by Coalition senator David Bushby.
“If I can
finish now,” she said, glaring Bushby in the eye. His response? Cat noises.
Wong
immediately responded. "You meow when a woman does that … that's a good
idea. It is just extraordinary. The blokes are allowed to yell, but if a woman
stands her ground you want to make that kind of comment. It's sort of
schoolyard politics, mate.”
In
all her 19 years on Parliament Hill, Hedy Fry, the Member of Parliament for
Vancouver Centre, has not seen anything quite like that. However, she says, “It
doesn’t mean that the snickering does not occur when a woman gets excited and actually
is going after the point that she’s trying to make, and her voice raises a
decibel or two, that there isn’t a little snickering, just quiet snickering, because
everybody knows that it’s wrong, that it’s sexist, but they snicker,” she says.
“But
people at least have the ability to know and to be embarrassed if they’re
called out doing it, which at the end of the day I think is some kind of
progress, really.”
The
first female MP elected to the House of Commons was Agnes MacPhail, who served
almost 20 years in office. She was elected in 1921. Currently, women make up
about 25 per cent of the House of Commons. The most recent election saw a
record high at 76 female MPs in the house, but this 25 per cent still doesn’t
accurately represent the demographics of women in the general population.
As
women are still a minority in Parliament, and in politics in general, sometimes
their needs are not met and they find the structures of a system that was not
designed for or by them to be lacking.
“I
don’t think you could accuse the Canadian Parliament of discriminating against women
in any way shape or form,” says Fry on being a female MP. “There is no basic
overt discrimination against females, but there are things that do not
acknowledge the presence of female Parliamentarians.”
There
are very clear reasons for this, she says. “Men have ruled for the last couple
of millennia, and therefore they built institutions of democracy, they’ve built
of Parliament,” she says, institutions that “accommodate a male way of
thinking, a male way of being.”
Having
more women come into office is a step forward; however, the barriers continue
even after entry into the House of Commons. What female MPs must face is a
historically male institution that has only recently began to change.
DIFFERENT
NEEDS
As
Fry puts it, drawing from her experience as a physician, the different needs of
the sexes come down to completely physiological factors. “Female MPs bear
children. That gives them a totally different set of responsibilities,” she
says.
These
differences are sometimes harder to navigate than one might think. Fry mentions
a recent event where female MP Sana Hassainia brought her three-month-old
Skander-Jack into the house, and was asked to leave. Failing that, she was told
to give her baby to a page. “You can imagine, pages are young university
students. What mother gives her baby to somebody she doesn’t know, who she
doesn’t even know can hold a baby?” Fry asks.
The
incident “is now being debated and discussed by a little committee,” Fry says,
which may reach a decision about the rules surrounding babies in the House.
Women
bringing their babies into the House has often been tolerated, although it was
“never formally introduced,” which is why the incident with Hassainia and her
son occurred.
Fry
remembers two female MPs who had babies in Jean Chretien’s second term. They
often had to bring their children into the house and breastfeed, “and the
babies had to be accommodated within the actual lobby which is where MPs walk
out of the chamber,” Fry says. This motivated a decision to install change
tables in the women’s washroom.
Fry
remembers one time where the house had three days and three nights of non-stop
voting and one of the young MPs had their baby with them. She was allowed to
feed her baby while she was not voting. It was very discreet, as “she had a
scarf and nobody could see what she was doing,” says Fry.
Fry
likens the needs of women to any other group. Parliament “has made room for
disabled persons, it’s all wheelchair friendly,” she says. “So, that’s been
accommodated, but some of the things we take for granted about women haven’t
been accommodated.”
When
Fry first came in under the Liberal Chretien government, “there were two
washrooms, one for men just outside the doors into the actual chamber, so it
took literally 20 seconds to get there.” On the other hand, the women’s
washroom “was way down the end of a back corridor.”
It
was an issue. “One female MP actually missed a vote because she had to go to
the washroom; it was ever so far away that she couldn’t get back in time,” Fry
says. At that time, Fry says, “we decided to take the existing men’s washroom
and split it to create bathrooms for women there.”
The
reason for the inconvenience of the bathroom wasn’t a deliberate exclusion, it
was simply that the very building’s structure harkened from a time when there
were little to no female MPs.
JET
LAG
One
of the most notoriously difficult things about being a politician is the long,
grueling hours and the requirement to travel for work.
Joyce
Murray, the MP for Vancouver Quadra, emphasizes that the demands are
relentless. “Women work, like men do, in Ottawa, many, many hours a day, and
then the expectation is to be home on the weekend and serve the needs of the
constituency,” as well as the needs of their family.
