“It’s normal that there are more elected men, women are not interested in politics. »
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
“It’s hard to recruit women to be candidates, they are more difficult to convince than men. »
“Parties recruit women as candidates just to look good. »
Surely you have heard these words recently. I invite you to take a few moments and read these sentences again. Admit that there is food for thought.
You would have thought that things would happen naturally. That by obtaining the right to vote in 1940, the women of Quebec would increasingly take their place in the various public spheres in order to be as represented there as in society.
Well no, 82 years later, parity is still a hot topic, because unfortunately it has not yet been achieved. We are on the right track – it seems that there have never been so many women candidates as in this election – but nothing is certain. In the past, we have seen considerable advances and setbacks in the place of women in politics. The elections in which I was elected in 2007 are among these setbacks.
In short, it is time for women to participate permanently in the real decisions, and no longer occasionally.
We rarely talk about parity in the election campaign. Admittedly, this is not a sexy subject to discuss. There is no Ministry of Parity and there is never any electoral promise to invest massively in parity.
The only time this subject is raised during a campaign is to analyze the proportion of women candidates in each political party. After all, in 2022, it would be unthinkable for a party not to present as many women as men (and yet…).
This parity is important, even crucial. This is the very basis of democracy.
In the list of actions to be taken to ensure the dignified representation of women, the number of female candidates is only one of the points to be ticked off. There are many others.
But why is it important that there are as many women as men in politics?
Women constitute half of the population (a little more even). It is simply normal that they are present in the same proportion to contribute to making decisions which have an impact on the whole of society.
Let’s take the situation another way. Imagine a Quebec family, in 2022, made up of a father, a mother and two children. Would you find it normal that only the father makes all the decisions concerning the family: health, education, the economy, housing, transport and so on? Surely not.
So why would we accept, in 2022, that women are still under-represented and why would we passively decide to take only the minimum steps to correct the situation? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me and above all, it’s not very democratic.
It is high time to pass a law requiring political parties to field as many women as men in general elections. Several aspects would have to be established, of course, but without law, we will have to rely on the goodwill of the political parties, which does not protect us from other setbacks in the future…
During the event On the march towards parity, organized by the Groupe Femmes, Politique et Démocratie, last April, of the four parties present, only the Coalition avenir Québec did not want to make a firm commitment to adopt a law on parity in the next legislature. The Parti Québécois, the Liberal Party of Quebec and Québec solidaire did not hesitate. The Conservative Party of Quebec sent no representative.
I would be pleasantly surprised if all parties made this commitment in the coming weeks. This is a promise that must be kept!
However, achieving parity in politics is not simply about having as many female candidates as male candidates. It must be ensured that these candidacies will result in a sufficient number of elected candidates. In other words, the “takenable” constituencies must be reserved for women.
But we have to go even further than that. Women must be at the forefront, have a space to express themselves, at all levels, in the same way as men: in the campaign committees, in the strategic team and in the close guard in particular.
They must have responsibilities, be spokespersons for important announcements and take part in decisions and orientations.
They must be everywhere, as in society.
It’s just normal, and it’s the only way to truly end parity one day.