The real reason more women should be in politics

A former Ontario finance minister asked me why we need to get more women involved politically. I didn’t have to look far for the answer.

TVO.org

By Steve Paikin - Published on Dec 02, 2020

I got a very short, provocative email the other day from a former Ontario finance minister, whose privacy I will protect here, since it was a personal note that he sent. He was responding to a piece I’d just written about what it’ll take to get more women into politics. His note simply said: “Why?”

I inferred from this that he wanted to know why we needed more women in politics. What possible difference could it make? Isn’t it more important to have the “best people” in public life, regardless of gender?

All great questions. Fortunately (and coincidentally), I had just watched a Zoom conversation, organized by Ryerson University’s Democracy Forum, featuring two of the most trailblazing women ever to serve in politics in Canada. So, to that former finance minister who emailed me, here comes your answer.

Kathleen Wynne and Rachel Notley both made history in their respective provinces during the past decade. Wynne became Ontario’s first female premier in 2013 and won a majority government in 2014. She was also the province’s first openly gay premier. In 2015, Notley became the first New Democrat to inhabit the premier’s office in Alberta. She learned her politics from her late father Grant, Alberta’s NDP leader from 1968 to 1984. Notley did her first campaigning as a child of three and a half and has a picture of herself on Tommy Douglas’s knee. (As a young girl, she famously once told federal NDP leader Ed Broadbent, “You have that same fake politician smile as my father.”)

Read more at TVO.org