While
she stresses that this weighs on everybody, it can affect women in particular.
“Even when both partners in a marriage or relationship are working in the work
force, women still shoulder more of the family and administrative and the children
side of the household activities,” she says.
Indeed,
though partners in a relationship both often work, women do spend more time on
unpaid work such as household chores, childcare, and elder care, according to
2006 data from Statistics Canada. Based on this kind of data, Murray says, “it
may be more challenging for women [to be involved in politics], especially
women that have young children.”
Murray
believes that many structures of Parliament are “still holdovers from a time
when Members of Parliament were primarily men, who came out by train from
wherever their constituency was, brought their families, lived in Ottawa, and
went home by train in the summer, or for Christmas.”
This
doesn’t have to be the case, she says. The structure set up is “not utilizing
modern technology communication tools, it’s not utilizing meeting technology in
the way it could, it’s relying heavily on long air flights, especially from
far-flung ridings, and that’s got an environmental impact, a time impact, and a
stress impact on men and women alike.”
Factors
such as these, Fry says, are what make it so that more women go into positions
in municipal or provincial governments. She describes her own personal commute,
“traveling sometimes eight hours with a three hour time difference,” as
something that would definitely impede having a family. “If you leave your
children home, you’re an absentee parent. And you know, socialization still
expects that the woman should be there,” she says.
She
notes that a lot of women aren’t interested in becoming MPs for this reason or
will “wait until their kids grow up, like I did.” However, waiting it out is
not the solution, Fry says. “Why should they? I mean, the whole idea of having
a Parliament is to have a representation of society.” This includes people from
all groups and of all ages.
PARTISANSHIP
These
kinds of demands on women, of family and work, are just some of the many issues
that are discussed in the all-party women’s caucus. “We haven’t reached any
conclusions,” says Murray, “but we want to make it [Parliament] a more
family-friendly place.”
The
all-party women’s caucus has existed off and on since 1989. For some time it
was just a meeting of female members of the Liberal party; however, in October
of last year Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett invited female MPs of other political
parties to join.
“We’ve
now had three meetings, once a month for the last three months with women from
all of the parties,” says Murray. The Conservative senator is a co-chair and
the other co-chair is Liberal. “Our discussions have covered the general
terrain of women’s equality, women’s portrayal in the media and in politics,
and barriers to having more women in Ottawa.”
“I
am very sorry to say that there are very few female Conservative MPs who are members
of this group; the female Conservative senators are [part of the women’s
caucus],” says Fry. “Originally, when we first started [the women’s caucus], a
lot of the Conservative women came, but they’ve dropped off; maybe they’re just
busy, I have no idea.”
“I do know
that I have spoken to some Conservative women MPs who have told me that they
don’t like this issue of ‘women’s this’ [and] ‘women’s that’ because women have
to stop being seen as victims and treated as victims,” she adds.
Conversely,
Fry doesn’t see it that way: “We’re not saying women are victims at all.” She
points to something that was brought forward to the United Nations in her time
as Secretary of State Multiculturalism and Status of Women, called gender-based
analysis. This analysis is “how to analyze every policy, every piece of
legislation that is coming through Parliament, to ensure that it does not
unintentionally create a challenge for men and for women.”
Fry
emphasizes how important it is to uphold this, and that certain policies, such
as the Harper government’s job creation plan, haven’t. “[If] you know that only
one per cent of women are in the construction trade, how is that an equal
opportunity job creation program? It isn’t. If you’d done gender-based
analysis, you might have recognized it wasn’t,” says Fry.
She also
stresses the importance of women working together on Parliament Hill.
It has
happened a few times, she says, “where women coming together have been able to
cross partisan boundaries, to make significant changes, like when the Liberal,
and the NDP and the Progressive Conservative women came together to make breast
cancer a really important and seminal issue.”
In June
2011, Rona Ambrose, present Minister for the Status of Women for the
Conservative government, spoke at the Equal Voice reception, an organization
that aims to get more women elected into office. “As elected women to the House
of Commons we have a special opportunity, and I believe a real obligation, to
work together to improve the lives of women and girls,” she said.
In
conjunction with Equal Voice’s mission she also encouraged more women to run,
but the message that she sent about female solidarity in Parliament was clear.
“I look forward to collaborating with all of my 75 women colleagues from across
the political spectrum,” she said.
The
percentage of female candidates in political parties ranges from the low 22 per
cent of the Conservative candidates, to the high 41 per cent of the NDP
candidates. As with the Liberal party, the NDP party has its own women’s
caucus. MP Djaouida Sellah, who is chair of the NDP women’s caucus, announced
her election last year, saying that, “The evolution of the status of women in
the Western world has created a domino effect that can still be seen today
around the world. The fact that Saudi Arabian women obtained the right to vote
in municipal elections shows that the path forged by Canadian women is still
guiding the evolution of many societies.”
Unfortunately,
despite this strong role, it seems that it is not enough to avoid the usual
scrutiny, particularly from the media. Last month, Huffington Post put up a very brief video clip
entitled “Another vain NDP MP in the House of Commons” of Sellah brushing her
hair out of her face while looking into a mirror, saying that the MP was the
latest to be “caught doing something embarrassing.” She can be seen fixing her
hair for approximately five seconds.
TOP OF
FORM BOTTOM OF FORM
While the
Conservative male-to-female ratio is the least equal, they have increased their
ratio the most in the last half-decade: while now representing 22 per cent of
the Conservative candidates, women accounted for only 12 per cent in 2006. As
noted in a parliamentary publication on Women in Parliament by Julie Cool of
the Social Affairs Division, the Conservatives have not implemented any special
measures to achieve this.
With
consideration to the fact that women, on average, earn less than men, other
political parties will sometimes provide additional campaign funding to women
who are nominated. The NDP, who have the highest ratio of women to men,
actively seeks out minority groups and women to be nominated. Most parties have
minimum quotas.
SLOW
VICTORIES
According
to the Parliament of Canada’s website, since 1997, the number of female-held
seats in the Parliament has remained at around 20 per cent, most recently
jumping to 24 per cent in 2011. The number has been steadily increasing, with
the exception of 2004 to 2006, when four female seats were lost.
There are
still needs that could be accommodated, Fry says. Better childcare would be a
good place to start: “Some places, like Sweden, and Scandinavian jurisdictions,
they do have childcare available in the precinct, they also do have neonatal
care available, they have breastfeeding rooms … they have very female-friendly
precincts,” she describes.
Another
issue is the opportunity for women to prove their equality with their male
counterparts. This is often impeded by the tendency to give women “soft
portfolios,” Fry says, where “in many countries, [women are] given social
services, health, human resources, [and] labour… [instead of] the hard-nosed
political things; finance, and international affairs, and trade, and that kind
of thing, which is kind of sad. Because you know, I think it’s time that we
start judging women on their ability.”
MORE
THAN QUOTAS
A big
question hanging overhead as well is whether electing more women will in fact
change the structure.
“Some
Parliaments that have a large number of women are beginning to say, ‘Well, have
they?’ Have women actually fulfilled the promise of change? Or have women,
suddenly finding themselves in a male-dominated arena, decided instead of
sinking they would swim, and in order to swim, they actually join the club?”
says Fry. “And they behave like a man, and they don’t want to be spoken of as
women, because there is a tendency for us people in business, in Parliament,
and the media, to stereotype women as shrill, if they raise their voices, as
ambitious in a negative [way], aggressive if they are ambitious and they want
to move forward.”
It’s this
attitude, she says, that sees many women fall silent, or adapt to the ideas of
others.
This is one
pitfall, but conversely there are also success stories that avoid this.
Brigitta Dahl, former Speaker of Parliament for Sweden, explained her
impressions of the Swedish Parliament. It’s not just the representation of
women, she says that makes a difference, but “that a majority of women and men
bring relevant social experience to the business of Parliament. This is what
makes the difference. Men bring with them experience of real life issues, of
raising children, of running a home. They have broad perspectives and greater
understanding … Neither men nor women have to conform to a traditional role.
Women do not have to behave like men to have power; men do not have to behave
like women to be allowed to care for their children.”
The
presence of women in Parliament, then, can also make change beyond uniquely
female needs. Because women often hold a strong role in supporting family,
their push for more family-friendly amenities in office also paves way for male
politicians who want to have a stronger family life.
Greater
representation from all groups in society strengthens democracy, but it can
also lead to the ability to break out of traditional roles, to and make change.
Female politicians often hold this promise.
Fry
emphasizes that for this reason, it’s important that female politicians stand
their ground. “I think most people instinctively … when they elect a woman …
elect change. I think they really instinctively believe that things are going
to change,” she says. “And if it isn’t, they’re going to say, ‘What the hell’s
the difference?’”
//Claire Vulliamy, arts editor
//Graphics by Marco Ferriera
//Claire Vulliamy, arts editor
//Graphics by Marco Ferriera
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